liftconference |

As for the past 7 years – except for last year -, I’m getting prepared for an inspiring and insightful conference, Liftconference #lift13.

I’ve written a lot about it – see my last year’s “Make the most out of #lift12: Musings of a veteran member“.

My main focus and interests this year?

One of the main themes – as highlighted on the poster the lift’s team generously distributed before the conference and which is now proudly decking out my office wall :) – agile, is very relevant to our company and the service it offers (Solo and #solocloud). Resilience, which was also a main theme at TEDxLausanne this year, as well as the mobile session are highly interesting for me.

More broadly, creativity, inspiration, people, design, trends and the experience area are the main drivers to me.

Shaked, mixed and baked this gives me food for thought for the next months, it usually leads me to new ideas.

If you are going to LIft, please, tell me, connect with me or drop me a note at cloben at gmail dot com!

Every year, before going to Lift, I used to write some notes on this blog in anticipation to my forthcoming lift experience, sometimes sharing what makes it so special to me and sometimes what it had brought to me.This year, I won’t participate, even if I’ll try to follow as close as possible via Twitter, but as a “veteran” member of the Lift conference community, I thought that my previous experiences at Lift and other conferences could be of help for newbies, such as @taissacharlier. With a slight ironic look, having in mind that there’s no right way of doing it.
Nevertheless, here are a couple of suggestions:

set a couple of objectives before going: business objectives (e.g.meet x people with a specific purpose) as well as more personal objectives, more about new perspectives. This will help you focus your attention on the most important things for you, even if serendipity can bring along good surprises.
take time to have a look at the participants, again with your objectives in mind, even if the presentation doesn’t facilitate this (participants are lisited by alphabetical order and with no keywords visible, for example)
in order to facilitate the networking and growing highly targeted contacts on Twitter, have a look at the participants on Twitter, here’s a list by B-M Switzerland
create a list on Twitter to follow the hashtag of the conference #lift12, and , of course, connect, connect, connect!
try to add your personal point of view/additions, when live-tweeting, always with the hashtag (#lift12), but don’t spam the timeline neither!
If you can, try to organize a workshop, it’s a good way of diving deeply into your subject and a unique opportunity to get experience and input from brilliant people, from diverse horizons.
be prepared with your personal “tagline”, matching your objectives: the way you’ll present yourself will play a big role in the success of your “networking” (seen in its broader meaning)
avoid facility, don’t stick too long with known friends, even if you’re happy to see them, but instead don’t hesitate to place yourself in uncomfortable situations, where you’ll have to do big efforts towards “strangers”!
if you can, take notes and wrap them up on a blog, it will help you “digest” the rich content and add another look or perspective to the Lift experience for others
use and abuse of the experience corner: arts mixed with all kinds of experimental projects, interaction design, among others, will truly help you think out of the box and infuse new perspectives into your life. Maybe. Surely.