LIFT is over. Seven hundred attendees. Three days. Sixty presentations. I am now dealing with the ensuing emptiness, and started digesting some of the most intense days I have ever gone through. I met hundreds of people, entered countless conversations, was stressed, interviewed, photographed, applauded, sick, thanked, pressured, hugged, and even threatened by a guy who had more than abused my kindness at the entrance. LIFT is a roller coaster, where the highs and low come in rapid succession, and when the train stops you suddenly feel empty and bored. I know the team feels the same, and I will quickly schedule a diner to allow us to exchange and sort all of our emotions.

A few days after LIFT, I like to think the event was a success. I say it carefully because I am the least objective person to judge that. Two main reasons: 1) everybody comes to me with praises and thank you, afraid of me breaking their arm if they don’t say something positive ;) 2) as the master of ceremony I am over-exposed to problems and have to deal with hundreds of them that, most of the time, don’t make it to the community, or only to one or two persons. So my perception is somehow very distorted until I get the post-conference survey.

Anyway, I am happy to see that some of the bets we made worked, like the 600 persons fondue or the venture night. Overall I think we managed to keep the spirit of LIFT alive through an impressive growth and a lot of conflicting interests. I see room for improvement in almost every part of the event, but let’s let the dust settle a bit before talking about that.

Thanks to all who made LIFT08 possible! I am working on uploading the videos than will head for a few days of rest.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 4:46 pm and is filed under lift. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.