Lift founder Laurent Haug is in Barcelona representing us at EIBTM, one of the two major conference of conference organizers ;) Speaking during the Technology Hour on Generation Y and the meeting industry, Laurent is also one of the judges on the WorldWide Technology Watch where start-ups of the world compete with their latest innovations to win the chance to present at the exhibition.

The work of Lift is, to say the least, quite intriguing for an industry that is facing major challenges with the current economic crisis, flu and other pandemics, and strong challenges from new technologies changing the way audiences participate, register, travel, collaborate, stay in touch, etc etc.

To learn more, see the article in EIBTM Daily that was published today, and come and see us in Barcelona!

^{Laurent takes the near future pose made popular by Nicolas Nova and Julian Bleecker, the later a repeated offender (1|2|3)}

Several of our friends and partners are also attending: our Geneva conference center, Amiando, Swiss start-up Klewel and Sebastien Tondeur of MCI are among the people you will meet in the corridors of the Gran Fira.

Lots of people in the digital industry are gathering next week in New York for the Web 2.0 Expo. Sandbox Network founder and Lifter Fabian Pfortmuller organizes a dinner on Tuesday night to connect Web2.0 guests, Sandboxers and others Lifters over some nice food.

Guests will include Dominik Grolimund (founder of Wuala, see his presentation at Lift08 venture night), Jun Loyaza and the Head of Innovation at Deutsche Telekom USA.

More info and rsvp.

Our friends at CERN are presenting a very interesting lecture on Oct. 26th in Geneva:

The Citizen Cyberscience Lectures

Mobile phones and Africa: a success story
Dr. Mo Ibrahim, Mo Ibrahim Foundation

Time: 14:00-15:30, 26 October 2009
Place: Main Auditorium, CERN

The Citizen Cyberscience Lectures are hosted by the partners of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre, CERN, The UN Institute of Training and Research and the University of Geneva. The goal of the Lectures is to provide an inspirational forum for participants from the various international organizations and academic institutions in Geneva to explore how information technology is enabling greater citizen participation in tackling global development challenges as well as global scientific research.

The first Citizen Cyberscience Lectures will welcome two speakers who have both made major innovative contributions in this area.

Dr. Mo Ibrahim, founder of Celtel International, one of Africa’s most successful mobile network operators, will talk about how the introduction of mobile phones in Africa has created jobs and enriched the social lives of citizens, as well as supporting civil society and advancing the cause of democracy.

Dr. Alpheus Bingham, founder of InnoCentive, a Web-based community that solves industrial R&D challenges, will describe examples of citizens outside a targeted field of expertise providing unique solutions to challenging scientific problems.

The Citizen Cyberscience Lectures are open and free of charge. Participants from outside CERN must register to be able to access CERN.

To register contact Yasemin Hauser (Yasemin.Hauser [at] cern.ch).

For more information visit the lecture's website.

Beside team communications, this blog features posts written by community members. If you have a Lift account you can also share your thoughts and ideas by clicking here. Here is a post about Frontier of Interactions 2009, a conference founded by Lift06 speakers Matteo Penzo whose fifth edition just happened in Roma, Italy.

Frontiers of Interaction http://frontiersofinteraction.it is an event born around the interaction design topics that, since 2005, has become the top notch innovation conference in Italy; its unusual format that mixes music, interactive and artistic installations, demo sites and speeches makes it the de-facto home for makers and innovators: talents moving between industry and academia, early adopters of enabling technologies and geeky gadgets.

Each year we choose a different file rouge and through the years we've been fortunate enough to anticipate trends and dynamics about multimodal interfaces, web 2.0 and online virtual worlds and we traveled through territories like advanced mobility, robotics for entertainment, artificial intelligence, spime networks.

After three years spent in Milan Frontiers of Interaction started a three years long tour that - in 2008 - took us in Turin (World Design Capital) while Rome hosted the 2009 edition, held at the marvelous Acquario Romano building; this is the candidate venue for our Frontiers 2010, which is going to be held early on July.

Frontiers is an hybrid show, which attracts international speakers, inspires the national talents and creates a bridge between Europe and Silicon Valley; in the last 5 editions we hosted friends like Bruce Sterling (Wired), Adam Greenfield (Nokia), Nicolas Nova (LIFT Conference), Elizabeth Churchill (Yahoo), Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford University), Bruno Giussani (TED) and speakers from the Academics such as Tokio University, MIT, Fraunhofer Institute or UCLA.

All the 2009 edition videos and the "interviews from the balcony" (which entertain our public during the speaker change) are available for free (partly in Italian, partly in English) at http://frontiers.dolmedia.tv.

Beside team communications, this blog features posts written by community members. If you have a Lift account you can also share your thoughts and ideas by clicking here. Here is a post introducing ICCM 2009, a conference organized by Patrick Meier, inspired in part by his experience at Lift09.

The purpose of ICCM 2009 is to formalize the field of crisis mapping by bringing together seasoned humanitarian and human rights practitioners, leading scholars, technology developers, designers and donors to craft the cutting edge of crisis mapping. Crisis mapping seeks to leverage mobile platforms, computational linguistics, geospatial technologies and visual analytics to power rapid effective response to complex humanitarian emergencies.

The co-organizers of ICCM—Patrick Meier at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) and Jen Ziemke at John Carroll University (JCU)—seek to foster a vibrant community of crisis mappers to create multiple synergies important for applied innovation in the humanitarian space.

To this end, over 50 organizations are participating in ICCM 2009, including multiple UN agencies such as UNDP Sudan, OCHA Colombia and UNOSAT in CERN; NGOs such as Ushahidi, MercyCorps and Amnesty International; technology developers including Development Seed, Avencia and UniversalMind; and multiple research institutes such as the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, the EU’s Joint Research Center and the National Visual Analysis Center in addition to prominent scholars working in the area of conflict research.

The conference will include Ignite Talks, self-organized roundtables and a tech fair in addition to roundtables on mobile and automated crisis mapping, crisis mapping analytics and crisis mapping response. ICCM’s co-organizers were inspired by Lift09 and are drawing on Laurent’s advice to design the first of what they hope will be the world’s go-to conference series on crisis mapping.

Beside team communications, this blog features posts written by community members. If you have a Lift account you can also share your thoughts and ideas by clicking here. Here is a post introducing Palomar5, an initiative of Lifter Hans Raffauf to gather young entrepreneurs in Berlin for 6 weeks.

Palomar5 is a project initiated by a group of 6 young Germans and Deutsche Telekom's Product and Innovation Unit, whose aim is to involve young people in a new format of innovation. Palomar5 isn't a think-tank or a conference, it wants to produce more than ideas, to create tangible solutions within an intensive creative space.

At the core of this initiative is a 6 week camp that brings together 30 people under the age of 30. They will live and work together in a unique 2000sqm space from October 9th till November 21st in Berlin.

The topic is the future of innovation, technology and the working environment. The content streams we will be working on are Leadership, Collaborative Value Creation, Knowledge Cultivation, Corporate Communication & Behaviour, The next Generation of Identity, Intellectual Property, Skills Management.

The Transformeurs 2009 event is set to happen in two weeks, and there are only 40 seats still available. If you want to hear Daniel Kaplan (CEO of the FING), David Orban (of the Open Spime project) and Jean-Louis Fréchin (ENSCI and No Design), with workshops by Nicolas Nova (Lift), Xavier Comtesse (Avenir Suisse), Raphaël Briner (HyperWeek) or Alexandre Cotting (Institut Icare/Rfid Center), visit technoark.ch/technoark2009 to find more information.

The Ark is offering ten free passes to Lifters, and we still have five available. Please use the comments below or email us if you want one!

Our friends over at CERN run some very interesting and free events on a regular basis, welcoming speakers like Richard Stallman or Mark Shuttleworth for one hour presentations and discussions. They will welcome another great guest on January 27, with Intel Chairman Craig Barrett making the trip to the WWW's birthplace.

Technology has had a profound impact on people’s lives around the world by tackling challenges in education, health care, research, and economic development. Throughout its history, Intel has been inspired by what technology makes possible. The work taking place at CERN has been a prime motivation to continue enhancing energy-efficient computing power required in the search for the Higgs boson. Can Intel keep pace with computing needs to tackle the world’s biggest challenges? Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel and the United Nations Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development, will discuss research currently underway that will help us rise to the challenge, as well as how technology is changing people’s lives all over the world.

More information and registration

The conference happens on Tuesday, January 27th at 14h00 in the CERN's Main Auditorium.

In partnership with our friends of the TSR, we organize an informal debate about the digital traceability and the risks of a "transparent society". Registration is free but you need to register by emailing julie.bauer@tsr.ch. May 19th, 6:30-8pm @ Télévision Suisse Romande, 20, quai Ernest-Ansermet, Geneva, full event in French

De nos achats quotidiens à notre comportement sur le Web, les traces que nous laissons sont de plus en plus nombreuses. Et les caméras qui nous observent sont presque omniprésentes, qu'il s'agisse de vidéosurveillance ou de particuliers équipés de téléphones portables.
Ces informations sont exploitées par d'autres: employeurs potentiels, équipes marketing ou même forces de police. Sommes-nous en train d'aller vers une société totalement transparente? La vie privée va-t-elle disparaître? Comment gérer cette situation nouvelle où nos moindres mouvements sont surveillés?

Le débat est animé par Bernard Rappaz, rédacteur en chef de TSR Multimédia.

Intervenants:

Sami Coll (Département de sociologie de l'Université de Genève). Il aborde dans son étude les risques de surveillance induits par les cartes de fidélité de type Cumulus. Le chercheur s'intéresse à de thématiques telles que la protection de la sphère privée et la protection des données.

Stéphane Koch (intelligentzia.net). Consultant dans le domaines de l'intelligence économique, la veille stratégique et la confidentialité de l'information. Il intervient dans des cas liés à la gestion de la réputation, la protection du "patrimoine informationnel" de l'entreprise et de sa marque sur Internet, ainsi que sur d'autres problématiques liées à la cybercriminalité.

A new event just got on our radar and it seems worth the trip to Barcelona. Welcome iFest (formerly Renacer), run by our friends of Infonomia, and that will feature speakers like Hiroshi Tasaka or Alex Steffen.