Lift Stories

Lift creates a lot of value, as an independent survey confirmed: 48% of the participants have gained concrete returns and new projects attending Lift11 (full report).

Our passion is to create an environment where great things happen. Our carefully designed events offer a unique opportunity to connect with the world's brightest minds, and see tomorrow's ideas ahead of everybody else. Here are a few examples of Lift's impact on the life of its participants:

They launched a new project at Lift

• Author Cyrus Farivar met the father of the Internet and Google VP Vint Cerf at Lift09 and asked him to write the preface to his book The Internet of Elsewhere
• The Korean artist Sey Min and the New York-based architect and assistant Columbia professor Yang Soo-in met at Lift Asia 08. Their meeting lead to a collaboration on "The Living", Soo-in's practice emphasizing open-source research and design.
• After we had invited Jaewoong Lee (Korean Entrepreneur, founder of the web portal Daum) to Lift07 as a speaker, he invited us back to Korea to start Lift over there! That was the beginning of a fruitful partnership featuring 3 Lift events in Korea. The fourth is coming up in spring 2012.
• At Lift06, Ellen Wallace was inspired to create the free online community newspaper "GenevaLunch". In 2007, GenevaLunch became one of the sponsors of Lift, Ellen's way to say thank you :)
• Andre Ribeirinho and Pedro Custodio were inspired by their time at Lift, so they decided to create their own conference in Portugal. SHiFT was born shortly after, gathering hundreds of Portugese and international attendees in Lisbon.
• Blogger Stephanie Booth was thinking about running her own event for a while, and Lift inspired her into making the jump. After Lift06, she launched GoingSolo, a conference discussing the challenges and opportunities solo workers face.
• Presenting the Dream School project at Lift11, one of Europe's most innovative creative director Marcel Kampman met Eva Sander who organized for him a tour in Mexico, to present the Dream School project. Marcel also met the UK-based great folks at Yoomee who finally designed the Picnic 2011 conference website:)
• At Lift France 09 Paul Bristow had an intriguing discussion with the speakers John Thackara, Dennis Pamlin and Gunter Pauli. This encounter inspired him to create a few months later the non-profit Eco-Pratique, which is now turning Ferney Voltaire into a Transition town!
  
  
  
  
  

  They got global buzz at Lift

• Following Lift08, Robert Scoble mentioned MixIn on his famous blog Scobleizer and gave it a huge boost. In 2006, Scoble already made CoComment one of the world's most visited website with one of his posts, sending the startup's IT team scrambling to find more servers to serve hundreds of thousands of requests from all around the world.
• Florence Devouard, then chair of the Wikimedia foundation, got the world's attention as Wikipedia was in the middle of a crucial fund raising campaign. After her talk, one of her answers to the moderator's questions on Wikipedia's cash flow was misinterpreted by a blogger in the audience. The report was saying that wikipedia would run out of money in a few months (which was not the case), and the news spread like wildfire all around the web. The result: worldwide attention to WIkipedia's funding situation, and an increase in donations.
• The Digital Media Consumption Manifesto initiative "Don't Make Me Steal" was launched at a Lift11 workshop by Pierre Spring and Jordi Boggiano, and it had been on Wired, as well as on Wired UK, and was retweeted by the Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe, Neelie Kroes.

Lift accelerated these projects

• Raphael Briner's Hyperweek raised a first round of investment at Lift10, before becoming one of Switzerland's major social media company.
• Fontself was an artistic project at Lift07. People loved the concept, and Franz Hoffman and Marc Escher started to thing they had more than a fun project: it was a startup! After months of hard work, Fontself incorporated and raised money from prestigious investors.
• Benedikt Foit founded his start-up Vic Ventures at Lift.
• Poken launched their interactive conference badge at Lift09, and successfully gathered attention from conference organizers around the world.
• After their presentation at the AlpICT venture night in 2008, Wuala was in the spotlight and was bought by LaCie in 2009.

They found a job at Lift

• Companies such as Swisscom, Accenture and LIIP recruited new team members among Lift participants.

They found an editor or book project at Lift

• FYP Editions scouted authors at Lift and published the books of several Lift speakers: Nicolas Nova, Stefana Broadbent, Yasmine Abbas, Jean-Henry Morin.
• Both speakers at Lift08 Paul Dourish, Informatics Professor at UC Irvine and Genevieve Bell, Intel's Experience research director, met and started writing together a book at the conference as mentioned in their book preface.

They found love at Lift

We are still asking for the permission of the couples who met at Lift to disclose their names ;) but we counted around five couples, and one birth has been confirmed: Daphne Jin-hee Haug, Laurent's daughter.

Lift T-Shirts all around the world

Our design partners at Bread and Butter take great care to make nice Lift T-shirt designs, that people will wear also after the conferences. Here are some shots of Lifters with their T-shirts, send us your own pictures!

From left to right: Lucky Joy playing on a stage in Lausanne ///Robert Scoble founder of Scobleizer at SXSW in Austin, Texas /// Mike Radparvar co-founder of Holstee at a party in Washington D.C /// Korean entrepreneur Jaewoong Lee on stage at Lift.