The release of the Lift poster is always an important step in the preparation of the upcoming conference (Feb 22-24).

Unveiled last week, it highlights the evolution of the event as a moment of cross-pollination as shown by how Bread and Butter describes their graphic work for this year:

"Lift aims to act as an accelerator - a kind of Large Collider of ideas - where sketches become successful start-ups and melted cheese becomes life friendship. In the design of this year theme, we wanted to visualize this. To focused on what happens during lift, this special sparkle so hard to keep alive.

The hand-made sketched and roughly cutted paper shapes are fragile and inaccurate as may be the participants thoughts, ideas and expectations. A polymorphic collection of simple elements, with no apparent link, but their own vague future. The blue flash is the lift effect. It's the verb in a sentence: the action. It transforms, moves, accelerates, gives sense, enlightens, opens, shapes and lifts up. It's the kind of energy we want to give to the participants: the capacity to move forward, toward their future."

The program is also moving forward with a set of confirmed speakers (Gordan Savicic, Kars Alfrink, Fabian Hemmert, Patrizia Marti, Mark Suppes, Steve Song, James Bridle, Gesche Joost and Ashley Benigno. They will address various topics ranging from the interplay of technology and crisis to the new face of gaming, the evolution of finance to the practices of extreme amateurs or trends from the mobile industry.

Early bird prices end pretty soon (October 31).