Lift conference

Killing your digital identity

Tue, 08 May 2012 18:18:02 GMT

One of the co-inventors of the web 2.0 suicide machine, Gordan Savicic will tell us the story of his invention, and why he is on a mission to help users be smarter about their digital identities.

etoy.CORPORATION - twisting capitalism & technology since 1994

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:39:53 GMT

etoy.CORPORATION SA is a corporate sculpture and a shareholder company registered in the city of Zug/Switzerland, using corporate structures to maximize cultural values. Since 1994 etoy is hacking the dominating model of the individual artist: the concept of the independent star and glorified genius is replaced by an abstract trademark - etoy. Legendary for its «digital hijack» (1,5 million search engine users
kidnapped in 1996), etoy also coordinated «TOYWAR», a milestone in hacktivism, bringing down a multi-billion dotcom operation and thus creating the most expensive performance in art history. A pioneer in container architecture inspired by the Internet's paket system etoy currently invests all resources in MISSION ETERNITY – a digital cult of the dead and a long term data archive focusing on pioneers of the information age.

Dancing with Handcuffs: The Geography of Trust in Social Networks

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:19:42 GMT

How did a student end up making international headlines for throwing shoes at the architect of China's internet censorship infrastructure and then become the hero for information freedom worldwide? Tricia tells us what happened to the student and how the outcomes were dependent on a variety of factors that tells us a lot about how we socialize and build trust online.

Mass customisation and 3D printing

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:51:21 GMT

Lisa Harouni is responsible dor the day-to-day management of Digital Forming, a startup that offers design companies and lifestyle brands a competitive edge by allowing customers to get involved in the design process of products.

After an introduction about 3D printing technologies, Lisa will show their benefits and implications for both businesses and individual: rapid prototyping, mass customization, return of local production, consequences on copyright laws, and more.

She will also describe the potential fields of applications of this technology in the near future.

WE FELL IN LOVE IN A CODED SPACE

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:29:51 GMT

James Bridle talks about literature and storytelling when everything has become digital, the construction of knowledge and collaborating with robots. Ham, spam, word salad, and what is important in a tent.

Open Source Nuclear Fusion

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:34:13 GMT

Mark Suppes built a nuclear fusion reactor with no formal science background. Prior to the fusion project, Mark became comfortable tackling the improbable with eight years of web startups. In these startups, he learned that it's better to be too ambitious than not ambitious enough. Considering the time and effort a startup requires, it makes sense to aim high. Then, in late 2008 Mark watched a video that would change his life. In that video Dr. Robert Bussard revealed his secret invention: a new approach to nuclear fusion called the Polywell. Bussard believed his invention could provide abundant and inexpensive clean energy; something the world desperately needs. Mark took an intense fascination to the Polywell. This fascination grew and spurred Mark to attempt building his own Polywell. Since he had no prior science background the project presented many steep learning curves. Over the course of three years Mark's Polywell fusion reactor project has transformed into a community project with hundreds of contributors. Mark's open source project has built the world's first amateur Polywell, a small but important step on the long journey to clean energy.

Networking for the Unexpected: Building resilience and innovation with...

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:00:54 GMT

What are the desirable qualities in a communication network? Affordability, ubiquity, reliability, privacy, convenience. In the developing world, mobile networks are delivering telephony and broadband where it has never gone before but often at the expense of the above qualities. Village Telco, an Open Source, DIY, telco-in-a-box puts the power of telephone and broadband infrastructure in local hands and offers a complementary alternative network to conventional telecommunications services.

Visualizing urban flows with mobile data

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:51:54 GMT

In this presentation about the "Villes Vivantes" project with the City of Geneva, Lift and Interactive Things, Benjamin Widerkehr describes how the huge quantity of data generated by mobile phone usage can be employed to visualize urban flows. Benjamin focuses on how to create meaningful stories based on these data.

Open Data: How We Got Here and Where We're Going by Rufus Pollock

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:39:02 GMT

Over the past few years, there has an explosive growth in open data with significant uptake in government, research and elsewhere. Open data has the potential to transform society, government and the economy, from how we travel to work to how we decide to vote. But we
have only just begun down this road, and the going, even so far, has not always been easy.

In his talk, Rufus Pollock introduces the idea of open data, explains how, and why, we are where we are today, and, finally, looks to the future of the rapidly evolving open data ecoystem.

Technologies vs people

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:35:01 GMT

JP Rangaswami discusses the following interrogations: did technology make our lives easier or worse? What are the things that got better, beyond the obvious and utopian views? Did technologies make our jobs easier or worse? Are we collaborating better?

Level vs. Level Are in the future all games gamified?

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:00:50 GMT

In this short presentation about gamification, Niklaus Moor focuses on the psychological mechanisms of video games and the role of motivation in game design. He describes how applying game mechanisms beyond entertainment is quite challenging and tricky.

The future of mobile phone applications

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:30:44 GMT

Nick Heller addresses the future of mobile phone application, using technologies such artificial intelligence, sensors or voice recognition and how they relate to developed and developing countries. More specifically, he addresses what could we the western learn from other developing markets that have access to new technologies. With examples such as the use of internet of things and real-time language translation (from English to Zulu, Afrikaan to Zulu).

The Open Source Satellite Initiative

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:54:17 GMT

Space programs so far have been the domain of governments and the military-industrial complex - rarely ever have individuals ventured into outer space. But after years of research Korean artist
and independent satellite engineer Hojun Song has found that it is indeed possible to launch and operate a personal satellite at a fairly reasonable price. For the past six years he has been exploring ways to integrate the concept of a personal satellite project into cultural contexts and into his artistic practice. As his first satellite will take off from Kazakhstan this August he came to Lift to share his story, his struggles and his plans.

Peer-to-Peer Currencies: The Amazing (And True!) Story of Bitcoin

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:42:31 GMT

The story of Bitcoin: how the world's most famous peer to peer currency went through a gold rush, a bubble, and a crash in only a few months.

Democratizing Innovation - Grandma likes that by Fabian Hemmert

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:07:15 GMT

In his talk, Fabian Hemmert talks about the democratization of technological innovation. He shows a series of projects conducted at the Design Research Lab in Berlin, which, rather than serving the average user, embraced niches and extremes.

Perspective on information overload by Anaïs Saint-Jude

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:41:06 GMT

Is information overload really new? Anais Saint Jude will provide a bit of perspective by looking at another great period of innovation: the 17th century.

Reinventing finance, one startup at the time

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:09:01 GMT

Sean Park believes finance will change radically in the coming months. He will show us some of the startups he believes in, from people reinventing banks to new payment systems.

Here are the links Sean mentions in his talk:

And just in case you are interested/curious, here are the other companies currently in the Anthemis ecosystem:

FinanceACar – World’s first car finance comparison site
MileSense – Turning data into intelligent risk analysis
Metamarkets – Fast insight for big data
BluFin – Look at finance in a new way
MoBank – Cutting edge mCommerce solutions
PayPerks – Powering innovative solutions for the financially underserved
PeerIndex – Understand your social capital
Hooplo – Social games publishing platform
Visual.ly – Data visualization platform for big data

David Rowan "Startup entrepreneurs should move to Africa now"

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:14:49 GMT

David Rowan thinks featured Africa is the next place where great technological innovations will happen. He will explain how startup entrepreneurs should move there.

Lift12 preview with Sylvie Reinhard, Nicolas Nova and Laurent Haug

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:06:52 GMT

Short Preview of Lift12 by the Lift Team. We took the challenge of describing the conference in less than three minutes, and we failed! But really it is a condensed, action packed preview of what to expect on Feb 22-24 2012 in Geneva!

Philippe Lemoine "Wrap up and Take aways"

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:20:42 GMT

In his speech, Philippe Lemoine sum up all sessions that took place at Lift France 11 and brightly concludes by some inspiring take aways.

Roger Malina "Lift France 11 Wrap-up"

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:04:14 GMT

Roger Malina brings the first conclusion to Lift France 11 and comes back on some of the most inspiring speeches of the conference.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang "Contemplative Computing"

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:43:29 GMT

Information technologies today interrupt and distract us, dividing our attention across a range of activities and devices. This feels like an inevitable state of affairs, but Alex Soojung-Kim Pang argues in his talk that it is not. Drawing on recent work in embodied cognition, contemplative practices, and interface design, he describes how we can create and use information technologies in a more thoughtful, meditative way, to help us work in a more sustained, creative and focused manner. He also explains what contemplative computing might mean for individuals as well as corporations, institutions and civic actors.

Juliana Rotich "Ushahidi: Powered by Open Source"

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:25:55 GMT

What happens when barriers to use of technology are lowered? What can we learn from the Ushahidi open source community and the technology landscape in Africa about the opportunity and the limits of open innovation?

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino "Homesense project: agile and open innovation...

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:16:40 GMT

In her speech, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino gives an update on the methodology and results employed in the Homesense experiment: a project that rethinks how we design smart homes and investigate how we interact with technologies at home. This project applies open collaboration methods of online communities to physical infrastructures in the home.

Kris de Decker "Ecotech myths and lessons from the past"

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:10:56 GMT

The present-day approach towards a sustainable society is doomed to fail. The focus on sophisticated technology - electric and hybrid cars, energy-efficient devices, solar panels and wind turbines, for instance - has little or no effect because these green technologies require large amounts of energy and resources for their manufacture, which makes their development highly dependent on a continuous supply of fossil fuels. What we need to solve our problems is exactly the opposite: less sophisticated technology. There is a lot to learn from the past. While they often worked surprisingly good, most of low-tech solutions have been completely forgotten. In his speech, Kris de Decker explains that reverting to past technologies does not mean that we should go back to the Middle Ages. Rather, it means combining old tech with new knowledge and new materials, or applying old concepts and lost knowledge to modern technology.

Gabriel Borges "Open innovation initiatives"

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:26:15 GMT

Gabriel shares the experiences of two different initiatives based on open innovation. One from a group of friends that got tired of not having the international concerts they wanted in their city, and decided to produce them by themselves with the help of social media. The other project comes from Fiat that decided to invite the consumers to help in the design of a concept car. Almost 15 months later, the auto-maker had a new concept model created with the help of 17 thousand people. Both projects were held in Brazil, a nation that is beholding an almost silent digital revolution as result of their current economy arose.

Ville Keränen "From Team Academy to the future: Building organizations for...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:08:31 GMT

In his speech, Ville Keränen presents the Team Academy, founded in 1993 by Johannes Partanen. The concept is really different from all schools we know: no lectures, no teaching, no exams, no grades, no simulations, but instead: team company, real clients and projects, lots of dialogue, and team coach. Through various examples, he explains the principles of such a school and what we could get from it.

Anna Meroni "Feeding Milano: a human platform to regain the meaning of slowness"

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:57:33 GMT

Food, in Latin cultures, means conviviality, pleasure, taking care of the others and being loved. How can the principle of conviviality, as pleasurable and collaborative relationship, change the way a city feed itself? Anna Meroni believes this principle impacts also the way in which producers and consumers get in touch and exchange produce and knowledge.

Anna Meroni created in Milano, together with Slow Food, a human platform supported by information technology that is designing and prototyping a number of new services to shorten the food chain and feed the city. We can see this platform as a design supported community that is experimenting a brand new system of possibilities to create a sustainable foodshed, by building a network of trust and sympathy among producers themselves and with consumers. It encourages the last mile to be a human mile and relationships to happen, which implies also for designers being there and creating human links as a way to operate. In her speech, Anna Meroni addresses the design challenge of making that possible.

Edial Dekker "Trusted networks and the rise of the micro-entrepreneur"

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:55:29 GMT

We're in a world where exponential change is the new normal. Old economic structures are being challenged by newer ones and networked technologies are changing the way we can distribute resources. For a world with so limited resources, it's amazing how much idle-capacity we have at the moment. This does not only apply to natural resources such as minerals and forests, but also applies to human resources, such as knowledge, skills, and tangible resources such as tools and equipment. In his presentation, Edial Dekker dives deeper in the role of social layers connected to the 'social object' of distributed resources and the effects that it has on the network. The talk will touch the concept of a trusted network, the rise of the micro-entrepreneur and why it challenges us to rethink the way corporations and organizations are structured.

Geoff Mulgan "Openness and collective intelligence, its prospects and its...

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:30:59 GMT

In his speech, Geoff Mulgan talks about collective intelligence and how we think about the idea of openness. Through several examples, he introduces a reflection around crowd sourcing data and its use.

Jonathan Kuniholm "Open Prosthetics, where it comes from, what it changes,...

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:28:09 GMT

Open Prosthetics is a movement and a community that looks (i) to find economically feasible ways of producing medical devices for underserved medical populations and (ii) to give patients a way to participate to (even large and sophisticated) projects that develop technologies in their name. By facilitating the exchange of knowledge, Open prosthetics has allowed projects to develop that make prosthesis more available, while others focus more on new possibilities that would never find a market before that (such as specialized, customized, or even fancy replacement limbs), or even new ways of producing high-end research (lego hands for prototyping...).

Alain Renk "Unlimited cities"

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:17:22 GMT

Alain Renk describes "Unlimited Cities", a participatory platform used by architect to enable citizens to change their neighborhood. A rapid prototyping tool, this service aims at allowing people to bring their ideas and react to architectural or urbanistic proposals in a situated way.

Robin Chase "Building the cities of the future: People empowered (by...

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:02:03 GMT

Cities were once constructed by the efforts of individuals, until the grand plans of master architects, and then city planning departments took over, making sense of the "chaos." The city of the future will be both globally connected and highly local and customized -- once again shaped primarily by the individuals living within it. This new power will include sustainable local economies and be thanks to the miracle of the Internet combined with fast, easy access it to through ubiquitous mobile devices and sensors throughout our environment.

Tobie Kerridge "Debating Biotechnology – Speculative Design as Public...

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:59:10 GMT

In this speech, Tobie Kerridge describes the "Material Beliefs" project, a design research project with a focus on a speculative approach to biotechnology as a form of engagement with the public.

Paul Wicks "Putting patients at the center of healthcare; disruption in...

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:17:55 GMT

The current disruption in healthcare corresponds to the fact that patients can access tools to gather information, aggregate data, act, and see results reflected in real-time. In his speech, Paul Wicks presents the consequences which can be listed as follows:
Medicine: Patients are more engaged with managing their own illness, receive better outcomes / resistance from medical community in some quarters
Research: Patients can find out about clinical trials going on anywhere in the world and participate online or even carry out their own research programs - increasingly being viewed as credible in the peer-reviewed world
Business: Payers want to pay for improved outcomes, not transactions. The pill must be shown to be more effective than existing alternatives in the real world, not just a placebo in a controlled trial.
Safety: Patients can submit their own safety events in real-time and enter in to a dialogue with manufacturers about how to improve their products.

Frédéric Mazzella "How car-pooling can help forecast car traffic"

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:10:00 GMT

Carpooling consists in sharing a car on a similar trip. Drivers publish their available seats with a price, and passengers buy seats for home-to-work carpooling (on a day-to-day basis for a distance of around 20km) and long-distance carpooling (one-off trips or week-end round-trips for distances of 300km in average). The speech focuses on how to forecast car traffic based on car-pooling platforms with visual representations.

David Marcus "New business models in mobile channels"

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:04:02 GMT

In this February 2008 presentation, David Marcus, founder and CEO of Zong, talks about the new business models created by mobile channels. Zong lets people use their mobile phones to buy virtual goods. The system is easy to use: enter your number, go through the verification process, and pay on your monthly cell phone bill. Zong, which works with 250 mobile network operators in 45 countries, was acquired in July by ebay, and David is now VP Mobile for Paypal.

Adam Greenfield "On public objects: connected things and civic...

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:09:00 GMT

This talk explores some of the issues that emerge around networked information-collecting objects in our public spaces, and to frame a taxonomy of such objects from the unobjectionable (due to local effect and a clear public good associated with them) to those that ought to be causing us significant concern (no public benefit, global impact, pernicious second-order effects).

Saskia Sassen "The Future of Smart Cities"

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:21:56 GMT

A leading researcher on globalization, global cities and new technologies Saskia Sassen discusses the current hype around smart cities. She reminds us that “It is the need to design a system that puts all that technology truly at the service of the inhabitants—and not the other way around.”

Timo Arnall "Making things visible"

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:00:00 GMT

A designer and researcher at Oslo School of Architecture, Timo Arnall offers here his perspective about networked objects and ubiquitous computing. His presentation, and the intriguing design examples he takes, highlights two phenomena. On the one hand, he describes how sensors and RFIDs can enable to "make things visible" as the title of his presentation expresses. On the other hand, he shows the importance of going beyond screen-based interactions.

Eric Favre "The story of the invention of Nespresso" (FR)

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:07:00 GMT

From Nespresso to Monodor, the story of an inventor. Eric Favre patented the Nespresso process in 1978, the first step of the amazing story of an inventor turning his idea into one of the world's most successful product.

Carlo Ratti "The Sensable City"

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Carlo Ratti, director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT, shows various projects he and his lab conducted around the theme of sensed data (mobile phone, flickr pictures) and how they allow to reveal new information layer on top of urban space and or lead to new experience for citizens.

Jan Chipchase "Literacy, Communication & Design"

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Jan Chipchase is Principal Scientist at Nokia Research Center. He presents about "Literacy, Communication & Design" at the LIFT07 conference on Thursday, February 8, 2007

Sampo Karjaleinen "Open-ended play in Habbo Hotel"

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 22:47:00 GMT

Sampo Karjalainen is Chief Creative Officer at Sulake Corporation. He presents "Open-ended play in Habbo" at the LIFT07 conference in Geneva.

Jose A. Briones: "A New Approach To Innovation Management"

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:12:38 GMT

This video has been uploaded by a member of the Lift community. To send us your videos, click here.

Product innovation has been described as the way out of today's difficult business environment. However, the rate of success of development projects, in particular white space or disruptive innovation projects remains too low.
We believe that a reason for the low success rate is the erroneous application of methods designed for incremental innovation like Stage Gate to projects with high levels of uncertainty. In this presentation we will discuss the different types of development projects based on degree of uncertainty, and the creation of different project tracks. Projects are managed using different tool sets based on the best fit between information available and decision making needs. (

John Tackara "Design and sustainability"

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:43:00 GMT

John Thackara, who is director of Doors of Perception, gives a provocative talk about the role of design in finding solutions to the ecological crisis. After inviting us to avoid terms such as "future" or "sustainable" as they maintain a certain distance to the problem we face, he shows a rich set of projects he participated in. He makes the important point that the resources to be put in place already exist and that they might not necessitates complex technological developments.

Vinton Cerf "From the Jurassic Era of the Internet to its Futures" (FR)

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:41:00 GMT

IP protocol inventor Vinton Cerf, who is now Vice President and Internet Evangelist at Google gave the concluding talk at Lift 09. After a quick recap of the history of the Internet, he basically gives an enthusiastic tour of its current limits (bitrot, IP address shortage) as well projects about its evolution, such as interplanetary internet though satellites.

Lift France 11, with Fing

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:57:54 GMT

This video presents a snapshot of the Lift France 11 conference. This 3rd edition of Lift France took place on July 6-8 2011 in Marseille, France and welcomed over 700 participants.

Sugata Mitra "How kids teach themselves"

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:38:00 GMT

Speaking at LIFT 2007, Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own -- and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves?

Bruce Sterling "Shaping Things"

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:50:00 GMT

Following publication of his book "Shaping Things", American Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling share his views and visions at LIFT France 09 about the future of Design, the broad concept of an "Internet of Things", and reflects on two important issues: Privacy and Recycling. Bruce has been a regular speaker at LIFT events.