My LIFT08 Recap [en]

LIFT08 was great, but overwhelming. I think I’ve used this word a couple of times already to describe it. I’ve been thinking a lot these last months about my “conference experience”. I’m not quite a conference butterfly never touching the ground between them (expression stolen from Tom Purves), but between FOWA, Web2.0Expo, BlogOpen, ParisWeb, LIFT, and the upcoming BlogTalk and SXSW, I’m spending a significant amount of my time preparing for, attending, or getting over conferences.

I plan to write a bit about LIFT08 first, and then come to more general stuff about these “tech” conferences and the worlds revolving around them — but you never know which way a blog post might decide to take you, do you? (I can already see I’m going to write it differently… fasten your seatbelts. Actually, I’m going to write separate posts. Or this one is going to turn into a 10-page essay. And nobody wants to read 10-page essays, do they?)

So, what do I take away from LIFT08 — knowing that this year, I’m looking at things through an event organiser’s eyes?

• Many hats: I’m a live-blogger, I’m a “speaker” (workshop, open stage, and an informal discussion), I’m a friend, I’m a freelancer on the lookout for new gigs, I’m promoting Going Solo, and looking for anything or anybody who can help me put on a great event. Too many hats.
• Live-blogging: I’m not happy about my job as a live-blogger this year. I think I was too stressed by my many other hats to really concentrate well on what I was doing. Also, as I had a press pass for it, I felt under pressure to do it seriously. Lots of partial notes, not “live” enough, didn’t tag my photos (help me!, and lots of talks I skipped. I want to post some slideshots still, and notes I took during the workshop with real live teenagers (e-mailing first to make sure I won’t publish stuff that might get them in trouble). I’ll write a summary post with links to my notes.
• One track: really really great that there was only one track (as in, no separate rooms, no choices to make in the programme). Just sit down somewhere and the choices are made for you. Thanks for having the courage to make those choices for us, Nicolas and Laurent.
• Water: bottles are really better than fountains. I’m not going to walk around with a glass, and I always forget to bring a bottle with me. I didn’t drink enough. Not sure Going Solo will be “as I’d want” in that respect, though we should have big bottles of water on the tables in the conference room.
• WiFi: up and down, of course. Why does conference wifi always have to be so wobbly? There’s room for some serious analysis and reseach about that, in my opinion. Getting wifi for Going Solo is one thing I really worry about. There will “only” be 150 people there, but still… Given my track record for criticizing, I’m going to be lynched if Going Solo wifi fails.
• Videos: great videos, but. No permalinks to each video (I e-mailed Nouvo about that). Also, some organisational (?) glitch which prevented the open stage talks from being edited and uploaded at the same time as the other videos — as an open stage speaker who was relying on that swift publication, I find it very frustrating. The tapes are safe, Laurent tells me — but had I known, I’d have asked somebody to quick-and-dirty shoot and upload to YouTube.
• Content: I think the two-many-hats problem prevented me from fully getting all I could out of the various talks. I’ve also noticed a shift in content (the audience reflects this) from “more web” to “less web”. It’s a good thing, because it broadens my mind, but it also means there is less pointy stuff I’m directly fascinated with. (Don’t change anything guys, though, I like being stretched.) Maybe this had an influence on how easy (not) my note-taking was.
• Speakers: at one point I started wondering if it was a new trend for speakers to read their talks. Please don’t do that! It makes it very hard to follow what your saying. Lots of really great and entertaining speakers, and general level was very high (despite the reading).
• Food and drinks: nice! nice! yum! No breakfast though, I missed that. And also, no orange juice during the breaks?! I didn’t find it if it was there. Not everybody drinks tea or coffee — and I had a really hard time finding the tea.
• People: lots of them, lots. My “conference experience” is changing, as I said above, and I need to blog about that.
• Intense: LIFT is intense. Great people everywhere. Great talks you should meditate upon during a month.
• LIFT experience: I was too busy running around to enjoy all the “offline stuff” LIFT08 offered, and I really really regret it. I didn’t even get around to having my own handwritten font made, and didn’t send anything to the editor of the not so empty book (I blame the wifi — it was just too much effort to send an e-mail). I really think that the not so empty book should go and tap into technorati and flickr tags to steal content which has been published online. I had my photo taken though… not sure where it is now, however.

So, still landing. See you tomorrow night in Morges to talk more if you’re in the area.