The LIFT Conference is a 3-day gathering in Swiss Geneva with a clear focus on the impact of technology on society (and vice versa), and much like last year, the 700-headed audience witnessed an impressive set of speakers on this third editon of LIFT, all with the ambition of leaving an inspired impression on everyone present.
Internet & Society
The first day of the actual conference - after the Workshops and Venture Night the day before - was kicked off by Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk and science fiction author, who tried to convince everyone within 30 minutes that the most spectacular event of 2008 had already happened: the marriage of French President Nicolas Sarkozy with singer / model Carla Bruni.
Pierre Bellanger, founding CEO of the popular French social media platform Skyrock, shared his vision on trends in social networking, followed by academic Jonathan Cabiria, who explained how virtual worlds like Second Life can help marginalized people to regain self-esteem and hope.
Design & User Experience
Anthropologists Younghee Jung and Genevieve Bell, respectively from Nokia and Intel, explained how the internet can influence mocking up desin & user experience concepts for the future. Jung talked about Nokia Open Studio, a product launch event that incorporates stimulating people from developing countries to contribute their ideas and vision on the mobile phone for the next generation. Bell, from chip maker Intel, gave a compelling speech about secrets and lies on the internet. A must-see:
Entrepreneur stories
After lunch, the audience listened to some inspiring stories from the following entrepreneurs:
Rafi Haladjian - the French internet pioneer who wants to change the world with a connected rabbit, the Nabaztag, one of the creations from his last company Violet.
Eric Favre - the Swiss visionary who brought espresso to the masses as inventor of Nespresso and its patented coffee caps, gave a very inspirational talk about innovation and ‘intrapreneurship’.
Jasmina Tesanovic - the Serbian political activist, feminist, author, translator and film producer shared her visions on blogging in times of war.
The Far East
EPFL-researcher Marc Laperrouza guided us into Asia with an expose on the recent trends in the Asian telecommunication landscape, followed by academic Heewon Kim delivering more insight into every day life in the Far East thanks to her research on the use of social software in South-Korea.
Gen Kanai, top executive with Mozilla Japan, discussed open source in Asia, and why the general perception of Asians not contributing much to the open source community is false. Here’s the video of Kanai’s keynote:
Technology for the good and the bad of our climate
After the coffee break, there was one more special session about global warming and the innovative technologies countering the phenomenon. Tom Taylor from the British agency Headshift explained how social networks and ‘peer pressure’ can raise the general awareness about global warming as well as actual deeds for the benefit of our environment. One example he gave was DoTheGreenThing.com.
The online community focused on raising awareness on efficient usage of energy resources WattWatt was introduced by its makers, followed by Nobel prize winner Andy Reisinger, who gave a fascinating expose about the worldwide social challenges global warming entails.
Last but not least, watch this video from Guy Pignolet (Sunsat Energy Council), who invented in innovative way of amassing more solar energy from outer space and beam it back to earth for our benefit:
More videos are available at Nouvo.ch, pictures here.
Robin Wauters for mTrends.
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