Isn't it great if you really look forward to something and it turns out to be just as wonderful as you hoped for? This is the case with me attending LIFT07 in Geneva, (Feb 7 – 9). What did I expect:

To meet interesting people from all over the world with 'internet' as the common ground (550 people from 30 countries to be precise). To have fun. To have interesting discussions. Gain new insights. Eat good Swiss cheese fondue. Enjoy listening to inspiring people giving interesting talks. And that's exactly what I got.

Since all of my fellow-attendees are avid bloggers, I will not even try to summarize the 'how, what, where and who' of the past few days. Instead I will link to a few stories, people and images that have stood out for me personally. A good place to start is the LIFT07 site itself ofcourse where quite a few pictures have been put up already. My main interest lies with both finding new ways of marketing Macaw's services to our target group and with the use of social software in companies.

This last topic turned out to be somewhat of a central theme of LIFT07, with Lee Bryant of Headshift, Stowe Boyd of Blue Whale Labs and Colin Henderson talking about this. But the topic also kept popping up in the many conversations I've had in these 3 days. To me this was somehow re-assuring. It is nice to discover that what we firmly believe in at Macaw, is also firmly believed in by a lot of other people and companies around the world. We've been blogging, internally, for over 3 years now, and we would not want to be without this form of communications anymore (not since day 1 actually, it's been an instant succes). In addition to that, we have an intranet that's completely free. Meaning there are 'edit' buttons everywhere and everybody can publish or create anything that they feel the need to share with the rest of the company.

While experiencing the benefits of these open ways of communicating ourselves (shared knowledge, increased feelings of commitment to each other and the company, the power to express yourself and being taken seriously are a few of these), we also wish to share this with our clients. Some of them take to this approach quite naturally, most of them with a lot of questions and hesitations ('How do we control it?', being the main question. Answer: you don't!).

Other things that I noticed / took away from the LIFT conference were the diversity of the speakers: a nun who runs the website of the Vatican, a former rock-star turned Physicist at CERN, a Danish entrepreneur who invented a type of grass that changes colour when it grows on landmines and a director of the board of Wikipedia, just to name a few.

Being practical and pragmatic I have asked quite a few times, after hearing talks of websites and online projects: 'how do they make money?'. This question didn't really get addressed much, reflecting the non-corporate vibe of the whole conference. I found out for instance, that Wikipedia is run by donations from individuals mostly, it has no business model. So if people stop donating, in theory, Wikipedia could cease to exist (let's hope not!).

Being practical and pragmatic, I also keep asking myself what kind of concrete tips or ideas I've taken away from this conference.
Again, the answer remains out there.

What's left is a really good feeling of knowing there's an international tribe of smart, interested people out there who care about and work on the things I and Macaw work on as well, be it in different ways, using different technologies, the essence remains the same: we all believe open communication and the sharing of ideas and knowledge are the way to go. And I guess that's worth something too…..