The LIFT Think family continues to grow: after Marc Laperouza, the Near Future Laboratory and John Staehli, Jean-Henri Morin joins the ranks of the LIFT authors. A Swiss and French national, Jean-Henry is based in Seoul where he is associate professor in information systems (MIS) at Korea University Business School since 2006. He is specializing in Digital Policy Management (DPM), a hot and important emerging issue for the digital world.

Read Jean-Henry’s first post here: Do we need to take a step back and rethink IT research ? Services Sciences may be part of the answer

Speaking over lunch with a close friend the other day made me realize how much things had changed in the last months at LIFT lab. It took me about an hour to update him on all the ongoing projects and initiatives. A lot happened, and a short reminder can’t hurt. What’s new at LIFT lab:

EVENTS
LIFT is going to Asia in 2008! We will organize an event similar in concept and size to the Geneva conference in Seoul, South Korea. To prepare this large gathering, we are organizing smaller events called “LIFT Evenings” to start getting in touch with the Asian Community. The first LIFT evening will feature amazing speakers like Bruce Sterling, Jake Song (the guy behind Lineage, one of Asia’s largest online game), Yoo Suk Yeong (the architect who represented Korea at the Venice Biennale) and Adam Greenfield on September 12. We have slightly more than 100 seats available for this free event (free registration here). And of course we will have LIFT08 in Geneva on February 6-7-8. Ten speakers are already confirmed and we will make more announcements once the Asian event is behind us.

SERVICES
In an effort to develop services around the conference without losing the non-profit and non-commercial spirit of the event, we launched a set of services that will allow us to pay our salaries without having to sell speaking spots to sponsors ;) LIFT lab will continue offering consulting services, and we are now developing a recruiting practice (LIFT individuals, headed by Jean-Daniel Sciboz who has years of experience in that field) to capitalize on our growing network of young and bright people. We will also continue organizing custom events for clients. Last but not least come our business support activities that consist in various services like helping early stage ventures find financing, help investors find promising projects, or assist foreign companies develop their activities in Switzerland or South Korea.

RESEARCH
The LIFT Think site is out, and it contains almost everything that the LIFT tribe is thinking, researching, publishing, attending, reading. The platform will develop into an open and interactive brainstorm for the LIFT community, used to detect new trends, themes and speakers for the LIFT events.

That’s a lot of things moving forward. I think these changes will allow us to transition to a more sustainable mode, where people involved in the organization of the events get paid for the hard work they put into it. LIFT lab now has 5 persons on its payroll and is serving a community of hundreds of people. That’s a lot of ground covered since I started the company in July 2005.

We quietly rolled out a major piece of the LIFT lab puzzle at the beginning of August: LIFT Think, our research portal.

I didn’t talk about it much because we wanted to fine tune a few things, but as our feedburner subscribers count shows some of you already found the site and liked it :)

The idea is that LIFT think concentrates all the LIFT lab writings in one convenient place. Authors like Nicolas Nova, myself or Roberto Ortelli are joined by the likes of Fabien Girardin (7.5th floor), Bruno Giussani (Lunch over IP), David Galipeau, Bread and butter, John Staehli or Marc Laperrouza on a single page where content is accessible in a number of ways, namely:

- main news
- latest articles (all the articles of all authors)
- popular articles
- articles by topics
- articles by author

On LIFT Think you will also find other resources like the LIFT jobs, our latest pictures, the events we found interesting and the links we are reading. We have a new design coming soon, but check the page already, it contains a wealth of information.

And if you wish to write on LIFT think feel free to contact us, we are still looking for a certain number of authors in fields like gaming, development and environment among others.

One of the new authors that is joining the blogosphere thanks to our /think initiative (I’ll talk about /think as soon as we have finished implementing a new design, so far it’s beta) is Marc Laperrouza. Marc is an old friend of mine, and one of the best specialists of China around. His blog is called Time to look east and is starting strong with articles on two drivers for innovation in the next 20 years and national champions and techno-nationalism.

We will soon have even more luminaries joining us, the likes of David Galipeau and Steven Ritchey are announced.

LIFT lab is now moving into the head hunting space! Jean-Daniel Sciboz - who has been working in the recruitment industry for the past three years - will head a division called LIFT Individuals, helping companies recruit the most talented people on the market.

The first offers are in, and there are some exciting opportunities. What about becoming Mozilla’s number 2 employee in Europe, heading the marketing and business development efforts on the continent (link) or joining the chat & instant messaging engineering team of a bank (link)? Are you a Java/Lotus Notes Analyst/Developer, then we have some openings for you (link)!

Here are our current openings as listed on the LIFT individuals vacancies page:

• Excellent position for a Structured Lending Senior Tran
• Director of European Marketing - Mozilla Corp.
• Portfolio Counsellor Middle East
• Credit Control Officer - leading international bank
• Java/Lotus Notes Analyst/Developer
• Senior Analyst/Manager Hedge Funds
• Project Head - Security Engineer
• Leading European Bank (app. 30 open jobs)
• Back-Office - Administration Bourse-Titres
• Chat Engineers

Send us your resume, refer your friends (we will pay you a commission), and don’t forget that you can subscribe to automatic job updates via RSS.