Paul Barnett is making waves in the video games business because he chose to attend LIFT instead of the reference event of his industry. In his inimitable style, Paul recalls his experience and comes up with a unique account of what kind of experience LIFT can be.

[LIFT] was amazing. You go into this room where the conference is. There’s these comfy chairs. I mean, really comfy chairs. And they rotate. And they lean back. [...] It’s like being at the UN. It’s just the most crazy thing I’d ever seen. And then it was full of people talking weirdly. One bloke was talking about how we needed to build power-stations in orbit.

It’s just one of those things when you first hear it you go “Power stations in outer orbit? That’s total madness” and then he goes – No, you don’t understand. They produce too much carbon. So what we have to do is put them above the ozone layer. And that way it won’t effect us anymore. And then you go – well, there could be something in that, I suppose. And the next thing he’s talking about is deploying these light collecting machines which will then beam down onto enormous solar panels – hyper solar panels – and he’s up there talking about it. And you can’t help but nod agreeably now and again and go – no, he’s completely bonkers. It was just full-on. There was a guy who inserted electrochips into his skin…

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Paul's LIFT08 talk was watched more than 50'000 times in a couple of days after he stepped on stage. The video is still up, it's still a lot of fun, and yes if you are French like me - not Swiss, nor Swedish (read the article you'll get the inside joke ;) - you will learn some new words to use during your next trip to an English pub.

When we looked at the audience in the middle of Paul Barnett's "show", We did not see any of the lifter on their laptop. All heads were turned towards the scene where this talkative gesturing guy was talking about his trip to Las Vegas, slightly drawing parrallels with game industry. I was used to his podcasts and his presentation was far beyond that. What's really impressive is that he managed not to talk about the product he is contributing to design, Warhammer Online as did some other speakers being there for the sake of the slightly hidden advertisement. He is probably hugely contributing to the whole buzz around this new "post-World-of-Warcraft" product that is Warhammer Online. After a so amazing communication job done around this game, I really hope (and I'm probably not alone) that the product will be as impressive as the buzz piggybacked by the personality that is Paul Barnett.