Korean media are starting to cover Lift Asia, and I was the happy guest of Talk2man on monday morning (two hours after I landed from a 15 hours trip, I'm still awake it's not too bad ;). Check the video below.

Today we had coverage on 매일경제 (don't ask me to translate ;) and I hear the Korean blogosphere is buzzing with stories about Lift!

PS: and thanks to gut4u who blogged me and a hamburger tonight ;)

The partnership with Présence Suisse we announced earlier this month will have one very happy consequence: Friday's lunch will be made of Swiss food under the supervision of chef Roland Hinni. Here is the menu:

Fondue Sampling Stations
Swiss Cheese Fondue (Gruyere and Emmental) with Large Diced of Banquette Bread, Cornichons Pickles and Cocktail Onions

Hot Food Presentations
Jeju Black Pork “Zuerichoise” (Thinly Sliced Pork Loin Sautéed with Cream of Mushroom Sauce topped with Freshly Chopped Parsley) presented with Berner Roesti (One Day Old Cooked Potatoes, Peeled, Grated and Fried with Butter)

Baguette Sandwich Stations (Make yourself)
Sliced Assorted salami, Honey Cured ham, Gruyere and Brie cheese
Air Dried Beef
Freshly Cut Banquette Bread for Sandwich
Butter-Dijon Mustard Spread, Mayonnaise

^{Lift's board member and friend (at least until I published this picture) Julian Bleecker enjoying the giant fondue diner at Lift Geneva 08.}

Salad Buffet
Wedged Lettuce Salad with Gorgonzola Dressing
Swiss Style Potato Salad with and Chives
Cucumber Salad with Yogurt Dill
Sliced Tomato with Red Onions Vinaigrette
Sausages and Cheese with Pickles
Same Home-made Pickles

Dessert Stations
Basic Muesli with Milk Brown Sugar and Whipped Cream with Toppings
Small Sliced Peaches, Plums, Green Apples, Banana in Lemon Juice
Assortments of Coarsely Chopped Nuts (Like Walnuts, Hazelnut, Almond)
Honey
Dried Fruits (Like Blueberry, Raisins, Apricots)
Plain Yogurt
White Chocolate Mousse with Raspberry Coulis
Whole Fruit Display

Looking at the Pacific while eating Fondue, isn't that the ultimate definition of luxury? And Swiss ambassador in Korea Christian Hauswirth will honor us with his presence!

I arrived in Jeju yesterday, the temperature is perfect and the view is, as usual, breathtaking. Here is what you will get if you stay at our partner hotel - the Hyatt Regency Jeju - that you can book at a discounted price through the Jungtour reservation system. All the information is on the practical page.

^{The view from Hyatt's room 1106. Click on the picture to enlarge it}

Our friends at Daum have subtitled in Korean three of the best ever Lift speeches. Check them online on DaumTV!

호주 출신인 제네비브 벨은 멜버른과 캔버라 교외의 노동자 거주 지역과, 호주 중. 북부의 원주민 공동체를 오가며 성장하였다. 그녀는 인류학 박사 학위를 소지하고 있으며, 인텔 디지털 홈 그룹 내 사용자 체험(User Experience) 부문 이사로 재직중이다. 그녀는 현재 인텔에서 사회 과학자, 디자이너, 감성 공학자로 이루어진 학제간 협력 팀을 이끌고 있다.

• Genevieve Bell: Secrets,lies and the possible perils of truthful technology
• Paul Barnett: MMO's and Vegas, and golf
• Kevin Warwick: Implant technology to enhance human abilities

Lift Asia experience curator Sey Min published a short explanation of the concept she will develop during the conference in Jeju Island:

We all live different lives: we come from different backgrounds and cultures — different life experiences. Our lives and relationships have had a big transition due to the rapid development in technology, and they are still revolving. One of the obstacles human beings MUST get though is how to communicate with each other when we all come from different backgrounds and have different perspectives. Each one of us is very special and unique—not only physically, but also in spirit.

In this new digital era, how does technology help us get closer to each other?

What does “getting closer” mean to us now?

How do human beings keep each other company without losing connection?

The project “Bonding Company” is an experimental showcase for the ‘opening, sharing, sparkling, and expanding’ in communication.

Read more on the Lift experience page!

After Octopus sashimi and rotten pink fish, I had live shrimps yesterday night as this video will show.

If you travel to Lift Asia be sure to ask a Korean friend to take you to a sashimi place, it is a really unique experience you will never forget, plus it is good and healthy!

As Lift enters the email period - where our job basically consists of sending messages to arrange the final details, promote the conference, and refine presentation topics - I have a tradition which consists in looking at past editions speeches again. And as I watched Robin Hunicke talk about The Modern Age of Gaming (in what became Lift's third most popular talk online) I found this funny little moment where the one and only Robert S. is writing a post and gets caught on camera. Slightly disturbed by the sudden incursion, he closes his browser with one eye and promptly turns his attention back on the presentation as 700 pairs of eyes see him appear on the screen above the stage. Watch a blogger caught blogging!

Paul Barnett is making waves in the video games business because he chose to attend LIFT instead of the reference event of his industry. In his inimitable style, Paul recalls his experience and comes up with a unique account of what kind of experience LIFT can be.

[LIFT] was amazing. You go into this room where the conference is. There’s these comfy chairs. I mean, really comfy chairs. And they rotate. And they lean back. [...] It’s like being at the UN. It’s just the most crazy thing I’d ever seen. And then it was full of people talking weirdly. One bloke was talking about how we needed to build power-stations in orbit.

It’s just one of those things when you first hear it you go “Power stations in outer orbit? That’s total madness” and then he goes – No, you don’t understand. They produce too much carbon. So what we have to do is put them above the ozone layer. And that way it won’t effect us anymore. And then you go – well, there could be something in that, I suppose. And the next thing he’s talking about is deploying these light collecting machines which will then beam down onto enormous solar panels – hyper solar panels – and he’s up there talking about it. And you can’t help but nod agreeably now and again and go – no, he’s completely bonkers. It was just full-on. There was a guy who inserted electrochips into his skin…

More...

Paul's LIFT08 talk was watched more than 50'000 times in a couple of days after he stepped on stage. The video is still up, it's still a lot of fun, and yes if you are French like me - not Swiss, nor Swedish (read the article you'll get the inside joke ;) - you will learn some new words to use during your next trip to an English pub.

Nicolas Nova explains how we create the conference program on his blog:

There’s a topic I rarely discuss here: how we work on the program of the LIFT conferences. With 3 editions in Geneva, a small event in Seoul and the LIFT Asia in CheJu next september, a long list of speakers has been booked. Since I am in charge of that part, it’s always interesting to shed some light about we handle that part of the conference.

So how does that work? Well, it’s not so much of a formal process as it’s a combination of the LIFT coreteam daily observation of the Tech world and a discussion with members from our board as well as local advisers. The daily dose of newsfeeds, magazine reads, meetings with researchers, designers, entrepreneurs, public institutions lead us to add names of relevant people in a database we called “LIFT parking”. This is mostly coordinated by myself and approved by the coreteam with recommendations coming from the LIFT team, the LIFT board, some partners/friends who reads specific resources (and get a free subscription and LIFT entrance) and of course local contacts who keep us posted about who is intriguing, pertinent and interesting in other part of the world such as South Korea, China, Japan. In the future we’d like to open this to new contacts from other countries in Latin America and of course Africa. Finally, the suggestion part of the website allows people from the community to suggest names and topics.

7-8 month before the event, we start cobbling our notes, potential speaker names and list of topics so that we can discuss the main theme and subtopics for the conference. This allows us to narrow down the list of potential speakers. Board members also suggest speakers at this time.

Link

Every program you see is the result of hours of readings, research, emailing, meeting, and contains the input of hundreds of people. And with close to 500 persons on our radar we will need to organize more events every year to hear them all, so if you have contacts in South America and Africa - two continents we would like to visit in the coming years - feel free to ping us ;)

We are very happy to have Jan Chipchase as a speaker for LIFT Asia 08!

What TED said about Jan Chipchase.

Jan Chipchase can guess what's inside your bag and knows all about the secret contents of your refrigerator. It isn't a second sight or a carnival trick; he knows about the ways we think and act because he's spent years studying our behavioral patterns. He's traveled from country to country to learn everything he can about what makes us tick, from our relationship to our phones (hint: it's deep, and it's real) to where we stow our keys each night.

Jan's discoveries and insights help inspire the development of the next generations of phones and services at Nokia. As he puts it, if he does his job right, you should be seeing the results of his research hitting the streets and airwaves within the next 3 to 15 years.

Jan gave a fascinating talk at LIFT07 in Geneva. See Jan’s speech about Literacy, Communication & Design at LIFT07 here. He was also recently featured in the New York Times magazine and a short video was also published in The Economist a few weeks ago.