photo by sdufaux

Attending a conference for the first time is always like joining a new family. They are really close and you feel like an outsider. It depends on the spirit of the conference and your own motivation, if you can get in easily or if you remain on the outside. After 1,5 days of Lift10, I think I can share some (very subjective) observations of the Lift family. But remember, this is Berlinblase, don’t take it too seriously…

First thing you notice is the very posh appearance of the audience, especially for a tech conference. Almost everybody whom I’ve talked to and who’s here for the first time, was wondering about that. We have all kind of assumptions on why that is. It could be the general sense of fashion in Switzerland and the close-by France. It could be because there are a lot of researchers at this conference who are used to a more formal appearance at their conferences. But the most obvious explanation is that their are just a lot of corporate people and not a lot of geeks which seems pretty strange for conference with a reputation like Lift. The introduction round at the workshop I attended this morning supported this point. Another evidence: with almost 1000 participants, the Twitter stream for #lift10 is relatively quiet.

Nevertheless, this family can have a decent feast for real. The big Lift fondue is an amazing experience. The whole conference comes together to break bread and and enjoy tons of melted cheese until no one can move anymore. I shared my pot with Gianfranco Chicco and Kitty Leering from PICNIC and Mark Jensen from 23company. We had a blast, sharing stories and enjoying the company. And the other tables seemed to share the mood. The room was buzzing … and later on aching from all the cheese cooling in stomachs, getting heavier and heavier.

One of my favourite things to do at conferences is to just sit or stand beside groups and just listen in. This hallway conversations usually give you the best impression of the overall atmosphere of an event. At Lift, I don’t always like what I’m hearing. I measure the seniority of a community by its ability to make fun of itself because you need a lot of maturity to consciously know about the flaws and quirks of your topics of interest and then joke about them. Most conversations, I’m following here at Lift seem to lake a good dose of humour. Everybody is taking themselves very earnestly. Conversations are heavy with buzzphrases like “disrupting businesses”, “reinventing the future” or “revolutionising media”. And it’s good that people want to make a difference in the world. But the use of buzz phrases like these shows a certain absence of reflection of what we are actually talking about. But if we poke wholes into these phrases and make fun of them, we can let go of the pressure to “invent the future” and approach it playfully. The lack of humour is sometimes also very present in the Twitter stream from Lift where some have to constantly make sure that everybody gets that they are smarter then everybody on stage. I think the Lift family would profit a lot if people would just get over themselves and just lighten up a bit. It makes you so much more fun to hang out and have good conversations with.

Anyhow, the most amazing part about the Lift family is its diversity for sure. If I take a quick look around, I see very young students and grey eminence, business people and scientists, artists and organisers, locals and visitors from all over Europe and beyond. This also provides for a very diverse program and a lot of left-field inspiration. I really believe that amazing ideas can come out of Lift because there’s so much possibility to hear something completely new. It’s a remarkable achievement of the organisers to keep the diversity and not have the conference captured by one group.

So, the lack of humour makes me reluctant to join this family full on. But the diversity of it will make me come back, no doubt.

Update: One big thing I forgot to mention is that this might just be the tech conference with the highest rate of women which is really awesome. There are lots of women in the audience and on stage.

In good ol’ Berlinblase-style, here’s the video walk through the CICG where Lift is gathering.

All the main sessions will be livestreamed from 13:00 on Wednesday (5th). Here are more ways to follow the conference:

• I will be twittering at @berlinblase
• Follow the stream of tweets with the official hashtag #lift10
• Anna Jobin has created a neat Twitter list of most of the twittering participants.
• Stephanie Booth is doing an amazing job liveblogging most of the sessions at Climb to the Stars

Any suggestions for other ways to follow Lift10?

I’m about to head out to make the six hour train travel from Frankfurt to Geneva for the Lift Conference 2010. I’m very thankful to the organizers for giving Berlinblase a press pass and will do my best to collect as much impressions and inspirations as possible.

The combination is a killer. An incredible amount of prominent, very able speakers, perfect, summerly weather, a wifi that seems no trouble to handle the thousands of attendants and of course the evening parties that seems to come up in every conversation at one point or another. Jeff Jarvis tweeted today that SXSW is more of a tribal gathering than a conference and there is certainly something to it. People do talk about business, yes, but it also feels like the almost always distributed hive mind is coming centralizing itself in Austin for a few days to be even more productive than usual. It feels right, it feels exciting to be here and there is a lot to learn.

Just take danah boyd’s keynote today. It was incredibly articulate, precise and charismatic – her thoughts and privacy are very important and will be discussed vividly over the next days, weeks and month. It’s important to think about those issues, because companies like Facebook, Google and the rest of them grew at such a fast pace that gives them the assumption that what they are doing must be right since so many people are using their services. In fact, it’s the complexity of the system and the fact that most users aren’t informed sufficiently that leads to those assumptions. danah presented some valuable insight into the mindset of random people that shows very clearly: privacy is not dead.

We are – as you probably assumed already – not going to live blog from the SXSW. We’re here to gain insight into the US sphere and to learn from the experience. But we will blog about SXSW as much as possible.

The Berlinblase Posterous will be a place to gather all sorts of content for us, but we’re kindly asking you to submit your content there as well, if you think that it is interesting, funny or in any way relevant. Just send your photo, video or even text to this email address: posterous@berlinblase.posterous.com – it will land in our queue, but we will try to process the good stuff as quickly as we can. It would be great, if we could collect as much content from the conference participants – spread the word about our posterous!

Note: We would like – from time to time – to include your content into our live coverage. That means: we will be integrating your content into the DLD live blog. If you are ok with that than just submit your content, if that is not ok for you, please note so in your submission post to the Berlinblase Posterous and we will not be using your content for the live coverage. Also: if you have a special request how we should annotate your content to you, please also note that in your submission. Thanks!

P.S.: It would be great, if you could send your photos to flickr & co. as well. Don’t forget to tag them (DLD Conference).

We are at DLD10 for the next three days to do the official live blogging. But in true Berlinblase-style, we will also keep you updated on all the stuff happening behind the scenes and in the halls with this Scribblelive event.

If you have something to add drop us a line in the comments, thank you.

Photo by jaime.silva under CC

QUICK EVENT OVERVIEW:

DLD 24th-26th January 2010:

DLD is an inspiring community for the 21st century which features digital innovation, science and culture and brings together thought leaders, creators, entrepreneurs and investors from Europe, the Middle-East, the Americas and Asia. more…

Sunday, 24th Jan. 2010:
11:00 AM – 02:00 PM: guided tours through Munich attractions (optional) *
02:00 PM – 03:00 PM: DLD sign-in for registered participants starts
03:00 PM – 07:00 PM: DLD conference sessions

Monday, 25th Jan. 2010:
08:00 AM – 09:00 AM: DLD sign-in
09:00 AM – 07:00 PM: DLD conference sessions

Tuesday, 26th Jan. 2010:
08:00 AM – 09:00 AM: DLD sign-in
09:00 AM – 03:00 PM: DLD conference session

Where:
HVB FORUM – Kardinal-Faulhaber-Strasse, Munich [link to map]
The DLD entrance is at Prannerstrasse 2.
More Information on the DLD Website

Also check out the Program with PDF Download, the Speakers and Partners.

* = The tours are provided as a courtesy to all registered DLD participants. Register for the tour here

IPS Readiness Workshop von Ernst & Young on monday. Register here

Tweetup/Blogger Meetup by Social Media Club Munich, Sunday 24th January

Tweetup and blogger meetup during DLD: Sunday January 24th 2010, starting at 7pm. Location: Nam Nam, Amalienstraße 25, 80333 Munich. Entry is free but requires registration. To register for the event, please join Social Media Club Munich’s XING group. Also, we are still looking for sponsors! If you would like to sponsor the event, please get in touch via email at ke@eck-kommunikation.de.

Registration only! Already packed, but you can try it. Here is the german blogpost

Girl Geek Dinner München 26th January, DLD Edition

Like in the last years I am very happy to have a Girl Geek Dinner after the DLD. Short version:  Everybody can attend, but men need to be invited by a women and there is a limited on guests. I will make special space for international visitors and will try to match up the international guys . To attend please add yourself to the guest list. If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

When and where?
The event starts at 19:00 / 7pm at Niederlassung (Buttermelcherstr. 6, 80469 München, Google Map link).
Please note: Despite the title this is not a dinner and due to recent remodelling there will be only limited food available at the venue. Everybody does pay directly for drinks. Attending the event is free of charge.

Registration only! Go for it.

TWITTER:

HASHTAGS:

#dld10

#dld10Q *

* = For the first time this year DLD attendees and everyone on the internet will have the possibility to pass questions to DLD panels via Twitter (powered by Tinker). A selection of those questions might be presented to the moderators before the session starts and at the end of each session.

RSS-FEEDS:

Official DLD Feed: http://www.dld-conference.com/rss.php

Feed for the Live Blog will be announced later

Berlinblase Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/berlinblase

FLICKR HASHTAG:

“dld conference“

tag-string-suggestion for copy&paste:

"dld conference", dld10, munich, münchen, hbv-forum, burda, DLD, 2010, dldconference,

TINKER:

They just prepared a special page for the DLD event. Here comes the widget:

FACEBOOK:

EVENT

FANPAGE

IPHONE APPLICATION / MOBILE WEBSITE:

Download, more Information on the DLD Blog

• Program: Get an overview of all sessions at the conference
• Details: Get detailed information on all sessions and speakers
• Personalization: Filter the conference program down to your favorite sessions
• Up-to-date: Be always up-to-date with DLD news, even after the conference
• Twitter wall: Who is twittering about the conference and what?
• Q&A: Ask questions regarding the sessions.

And a special feature is added too:

For the first time this year DLD attendees and everyone on the internet will have the possibility to pass questions to DLD panels via Twitter (powered by Tinker). You can easily use the iPhone App to do that. The app automatically uses the predefined hashtag for questions „#DLD10Q”

A selection of those questions might be presented to the moderators before the session starts and at the end of each session.

Don’t have an iPhone or don’t like to install apps? Use the mobile website:

DLD’s Mobile Multimedia Partner YASSSU.com has developed the Mobile Video Portal m.dld-conference.com where you can watch all official DLD-Videos using any smartphone!

If you have something to add drop us a line in the comments, thank you.

… more to come

changelog:

100121: setup

Photo by Andrea Vascellari / CC

The bubblers, missing in action for quite some time, are back in business!

And we’re coming back big! Our „Live, raw’n’uncut“ style will return for the annual DLD conference in Munich, Germany. We gratefully thank the organizing team at Burda for the invitation. Here is the official press release. We’ll be live-blogging, tweeting, flickring and then some more social communicating for DLD 2010. Starting now, we’ll be preparing by reading up on the topics and speakers and geting our gear and gadgets ready for prime time.

What you can do to prepare?

Watch out for the DLD iPhone App (the program will be available after the official release), subscribe the official Feed of the DLD and maybe our feed. Following the DLD and berlinblase Twitter accounts could be an option, too. We are working, as usual, on a “Link Guide to Munich” (Paris, Berlin). Planing a meetup? Let us know and we’ll feature you.

So stay tuned and check back soon with the bubblers, keeping you posted.

Cheers, the bubblers