I am currently in Lisbon for the SHiFT conference. This three day event saw a day of workshops yesterday, and today is the start of the conference proper, with about 50 presentations until tomorrow evening.

Feira Internacional de Lisboa: SHiFT venue

My contribution will be a 80 minute Knowledge Cafe on the cultural categories and concepts that need/are shifting because of the impact mobile communications and internet have as infrastructures on our lives and routines. Digital nomads have seen their perception of work-life balance, value, transparancy, privacy, information strategies, organisations, jobs, structures etc, change in the past decade. This means we are learning new boundaries, barriers and attractors to balance our lives, and are creating new meaning and language to express that. I think there is a real need for that type of redefining cultural concepts and creating new language. Simply because it is virtually impossible to express the new exclusively in the language of the old. By doing a Knowledge Cafe (apart from not having time to create the content for a presentation last week because I was ill) I hope to bring the discussion down from the abstract level into the individual context of the participants, where they are most likely to feel well equipped to reflect and exchange experiences and stories.

Hanging out with Henriette, Mark and Brian during the workshop day