The second day of [[LIFT]] started with the obviously wise Xavier Comtesse who continued, somewhat more effectively, the “everything is different” theme begun by Bruno Giussani and David Galipeau at the top of yesterday’s program. Xavier’s thesis is that the new business models growing up around two new notions — TransformActors (“new actors in the new economy untethered to the practices of the old economy”) and ConsumActors (consumers who, in a sense, “finish the product” by, for example, self-checkin on easyJet, or by loading their new iPod with music) — will destroy the old business models in their wake. His arguments were convincing, and bear a lot in common with what [[Rob Paterson]] has been saying for many years.

My favourite metaphor of Xavier’s many was his suggestion that new economy will beat old, despite the increased work for consumers (ConsumActors) because fruit picked from a “u-pick” orchard tastes sweeter.

He also mentioned, in passing, that the phrase “plug and play” is increasingly less relevant; this hit home for me, as in recent months many of my consumer electronics purchases have come more like “buy, bootstrap an open source Linux firmware, play.” In other words, imagine the Home Depot model, but everywhere.

Xavier was followed by Thomas Sevcik who spoke about “Innovation Labs,” a system for taking organizations through an extended process — he used three months by way of example — of cross-pollinating innovation exploration. He used as an example an exercise that Deutsche Bank went through, with the help of his think tank, where an off-site “lab” was constructed inside the shell of an abandoned warehouse, and, over the course of several months, employees, executives, analysts and customers were brought together to explore the implications of electronic banking.

Thomas characterized the “challenges to innovation” — in other words, the raison d’etre for Innovation Labs — as being:

• Silos are everywhere
• Play is questioned
• No time to really focus

While my innate suspicion of wacky consultants prevented me from suspending my disbelief, Thomas did make a compelling case for changing the mechanism by which companies innovate, especially the notion of involving customers in the process.

After a break, the conference split itself into two, on either side of a wall that magically rose up out of the floor, and I opted for a session with Hugh Macleod, arguably the poster child for real-world examples of blogging in business leading to success. Hugh is well known in the blogosphere for his efforts with English Cut and Stormhoek, injecting blogging into the heart of their business model and therein transforming almost everything about their business.

The most interesting of Hugh’s revelations was that the transformative effects of blogging have as much or more to do with how the change a company internally as anything else. What I took from this is that if a company can arrive at a place where it’s “blog-ready,” it must already be along the road to re-conceiving of its relationships with its customers, suppliers, employees and stockholders; blogging is really more a manifestation of a changed attitude than a cause.

Following Hugh’s presentation I jumped sides of the divide to attend a session by Pierre Carde. Pierre works for Lyon Game, a non-profit organization working in Lyon, France to stimulate the development of the video game creation industry in the city.

Pierre’s characterization of Lyon Game suggested that they have their act together, and have solved the problem that so afflicts us in [[Prince Edward Island]] where economic development initiatives are so often led by amateurs with little experience (or real interest) in the industry they’re promoting. In Lyon they have forged what appears to be an effective partnership — a real, working, practical partnership — among academics, research labs, industry and government. The entire endeavour focuses on tiny companies working together cooperatively — more of that cross-pollination notion — and sharing accounting, HR and other resources in common where appropriate. It was an impressive tale.

Just before lunch the big wall came down and the hall was one again and there were two short DEMO-like presentations: Jean-François Groff took the wraps off VIZTA, a new photo-people-places site that will release soon, and Sigurd Rinde demonstrated thingamy, which he described as a sort of “Lego for business processes.” While thingamy was ugly and confusing, it did seem to have a rather powerful soul, and is worth a second look (it’s either PHP or cold fusion; I can’t tell which yet).

By the time lunch rolled around, I was starving, and so I bolted out the door and ran up the stairs so as to avoid the punishing lines of Thursday. As a result, I ended up finishing lunch almost before anyone else was out of line, which was sort of counter-productive in the “meet new interesting people” department. That said, the CICG food service folks put up a good meal, and lunch was excellent both days (although yesterday I somehow coated myself, my jacket and my mobile phone with chocolate mousse, something I didn’t realize for about 30 minutes after doing so).

After lunch, with the wall back up, I heard Emmanuelle Richard give a rather standard-issue talk on anonymity, a talk made somewhat more interesting by the fact that she works as a PI in Los Angeles, and so knows the other side of the anonymity coin better than most.

The highlight of the day was Thomas Madsen-Mygdal’s presentation that followed. Thomas is one of the pillars of [[reboot]], and I knew him there only as a sort of Ed McMahon, doing the intros and attending to practical matters. His LIFT presentation was a wonderfully rendered soliloquy on “why it feels like it’s all happening now.” His slides were beautiful, his ideas insightful, and the result was the sort of “talk about nothing” that I used to pride myself in putting together for the Access conferences of systems librarians.

My favourite statement from Thomas was “why the fuck you would want to work for somebody else’s passions is a really big mystery,” a statement that prompted me to tell my “the day we tried to give [[Okeedokee]] to our employees” story during the Q&A (which, in turn, resulted in an interesting conversation during the break with a Swiss journalist).

The killer line from Thomas’ presentation, however, was “Europe has been more connected by easyJet than by the European Union.” There was much applause after that one.

The day ended with presentations from Euan Semple and Robert Scoble.

Euan, until recently of the BBC, spoke about his efforts to connect the BBC with itself using low- or no-cost software and systems (forums, social software, etc.). Euan’s was a good case study of how practical skunkworks efforts can completely transform a corporate culture in a way that consultant-driven re-engineering programs could never.

Robert’s presentation was a variation of the “how blogging has changed the world, especially at Microsoft” presentation that he gave at [[reboot]]. Robert is a better speaker every time I seem him, and he makes a good case for how blogs can be effectively used by companies to humanize themselves, connect to their customers, learn from their customers, and work more effectively as a result. It’s a shame that Robert’s efforts are taking place inside Microsoft rather than someplace less, well, evil; but, then again, Microsoft is a first-class example of a “hard nut to crack,” so if it works there, etc.

And, with thanks and good-byes from [[Laurent]], that was [[LIFT]].

I’m happy I attended: the program was interesting, there was a hearty mix of attendees, the venue was pleasant, and everything appeared to proceed like a well-oiled machine organizationally. Laurent can take pride in taking an idea out of thin air last June in Copenhagen and bringing it to fruition. Plans are underway for LIFT07 as we speak.

After things wound down, I took the tram back here to the hotel, grabbed another falafel for dinner, this time at a smoky Turkish restaurant (again, it was excellent), and, what with being a social dork and all, am skipping the rockin’ after-party. I’ve got Saturday to explore the non-LIFT wonders of Geneva, and then it’s a full day of flying on Sunday back to [[Charlottetown]].

Whew!

According to Pierre Carde from Lyon Game, 20-30% of the workers in the video game creation industry in France have picked up and moved to Canada in recent years.

According to the The Henley Visa Restrictions Index, Canadians can travel to 125 countries without a visa; Canada shares sixth place on the list with Austria and New Zealand. Citizens of top-rated Finland, Denmark, and the U.S.A. can travel visa-free to 130 countries.

The LIFT Conference has just ended — you can find tons of links to blogs, video and more at the website, and by searching the usual places for tag lift06. Things went very well, and [[Laurent]] and his team can be proud of a job very well done.

The Swiss keyboard is exactly like the one I have at home. Except that the Y and the Z switch positions. Weird. Makes tzping anzthing in quite confusing — seems to take about 20% more brain power to blog.

There will always be one man at a European technology conference wearing red pants.

I decided to forgo the LIFT-sponsored end of day group fondue last night, and to strike out into the night on my own. After a brief scan of this handy cinema listings website, I was off.

My first stop was a small stand-up Moroccan falafel joint on rue des Alpes, just around the corner from the hotel. Excellent falafel with sweet mint tea — who needs fondue.

Then up towards the train station on a sort of wild goose chase to find Cinema Nord-Sud; they were showing Woody Allen’s Match Point at 21h, and seemed out of the way enough to make for a good expedition. I ended up taking several wrong turns, and had to ask for directions at a couple of intersections; it was eerily reminiscent of my experience with [[Steve]] in South Korea in 1998 when we roamed the streets of Haenam, Steve stopping every tenth person on the street asking “Almayo Kukjang,” which we thought meant “where is the cinema,” but seems to have meant something else entirely.

As in Korea, the cinema was eventually found: Cinema Nord-Sud is a charming non-plex single theatre of the type that is almost completely gone from North America now. It was the perfect place to see Match Point — a true cinema, of the proper proportions and feeling. The movie itself was neither profound nor horrible, and it was a pleasant way to spend the evening. One interesting, and initially confusing aspect of the movie was that it was subtitled in both German and French — at first I couldn’t figure out why the French looked so much like German.

At 11:30 I was back on the streets heading home. Save for a confusing scene around the corner that involved a aerial ladder truck from the fire department, several ambulances and a large crowd, the walk to the hotel was uneventful. After a brief LoudHush conversation with [[Catherine]] and [[Oliver]] back home (worked like a charm; thanks again People of Romania), I was to bed. I discovered, to my dismay, that the effect of coffee + Red Bull + tea + tea left me somewhat unable to sleep, so when the alarm went off this morning, I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. But I’ve a breakfast in me now, and I’m off for more LIFT.

I rather enjoyed the first day of [[LIFT]]. To be honest, I’m not the “conference going” type — memories of my erstwhile university days, jailed in large rooms with others listening to someone authoritative talk authoritatively, still haunt me. But [[Laurent]] and his fellow LIFTers have created a rather more interesting collection of speakers than usual — not the regular Web 2.0 / AJAX / Ruby on Rails crowd — and I found almost every session at least a little interesting. And some very much so.

The day began with a couple of scene-setting talks: Bruno Giussani and David Galipeau each gave variations on the “everything is different now” speech. Neither hit me over the head, but then again my head was still on Atlantic Standard Time, 5 hours behind the rest of the crowd.

Things started to get interesting at Jean-Luc Raymond’s talk on “Bridging the digital divide.” Jean-Luc works in France and elsewhere on projects designed to bring access to the network (“access” in the large sense: hardware, software, training, situation) to those who would otherwise lack it. He obviously knows his stuff, has real world experiences, and his talk was refreshingly free of “everything is different now” and grounded in “here’s what the real challenges are.”

My favourite bit of Jean-Luc’s talk was when he described USB memory keys, worn around the neck by people with little else to their name, as a “kind of house on themselves.” He also spoke of one’s “responsibility, as a citizen, to help [everyone] have their own place on the web.”

Next was Paul Oberson, perhaps the highlight of my conference day. Paul spoke on “Technology uses in the humanitarian world: the Polycrate’s syndrome” and, more effectively than anyone else I’ve come across, visually told the story of how decentralized ubiquitous networks can change everything about power relationships. Beginning with the tale of Polycrate, he diagramed, in picture and metaphor, the transition from a world where all relationships (government to person, NGO to person, etc.) are mediated to one where networks allow direct linkages. Paul is an excellent storyteller, and his slides provided a rare example of PowerPoint that enhanced rather than distracted (he’s promised to put them online, and I will point to them when he does).

I also appreciated that the irony of a rather traditional one-to-many conference format playing host to a discussion of how power relationships have changed everything was not lost on Paul.

Just before lunch were two quick presentations, one from the Amnesty International web team, and another from Matteo Penzo. Matteo spoke about Flash Voice, a Macromedia Flash-based system for wrapping an accessibility layer around everyday web content. Although he didn’t demo it, it sounds like an interesting use of Flash, and I will watch for it.

At lunch I renewed acquaintance with Henriette Weber Andersen from Copenhagen. Henriette and I met (sort of) at [[reboot]] and today was my first chance to have a real conversation with her. She’s working on some interesting projects besides Can I Crash?, all of which seem to surround community building, blogging, and social technology. She’s also the spark behind the recent spate of blogger/geek dinners in Copenhagen, and I promised to try and attend one next time I’m there.

After lunch came Cory Doctorow, who gave a variation on the same “why DRM is bad for business” talk I saw him give at [[reboot]]. Cory is a compelling speaker, and his ideas bear listening to over and over, so I didn’t mind the repeat performance; if you’ve never heard him speak, you might consider going out of your way to do so.

Following Cory was author Bruce Sterling, a last-minute addition to the programme. He gave a rambling metaphor-laden stream of consciousness talk called “Spimes and the future of artifacts” that was either brilliant or just inane, and more likely a healthy combination of the two. It was actually rather pleasant to hear from someone so ungrounded for a change.

Before the large group broke up into smaller sessions again, there was a panel discussion titled “Women and/in technology,” that was frustratingly short: just as things started to get interesting, time was called and we had to proceed. The panel, which grew out of [[Laurent]]’s frustration trying to find women to come to speak at LIFT, could have continued in some interesting directions had there been more time.

The day ended with a trio of more technical presentations: Marc Besson provided a well-crafted rundown on the state of identity management, Aymeric Sallin managed to completely confuse me about nanotechnology (I got the “it’s about really really small stuff” thing, but almost everything else was lost on me) and Stefana Broadben from the local Swiss telco, gave an interesting overview of the different roles that email, VOIP, landline, mobile, IM and other conversational technologies play in the day to day lives of a selection of regular everyday Swiss subjects.

By the end of the day I’d come to realize that I might actually be a “conference going” type — not particularly because the revelations delivered from the podia will change my life, but rather because the weird sort of suspended animation my brain enters in a conference room, pushed and prodded around as it is by a barrage of interesting and seemingly random ideas, makes for a very interesting creativity trance, the kind of trance that helps me dream of ways that I might change my life — or better those of other around me — on my own. Might sound lofty, but, oddly, it’s true.

The advent of podcasting is bringing hundreds of new people into the world of self-recorded and self-produced audio. And because most of us are starting from zero as far as audio knowledge is concerned, many podcasts sound, well, absolutely horrible.

My colleagues at [[Yankee]] have been podcasting longer than it’s been called that — Jud’s New England Journal goes back many years, when sending audio out over the net required a RealAudio server. Last year it became a bona fide podcast, with an RSS feed, MP3 files and all the other accoutrements of the medium. And it sounded pretty horrible.

Before this month’s episode got recorded and processed, I put my old friend [[John Muir]] together with the folks at Yankee to try and diagnose, and fix, the audio problems. I had a hunch they were simple, and I knew that John was the right man for the job.

I was right, and the proof is in the pudding. Compare the January episode to the February episode. I think you’ll agree that there’s a big difference between the two.

None of the improvements were dramatic on their own, and the same equipment was used to record both. I’m going to try and work with John to develop a quick checklist for podcasters to help everyone achieve improvements like this. In the meantime, Jud just became a lot easier to listen to.

By some miracle, I managed to negotiate myself through the purchase of a new SIM card for my [[T610]] mobile phone this morning at the local Swiss post office. As such, you can reach me at +423 663/075062 while I am here. It is a free call for me, but you will be calling Lichtenstein, so you might want to use Skype or some other cheaper VOIPy thing, and remeber to dial 011 first, as it will be an international call.