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.

Well, I managed to find Les enfants terribles without any problems last night: I faced up to my “discovering the rules of a complex new transit system” fears, figured out how to finagle a ticket out of the machines, and 10 minutes later I was walking down a dark alley across the river (or at least it looks like a river).

The the pre-conference wine-thing was full of stylish-looking geeks: think reboot but with better cloths and haircuts. I renewed acquaintances with Laurent Haug and Robert Scoble (is it just me, or do all photos of me in glasses make look goofy?), and met Ellen Wallace and fellow Canadian Thomas Purves alone with a host of others whose names just floated by.

Around 8:00 p.m., with my mind fading fast, I headed back out into the cool Geneva night and decided to walk back to the hotel. By 10:00 p.m. I was fast asleep, and I didn’t stir until my cell phone alarmed me up at 7:00 this morning.

It’s now 6 minutes after 8:00, and if I don’t hurry I’m going to miss the conference…

Arrived Geneva at 4:45 p.m. local time. Mild catatonia has set in from jet lag, but I’m determined to go to the “wine and snacks” across town tonight (I may end up sleeping on a park bench).

Best “Geneva fact” so far: the trains in from the airport have a volume control for the public address system.

I thought Air Canada did well by me yesterday, but their work on my behalf at the Charlottetown ticket counter doesn’t hold a candle to what they did for Jim and Helen Larkin.

Jim and Helen were originally booked on the same flight I was, Charlottetown to Montreal. From there they were scheduled to fly west, through some complicated and drawn-out route, to rendezvous with their daughter in Bangkok.

As they, like all others on the cancelled flight going west, had no hope of making their connections, it looked like the Larkins would be delayed by at least a day.

That is until the Reservationist Savant took on their case. This part-time employee at the ticket counter is reported to be a former travel agent. When the other clerks speak of her, it is with the reverence reserved for a master. And a master she was: in less than an hour she managed to re-book Jim and Helen through to Bangkok, going east rather than west, connecting through Halifax and London and then straight on to Bangkok on Thai Airways International.

Anyone familiar with the complexities of international travel will known that doing this sort of route planning is complicated at the best of times, let alone with weather bearing down and options quickly being eliminated.

So Jim and Helen ended up on the same flights I took: Charlottetown to Halifax, then Halifax to London. Of course, being upper crust Islanders as they are, they were in First Class while I was stuck back in coach (Jim’s explanation “we had enough points”). So I ate pancakes for breakfast after sleeping crooked in my seat while they undoubtedly dined on caviar and crumpets after climbing out of their sleep sacks.

By some miracle, their revised routing gets them into Bangkok 12 hours earlier than originally planned.

If you are ever in an Air Canada pickle in Charlottetown, it’s nice to know that there are miraculous skills available. Kudos to Air Canada. And to the mystery Reservationist Savant.

I just knew this wasn’t going to be a smooth trip. I’m on my way to Geneva for LIFT. I showed up at the Charlottetown airport at 16:30 for my 17:05 flight to Montreal where I was scheduled to catch the 19:55 flight to London.

Except the Air Canada flight “developed an electrical problem” that “couldn’t be resolved.” So the crew — presumably taking their lives into their hands? — are taking the plane to Halifax to be patched up, and the flight was cancelled.

Fortunately, I was one of two passengers that was going “backwards” to Montreal only to turn around and go east to Europe. We were pulled out of the waiting room and booked on a 18:45 flight to Halifax where, in theory, we will catch the 20:10 flight to London. I say “in theory” because of this:

…which is a “low pressure system developing east of Cape Hatteras” that will “intensify as it tracks south of Nova Scotia tonight.” I will consider it a miracle if I manage to get in and out of Halifax in the next 3 hours. If I make it only as far as Halifax, apparently there are no hotel rooms available, because of conventions and because of the storm. So I may be forced to look up long-lost friends.

Meantime, the remaining 40-odd passengers that were going to Montreal so as to actually go to Montreal — or at least to head there and then go east — are out of luck completely: the flight has been cancelled, and “because of crew shortages” will not run tonight, but rather sometime tomorrow morning.

So while I’m sitting here in the airport cafeteria with a bowl of soup, using Aliant’s free wifi (thanks, Aliant!), Shawn Murphy is trying to figure out how to get up to Ottawa so as to run the country.

Stay tuned…

• Chance that somebody you know will be waiting in the Charlottetown airport lounge to take the same plane you are: 78%
• Chance that that person will be Shawn Murphy: 37%

My Coop Taxi driver told me this afternoon that their ballpark figure for the number of taxis needed at the airport is 1 for every 10 incoming passengers.