Lift 08 – Geneva – The First Day

Unfortunately, as my flight arrived early morning, despite only grabbing one hours sleep after working until 430am, I didnt get to lift until lunchtime. There was a fantastic list of afternoon sessions – so much so it made it hard to choose. The sessions were actually workshops; in the evening there was a Lift Venture Night with a bunch of companies giving a short pitch and a panel (Pierre Chappax, Robert Scoble, Ouriel Ohayon, Jasper Bouwsma, Fred Destin and Faris Sabeti).

This was followed by a drinks and cheese-sticks mingle outside. As one would expect I met some fun people and made some interesting contacts. After seeing Robert Scoble mobbed everywhere he went (well, almost at Le Web 3, I finally introduced myself this evening at the relative calm of Lift. I met then went in search of food and joined a mixed group from Zurich, London, Hamburg and Helsinki at a nice restaurant called Cafe du Parc des Bastions. We found this place thanks to some friends of Bjorn Ognibeni and Sarik Weber, who I met over a glass of wine, who were already there. This was after a couple of false starts, including to go here but they had apparently (at 9:30pm!) already stopped serving. We’re rather lacking Rummbles for Switzerland so I have of course immediately Rummbled both! Once again it just proves the desperate need for Rummble, as I tried to Google for a restaurant on my Blackberry, then cut and paste the address to the GPS maps, then …… <sigh> It really should be easier. With Rummble, it will be!

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, the day kicks off at 9am with a talk on “Online Environments”. All in all my first impressions are that I’m going to enjoy this conference very much; once again a good mix of people -but perhaps will less of a commercial feel than DLD.