Shift conference 2006
On the 28 and 29th of September, Lisbon was the host of the Shift 2006 conference, focusing on Social and Human Ideas for Technology.
The event was held at rectory building (or the Chancellor’s Office) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and had the presence of many international speakers to discuss all about emerging technologies, whether they’re the latest internet trend or the latest social or psychological development. There were also Workshops and open spaces where people could present product demos or discuss other topics.
It was a fantastic event, an opportunity to meet some innovative products being made in Portugal like Goplan, Mingle, Virtual Sightseeing or even weSpendMoney (*wink* *wink*) and the awesome people behind all this stuff. There was also international projects like coComment, Plazes and Vizta, all awesome.
I had the chance to discuss alot of ideas, think of technology in new perspectives and gain motivation to invest and continue working on some of my less known personal projects.
Amongst the several talks (over 55 in 2 days) there was the opportunity to meet and see the presentations of Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, creator of the Reboot conference (which I’m really looking forward to go next year), Bill Scott Ajax Evangelist and Manager of the Design Pattern Library at Yahoo which I recommend everyone who does web development to check it out.
David Galipeau (Web Manager of UNAIDS) and presented a very inspiring presentation (and somewhat scary) at the future of technology and man, Kevin Cheng Senior Interaction Designer at Yahoo Local had a very funny talk about using comics to present ideas.
Luke Wroblewski (Principal Designer at Yahoo and Principal of “LukeW Interface Designs”) and Peter Merholz (Director of Practice Development and Partner of “Adaptive Path”) both aproach the topic of design in products and the web, lots of inspiration here and great fonts of usefull information, don’t forget to check their site.
There was still time for a little workshop in Ruby On Rails, teached by Joshua Sierles and with the presence of Fred from WeBreakStuff, it’s nice to see Rails being talked here in Portugal, I’m hoping next time there will be time to talk more.
I guess I’m problably forgetting a bunch of other people but there was really so much to see there that I’ll give just this small glimpse of what went through. As a last note, also check the photos at flickr, you can search for the tag shift06 and I guess I’ll see you there next year.
