I have only just discovered the information on LIFT 09. The themes of the conference seem to exactly match some talks that I am currently giving. The title of my presentation is called 'Why The World's Gone Soft'. I argue that technology has driven and been driven by four societal forces: Sharing, Open, Free, Trust (hence SOFT). These ways of communicating and establishing relationships are being pioneered by innovative companies & young people in the way they relate, and increasingly, are seen to distinguish what makes some businesses succeed while other fail.

I give many amusing examples of how SOFT is seen in the technological and corporate world, but its absence from the public sector (particularly education and public services) means that some of our institutions (schools, doctors surgeries to name but two) are at risk of becoming irrelevant. Some of this ground has been covered by Shirky and Anderson, but I take some of these ideas further and apply them to how best to understand young people, and how best to make public services more innovative.

I am about to tour the longer version (about 1 hr) of this talk in Australia, and will have excerpts on both YouTube and my under-construction website by the end of October. This initial note is to enquire if this is the sort of thing you're interested in. I have attached a heavily edited version of the presentation I recently gave to an audience of educators, together with a short clip explaining one of the examples used.

I should state that I'm no tech expert. My background is in education , arts and culture, but I hope my presentational style enables these concepts to be made easily, and more widely, accessible.

Best wishes,

David Price, OBE

Francesco Cara, a design strategist at Nokia with a psychology background, looks at the evolution of mobile communication ecosystems.

I absolutely love the plethora of avenues for contributing and helping influence the conference; this site and the community blogs, the face photos, fontself, the Not So Empty Book...

Simply wonderful. Congratulations on authoring such a wonderful conference and letting us add our own embellishments. :)