I attended last week Lift08. Great event. All speeches are online thanks to a partnership with TSR/nouvo.ch so you can catch up with the conference (but hey guys @ TSR, where are the permalinks for the video???), but the “networking/meeting people” part and the workshops would remain missing.

It was my 3rd time at Lift (out of 3) and I was afraid that while growing, it would become more “commercial” and lost its appeal likewise some other conferences (leweb for instance). I was relieve to see that besides very few speeches, the speakers were there to share (and not to sell) and I very much like that spirit. Keep it like that and I will be back next year, and the year after,…

I liked: the “off” area with the various performance, the one-track session, the Venture night (with Viewdle, Mixin, Wua.la, Holistis on stage…), the workshops, meeting new people, meeting “old” people, Pierre Bellanger, Jonathan Cabiria, Younghee Jung, Rafi Haladjian, Kevin Marks and all the rest.

I liked it not-so-much: the food (who cares?), not being able to ask question (I never do anyway), missing some people who I know was there (there is room for a personnal project/product to address that), the “ubiquitous” CoComment (ok I am slightly exagerating on that one, but I can not believe they have been selected for the Venture Night, they have been around for more than 3 years, took off like hell, went down a bit and never took off again. I have heard the words “acharnement thérapeutique” – not sure how to say that in english)

Some links with Lift coverage:

• LIFT08 official website
• Videos from Nouvo (TSR)
• Lift pictures on FlickR
• Lift Conference on Wikio
• Technorati results
• Lift on Google Blog Search
• InternetActu has a very good coverage on a side blog (but it is in french unfortunately)