Month: February 2008

Here are some of my Lift 08 notes, pêle-mêle:

This year I tried to provide a running commentary on Twitter. Unfortunately the wifi was patchy and a number of valuable text snippets were lost… 😉 I got one Tweet response – all the way from Malawi – that appreciated my effort.

I tuned in to the Lift backchannel on Skype:

The Skype backchannel was an interesting experience with live comments, opinions and background links. BTW, Skype was the most resilient of all Internet apps and managed to stay online throughout.

The format of this year’s Lift was a little different. There was one main track, i.e. we were all blogging and twittering about the same presentations. But I didn’t even notice it until we started discussing differences between ’07 and ’08. I liked the new format. I liked following the flow, without having to decide which session I’d need to move to next.

There was a red flashing light to indicate that the speaker’s time had run out… a neat feature.

At any one time, there were an incredible number of cameras in use. Automatic de-lurking.

I met a lot of new people from diverse backgrounds. And I met lots of ’07 attendees (there must have been a high degree of returnees).

My favorite talks:

Younghee Jung – she presented design ideas from Mumbai, Rio, and Accra regarding their vision of a suitable mobile device for their needs. I hope Nokia hears the request for cheap, sturdy and waterproof mobile phones.

Genevieve Bell – I liked the Australian humor.

Eric Favre – even though I don’t like Nespresso, I respect the perseverance.

Noel Hidalgo – a 5 min talk on traveling around the world in 7 months, sponsored by bloggers.

Kevin Warwick – scary but fascinating. He said “tremendously exciting” several times during the talk.

Holm Friebe and Phillip Albers – two Germans with a dry sense of humor described their creative way of doing business. For example, they don’t wait the usual 30 to 60 days to pay their bills but pay them up front.

Henriette Weber Andersen – enjoyed this refreshing 5 minute reminder that the marketer’s dream world has changed.

Robin Hunicke – great talk. She managed to link her presentation to other content we had heard. I particularly liked her slides that use small sketches as icons. A good idea. I had met her and Souris in the Lift workshop on Forgetful Interfaces and enjoyed their constructive input.

Finally the last sessions on Foresight inspired me. I can recommend watching the videos of Scott Smith and Bill Cockayne.

The corresponding Lift videos are available at: http://www.nouvo.ch/liftvideo