Geneva sky

The sky, the lake, and the mountains in the background, just before it was time to go to the airport.

Nature and more nature

Tigers frozen in time at Musée d'Histoire naturelle in Geneva.

This corridor gave me a strange feeling; it's almost as if it had been taken from a science fiction story.

History portal in Geneva

Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva is a true history portal. You can easily spend a few hours in the museum - it's huge. And it's worth it - not only we thought so.

Impressive paintings.

Pre-Internet communication form. Handwritten, with beautiful paintings.

There's even a cannon hall in the museum.

Indian cuisine in Geneva

Dining with Erik at Restaurant Himalaya, an Indian restaurant located at Rue de Neuchâtel 18. Even though the restaurant is a bit run-down, the food they serve is delicious. The place is definitely worth a visit if you are in Geneva.

CERN presentation at LIFT

CERN, a european organization for nuclear research located near Geneva, held a short intro to their research. Questions about dark matter, alternate dimensions, etc, popped up.

Deep field image from the Hubble space telescope. Higgs particle - will knowledge about it finally enable us to study the multiverse instead of the universe?!

User / citizen centered society at LIFT

Interesting panel discussion about how users and citizens, with the power of the net, with tools like blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc, impact corporations and countries. It's happening now.

Derek Powazek (picture), founder of JPG magazine, describes how users at www.jpgmag.com are the ones in control, the ones that decide which pictures are worth publishing.

Digital orchestra at LIFT

Lucas Grolleau (black LIFT T-shirt, to the right in the picture) operating a digital orchestra at LIFT+.

The orchestra consists of a number of mobile devices playing audio streamed from an iPod.

http://www.soundsgood.fr/

Dealing with technological overload at LIFT

Panel discussion at LIFT about the dangers with technological overload. Interesting and important. A few people in the audience actually admit that they are addicted by putting up their hands. One speaks up about his Internet addiction.

What's the core problem? Addicted to RSS flows? To mails?

Reading / answering one mail while ten new fills up the inbox. Not staying away from the Blackberry / Google's Gmail client - keeping on checking for new important (?!) mails.

Could it be that information overload is somewhat situation based, context dependent, personal - it might e.g. be the result of your own standards, the ones you have set yourself, for acceptable response time on mails / instant messages. This might trigger a sense of overload and also frustration; not being able to respond in time.

Erik - always with Google's Gmail client running on his mobile device. Victim or power user?! Can you become addicted to a tool?!

Coffee at LIFT

Friday. It's time to get caffeinated before the first panel discussion starts.

One?! No, that's not enough - you better give me two cups...

View from Hotel Eden in Geneva

Had to share the view from one of the suite's three balconies. The lake can be seen in the background and another balcony (mine as well) can be spotted to the right.

Shot from the right-most balcony - the mountains can be seen in the background.

Erik waiting in the lounge for me - he didn't get any balcony this time.

Geneva by night

Some night shots from Geneva. I'm walking from the hotel to the old part of the city.

Stones in the walkway, electrified, lit.

Nokia's Chipchase at LIFT

Mr Networking himself in action - Erik, visionary colleague, futuristic blogger, and photographer. Networking while waiting for Chipchase's presentation to start.

Nokia's Jan Chipchase held a presentation on "Literacy, Communication & Design". As usual, his presentation material had that perfect touch; fantastic pictures from his field research, no bullets, just a few words on a slide, simple and beautiful.

Me. Relaxing. In standby mode after Chipchase's presentation.

Networking at LIFT

The LIFT07 crew had prepared the conference center's networking floor with the LIFT logo - tape-paths to be traced.

Brought my Sigma 10-20 wide-angle lens. It's perfect for gatherings like this - no need to step back when taking a photo.

Salmon sandwich at LIFT

What would life be without a proper salmon sandwich - ok, I admit, this is not actually the real stuff, I quickly assembled it myself just to get a salmon shot.

LIFT kicking off

It's Thursday. I'm Caffeinated and ready to go. The laptop is running. It's my first day at LIFT07.

So, what's LIFT07 all about? Let's check the web page http://www.liftconference.com/:

LIFT has a simple goal: connect people who are passionate about new applications of technology and propel their conversations into the broader world to improve life and work.

There's definitely potential in this. A gathering of strategists, visionaries, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc. Interesting keynotes, panel debates, discussion forums, and networking.

Favorite slide so far is "We are wasting a lot of brain power in large organizations". No, you really think so?! - I'm ironic...

It's time for a short break. Let's try SnakeRun - you compete against another H(uman), controlling your snake by touching one of four pads to change the snake's direction.

Hotel Eden in Geneva

In Geneva for the LIFT07 conference.

Got the top suite at the hotel for some reason - weird, but there's no need to complain...

Three balconies. Makes it difficult to choose...