I’ve created a United Mobile Global SIM page in the Rukapedia outlining the advantages and limitations of using this product in an unlocked GSM phone while traveling.

Up at 5:00 a.m. this morning, Geneva time (GMT+1, AST+5). On the 5:41 a.m. train to the Geneva airport after checking out of Hotel Admiral (capsule review: nice central hotel with very friendly staff, clean but small rooms; would stay again).

The easyJet check-in in Geneva is completely kiosk-drive, and works simply and instantly. No crowds at checkin nor security, and the flight left exactly on time. Breezed out of Gatwick upon arrival; caught the National Express bus to Heathrow, and was there by 9:00 a.m.

Air Canada ticket counter staff at Heathrow were unusually helpful, and facilitated a change in my flight from London - Montreal - Charlottetown to London - Halifax - Charlottetown, shaving 5 hours off my travel time, and letting me say good-night to Oliver. And they waived the “change fee.” You rock (sometimes), Air Canada.

The flight over the Atlantic was uneventful but for leaving an hour and a half late — made up later — because of fog: regular moribund food, regular “show one and a half movies before Newfoundland” (cutting off As Good As It Gets half-way through). It seems like a much longer flight than it is, but that’s just because it’s homeward bound.

Air Canada still does the crazy “everyone deplanes in St. John’s and clears customs, then goes back through security and re-boards the plane” thing, but everyone hurried, and we made up all of the time we lost on the apron in London.

As I type, I’m in the Air Canada lounge in Halifax waiting for the quick flight to Charlottetown. The food offerings here have improved markedly, and I’ve just finished off a tasty bowl of Mexican Rice Soup with Okra, so French bread with oil and vinegar to dip, olives, gherkins, and a cup of decaf espresso.

Can’t wait to get home…

Today was my one and only day to see the side of Geneva outside of the CICG, and I was determined to make the best of it.

My Genevese acquaintances say that it’s very cold here, unusually so for this time of year; I joke that it seems warm to me, coming from Canada. But it was cold here today — bone-chillingly, humidly, nose-runningly cold. But there is no snow, and most of the cold goes away when you move out of the wind, and, hell, it’s Geneva, so there are plenty of distractions.

I let myself “sleep in” until 8:00 a.m., forcibly ignoring the fact that it was 3:00 a.m. back at home. After breakfast at the hotel, I walked two blocks over to the far side of the main post office where the Tourist Information Centre is located for the 10:00 a.m. walking tour of the city.

I signed up for the tour mostly to get my bearings — Geneva is a geographically cryptic city to the uninitiated. Not only did I get my bearings, but I got a good overview of European geo-political history over the last millennium to boot. The tour guide — an expat upstate New Yorker with a broad knowledge — guided a young couple from Barcelona and me around the old city, explaining all the way how Geneva came to be a rebel Protestant enclave in a sea of European Catholicism.

Two interesting snippets of new knowledge stuck out: first, the Napoleonic Wars — you’d think I would have heard of them by now! — ended in 1815. Two years later, in 1817, Isaac and Henry Smith sailed for Charlottetown. Our tour guide characterized the post-war period as a time of heavy “wow, that was long, let’s get outta town for chance!” So perhaps this played a role in their decision to head west? Just a guess.

Second, the Red Cross was founded in 1863, and a year later, on August 22, 1864, the First Geneva Convention was concluded. Nine days later, across the street from my house in Prince Edward Island — a world away — the Charlottetown Conference began. Unrelated, of course. But an interesting coincidence of important events.

After our two hour tour through the chilly streets of old Geneva, we parted ways in the middle of Place du Bourg-de-Four and I set off to find lunch.

I tend to run my tourism against the grain — I went to Thailand and never visited the beach, and I’m in Geneva and not going skiing, etc. — do I decided that I would continue to indulge my passion for variations on the falafel theme by grabbing lunch at a small storefront kebab stand, a stand so small it didn’t have a counter, and the customers and the owner and cook just mingled all together. I had a “vegetarian,” which turned out to be a kebab minus the meat (just like Burger King’s old “veggie burger” but a lot tastier) and left sated.

I walked up along the Rue du Marché, by all appearances the main shopping street in the city, to the Pont de la Coulouvrenière where I caught the tram towards the Nations terminus for my next stop, the Museum of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

I knew nothing at the history of the Red Cross, and reasoned that if I was ever going to learn, this would be the right time and place. The museum turned out to be a very worthwhile visit. Although it suffers somewhat from the “overuse of complicated multimedia” problem that afflicts so many museums (in this case, a wildly complicated slide-tape show, perhaps the most complex I’ve ever seen, was the capper), the combination of the audio guide (3 francs extra, and worth it) and the text gave me a solid grounding in Red Cross history. And, indeed, as the Red Cross story picks up once things settled down in Geneva, it also filled in the gaps in my “short course in European events” for the day. Oh, and they have a decent peach flan in the cafeteria, along with a very confusing coffee making system, and very comfortable red chairs.

As “a trip on Lake Geneva” seems to be listed in all of the “must do in Geneva” lists, I decided to walk down from the Museum, around the United Nations, and through the Botanical Gardens to the lakefront for the next stage of my day. Along the way I stopped inside an octagonal greenhouse in the middle of the gardens that was an excellent respite from the cold, and also a fascinating piece of greenhouse architecture, complete with a staircase that lets one walk through the tops of the trees that tower inside.

From the gardens I crossed under the Rue de Lausanne, and started back towards the centre of the city following the network of parks and paths that rings the entire Geneva lakefront. At Perle de Lac, I caught the 4:35 p.m. ferry across the lake to Genéve-Plage. Given the bitter cold, and the fierce winds, the trip across was quite an adventure, with the boat rocking to an extent that would have pushed Catherine, literally, over the edge. From Genéve-Plage, I caught a bus back downtown (all the buses, trams and ferries in the city use the same tickets, good for a certain amount of time, so I just continued on with the same ticket). I got off near Rue du Marché, where I’d left off around noon, did a little last-minute shopping, and then walked over the pedestrian Pont de la Machine towards my hotel.

In a sudden burst of “I can’t call it a day yet,” I caught a quick dinner at a horrible Thai-Chinese takeout place near the train station, and then saw the 6:30 p.m. showing of Mrs. Henderson Presents at the Cinema Central. I quite enjoyed the show and, if nothing else, I was completely cured of my deep dislike for Bob Hoskins. The cinema itself was, like the Cinema Nord-Sud where I saw Match Point earlier in the week, an old school anti-plex with glowing green seats, a balcony, and a no-popcorn policy; again, a perfect settings to watch a movie.

As I type it’s coming on 10:00 p.m., and I’ve got to pack and get to sleep soon, as my easyJet flight leaves at 7:00 a.m., which means I’ve got to get up very early in the morning. If all goes according to plan, it’s Geneva to London to Montreal to Charlottetown tomorrow, arriving home at 1:30 a.m. Geneva time. Which seems like forever from now.

Good-bye Geneva. I’ll be back.

I’ve uploaded the best of the photos I took at LIFT with my T610 to my Flickr. Keep in mind that the T610 has a horrible camera, so “best” is to be taken with a grain of salt. Taken together, however, the photos do provide some evidence of what interests me visually.

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.