I stopped by the Fête des Lumières in Lyon, a nice set of urban installations. Three million visitors show up in three days, and I again felt like European cities are way too small for the number of people who want to live or visit them.

^{Cathédrale Saint Jean}

^{Hôtel de Ville}

^{Place du Change}

^{La Préfecture}

I quickly crossed the Haro Straight yesterday to come to America’s rebirth party. Saying goodbye to eight years of blind policies surrounded by thousands of smiling citizens was worth the two hours ferry trip from Victoria. Whoever won yesterday seemed less important than the widespread jubilation of turning the Bush administration’s page for good. Even if the world will continue to pay the bills of the worst ever president for decades, yesterday’s event are a good start.

Seen on a chicken sandwich ordered at Seoul’s W Hotel:

Sitting in yet another late plane - this time thanks to the repeated incompetencies of Asiana - a company trying hard to drive me nuts after canceling another flight I was supposed to be on three days ago - I realized how bad things have gone in the airline business in a few years. My friends tell me I’m lucky because I travel a lot. And usually my answer to that is “you obviously say that because you don’t travel much”.

From a dream industry, for which almost every little boy wanted to work a few decades ago, it is now an uncomfortable, dehumanized, struggling and aging industry. Passengers are treated as “self loading cargo units” as industry insiders call them.

^{Asiana mechanical problem = 2 hours delay, missed connections, and a replacement plane not used since 1980 in bonus!?}

Seems nobody is proud to work for an airline anymore. And how could you be proud? When processes have completely taken personal initiative out of the picture (anything you ask at a check in counter now results in “you have to ask someone else”). When you work with tools from the stone age that make every single little tweak a nightmare. When clients are treated like cows, and end up interacting with you only in case of problem. When the magical moments that used to be involved in air travel (bringing your kids to visit the cockpit, getting a surprise upgrade once in a while, drinking a glass of wine while 11km above the ground) have been removed for security or economic reasons.

^{“Food” at the Lufthansa business lounge. The dream life of frequent travelers.}

The bottom line of this industry is to move people, and it certainly does that with a record efficiency and reliability. But how long can a company stay afloat when it treats its clients and workers like crap? Where should the balance between efficiency and humanity be established? Is this another one of these domains where market economy dictated an unbalanced consensus, like the one that just exploded on the financial markets?

One thing is sure: after this latest incident (part of a long list of flights canceled or delayed, of lost luggage, and even a spat with a drunk passenger on a Lufthansa flight that resulted in zero excuse or compensation from the company), it’s probably time for me to stop traveling a bit and focus on what is happening around my city. Globalization is making me sedentary after all, how ironic ;)

I am off to London to attend SeedCamp where I am a “mentor” for the entrepreneurs. Seems I got marked as working for Google by mistake, it should be a lot of fun to see how many guys have “sell to GOOG” as their exit strategy ;)

Hae-in - who is one of the members of the Lift team here in Korea - told me about “Navi Call Taxi”, a pretty cool service that women can use to be driven home safely. The concept is quite simple, even if I am afraid that we won’t see it anytime soon in Europe…

1. Call a taxi and give your location AND destination
2. The car picks you up, people you choose (parents/friends) receive a SMS with the name and number of the taxi you are in
3. The car is tracked via GPS in real time
4. If the car deviates from the normal trajectory (remember your destination is known and entered in GPS) an alarm is triggered.

The service was created after an incident where two girls got murdered by a taxi driver in this normally super safe country.

The combination of geo-localization and telecommunication technologies with our daily life will produce millions of opportunities for new and useful services like this one. More information about this future in Lift Asia’s Networked city session on Friday morning with Jeffrey Huang, Adam Greenfield and Yang Soo-In.

You know you left the twentieth century when, in a newly built Airbus A340, you read “Please Turn Off Electronic Devices” instead of “Non Smoking”.

Seen on the Finnair flight from Helsinki to Seoul. Fly with Finnair, it’s 50 times better than most European companies.

Jan Chipchase - who will speak at Lift Asia 08 after his remarkable keynotes at Lift07 and TED - continues to share his observations of our planet’s inhabitants. He brought this pearl from his world tour’s latest stop: Afghanistan.

Crude - but your icon is only a Photoshop away from becoming someone else’s icon. Actually - your everything is only a Photoshop away from becoming someone else’s something.

Link

Photoshop, used to reinvent symbols, and also people’s past!

Update: I added SeedCamp and Mastermundo.

I will be speaking at these great conferences in the coming months:

• SeedCamp (Sept. 15-19)
  I am a proud mentor and advisor for Seedcamp, an intensive week long event held in September in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA.
• PicNic 08 (Sept 24-26)
  Amsterdam’s craziest conference is back, featuring an intense program with tons of people I look forward to meet like Clay Shirky and Ethan Zuckerman. That will also be an occasion to have a chat with former Lift speakers like Ben Cerveny or Rafi Haladjian.
• Mastermundo Creative Conference (Sept. 27)
  Mastermundo is an intriguing conference organized in The Hague by the Royal Academy of Arts.
• World Women’s Forum (Oct. 21-23)
  I am honored to be one of the few men invited to speak at this big Seoul event that will welcome speakers like Mia Farrow or Maud Fontenoy around the theme of “Women as Agents of Change: Building a Diverse and Sustainable Future”. I will share my experience of building a business using social technologies with women entrepreneurs of the world.
• International Congress & Convention Association Congress (Nov. 4)
  I will be part of a session on 21st Century Events where I will present to fellow conference organizers how Lift is using new technologies to organize an original and unique event.
• EIBTM (Dec. 2-4)
  As part of the annual EIBTM technology debate, I will sit down with Corbin Ball (CMP, Corbin Ball Associates) to discuss how social networking sites and virtual worlds can be used in the meetings industry.

I finally took a bit of time off in Seoul, a day spend with Moka and Alexandre trying some of the things one has to try in this city. We started with a trip to Dr. Fish, a weird bathtub-like hole in the ground crowded with little fishes (Garra rufa and Cyprinion macrostomus) eating anything that looks like human skin. It is one of the weirdest sensation I have experienced, and even if the treatment aspect is not that obvious this was worth the try.

Then a fabulously clear day made us go to Seoul Tower where the clean air allowed us to see miles away:

Tomorrow work resumes and I will start the day with Swiss chef Roland Hinni to discuss the logistics of organizing a Helvetic lunch at Lift Asia. Aside from being a chef and university professor, Roland also has a TV show on Korean Television and I look forward to hear from him what we will be able to serve our guests. We received a grant from Présence Suisse, the organization promoting Switzerland across the world, and therefore are able to bring Gruyère and Salami to Korea!

Then Tuesday will be a key day. Our partner Daum is launching a major promotion campaign, and we expect the ticket rush to start. Koreans register for events extremely late. It is a cultural habit due to the fact that in this country things can change radically from one week to another, so fixing your schedule too much in advance can be a bad idea. We will see. First year registration patterns are always weird.

And for those of you still hesitating about coming to Korea: as last month’s Wired taught us plane tickets tend to be cheaper between eight and two weeks before departure! So if you haven’t booked your flight for Seoul you can still do it at a very low price, Finnair still having seats from Geneva at 1286CHF. I start to know this city quite well and promise personal advices to all the westerners who will dare coming to Lift Asia!