The amazing presentations we had yesterday, as well as stephanie's speech this morning all give the same message : if you have an idea, go ahead !

Among you, who thinks he will be on stage next year or just like yesterdays finalist, preparing a pitch ?

Here are the posts on yesterdays presentations :
http://blog.profession-web.ch/index.php/459-mixin-ease-your-social-life
http://blog.profession-web.ch/index.php/458-clipperz-protect-your-intern...
http://blog.profession-web.ch/index.php/457-holistis-concentrating-on-yo...
http://blog.profession-web.ch/index.php/456-viewdle-searching-through-vi...
http://blog.profession-web.ch/index.php/462-pixelus-real-time-animation
http://blog.profession-web.ch/index.php/463-wuala-stored-and-encrypted-p...
http://blog.profession-web.ch/index.php/464-io-making-interface-visual

Add your own venture in the comment list if they are by any chance linked or inspired by the conference :

A few hours only after the Venture Night, all the videos of the talks are online on Klewel.ch:

http://www.klewel.ch/lift08venturenight.php

You can play back the videos, browse the slides. You can also search for words appearing in the slides.

Any feedback welcome. Enjoy!

Maël

A summary of Venture Night on my blog, plus first moments...

Waiting to find out more about how our external blog posts are aggregated.

Libby

http://authenticblogging.com/2008/02/06/loving-venture-night-at-lift08/

Hi folks

I don't get in until Wednesday afternoon, and I am keen to meet up. It's my first trip to Geneva and LIFT, and it is only a Wednesday night, but a meal might be nice...

I'm not 100% sure that the Venture Night is my thing. So... is there an alternative meet-up anywhere? Would be great to arrive and slip right on it to things before the conference starts in earnest the next day...

Will people be milling around at the Venture venue, then heading out from there?

Is the Venture essential?

All suggestions most welcome...

Bestest

Libby

The venture panel has spoken, and came up with EIGHT winners for the venture night. We had some companies finishing ex-aequo so we decided to include everybody instead of coming up with some weird system to separate those who had finished with the same grade.

Congratulations to the winners, and see you all at the venture night on Wednesday February 6 from 17h. Reminder: the venture night is a free event open to the public. Even those who did not register for LIFT08 can come and share a drink with the LIFT community. Practical information here.

It is hard to pass all the information to you guys with all the things happening at the same time, so sometimes we forget to tell you a few stories, like the fact we will be printing EIGHT editions of a magazine live during the conference, or why our venture night works the way it works. Shafqat just made me realized I hadn't explained everything during a conversation on techcrunch.uk. Here is my comment:

In response to "I can only say that most of the proposals won’t be let into the room since only 6 of the 45 ventures will be selected."

"Regarding the number of startups presenting, I made this choice because I believe that having less startups put in a better position makes more sense than 30 startups with 3 minutes and everybody bored and not paying attention in the room.

At LIFT we don’t do thing if we can’t do them well. I prefer to give 6 startups a real chance to meet big guys, get in the media, and showcase their stuff rather than compressing 30 pitches in 2 hours.

So now you know, and you can tell me if you agree or not.

We have been receiving help from the city of Geneva, and it just materialized into a great news: we will hold the Venture night and the Fondue at a wonderful Maison Communale de Plainpalais, an amazing and beautiful building with numerous rooms and a theatre at the heart of the city.

It is great because:
• the venture night will happen only 300 meters from Unimail (where the workshops are scheduled on Wednesday).
• we solved one of our oldest problem: find a room to make the fondue at only ONE location for 600 to 700 persons. Hurray, we are organizing Switzerland's biggest fondue of the year with the help of the source: gruyere.com.
• the room is beautiful and full of charm, and will be a great place to do cocktails and presentations.

We are now organizing buses to take participants from the CICG to the fondue on Thursday, and the social events just got much much better :)

We have been wondering when you guys would start making your propositions for LIFT08. And it is now it seems, with many of them coming in the last few days :) Let's see: we have 7 open stage propositions, 16 projects for the venture night, 6 workshops and... only 1 discussion (which is a cool format you should really check it out)!

All propositions are assembled on the LIFT08 propositions page, and if you are thinking of speaking yourself hurry up, voting is scheduled to happen in 2 weeks so don't miss your chance to speak at LIFT08!

Fred Destin, a regular LIFT attendee and one of the most well known european VC and blogger, joined our venture night panel and will be with us to provide advices and feedback to the presenting entrepreneurs.

Fred is a General Partner at Atlas Venture, focused on technology enabled business and digital media. For Atlas Venture he sits on the boards of DailyMotion, Zoopla, PriceMinister, Sporever, KDS and Realeyes3D.

A just updated the LIFT venture night page, making a few things clearer (the event is PUBLIC and open to persons who don't attend LIFT08, it is NOT a contest, it is EASY to submit your project). The panel of entrepreneurs is shaping up with Pierre Chappaz, Robert Scoble, Ouriel Ohayon and Jasper Bouwsma joining us to advice young entrepreneurs.

Now we need to do a bit of work on the format, and here comes a question for the LIFT community: what are the cool formats you saw in Venture nights around the world? Should we do classic 5 minutes pitches, or try to do something ala Pecha Kucha with automated slides? Do we ask actors to play the pitches to add more fun? Should the public be involved in some way? These are the questions we are working on, and any idea or experience you could have is welcome.