The only festival of its kind in German-speaking Switzerland, Tweakfest is a Zurich based geek event, a successful institution combining aspects of various media in one show. Traditionally, Tweakfest merges the ideas of game developers, Web designers, data analysis specialists and caters to basicaly everyone interested in the Internet.

While 2005 year’s Tweakfest conference was about “visions of digital lifestyle”, this year’s event takes a look at interfaces (with which they refer to computer interfaces), the interaction point between man and machine.

In a funny tidbit of its press release, Tweakfest quotes “cyberspace” as if it was a common term to describe what is going on with the Internet these days. I always thought that “cyberspace” was this 80’s version of the Net, a Johnny Mnemonic kind of virtual reality, where nothing is real and everything has a vector-look. I feel so 1999.

Someone who writes PR with such incompetent references should really not write about the Internet at all. Even to non-geeks it should be obvious by now, that the Internet is not a cyber-reality but part of real life. It’s about people connecting with each other, exchanging things, ideas and real life experiences. Second Life and alike are still around, and it may be true these things will get better interfaces. But what does that have to do with our daily lives, our interaction with people, utilizing the Internet? Taking a look at interfaces seems a bit far off from the actual topics moving the Internet scene right now.

I was recently asked to write a summary of all trends involving the Internet at this time. It included interest based offers and portals, user empowerment, contact based applications, integration of sharing and social bookmarking, user feedback platforms, location aware services, life streams, mood and status messages, crowd sourcing and open source—but cyberspace was nowhere to be seen.

I must say I am a bit disappointed about Tweakfest this year. I was looking forward to attend at this year’s conference in April, but I will probably pass. It seems Tweakfest has indeed lost touch with the reality of what the Internet is all about these days.

As an alternative conference with much more impact on the scene, I would recommend Lift in Geneva. It’s taking place from February 25 until February 27, 2009. I won’t be able to make it, as I am in Florida during that time, but I would recommend it to anyone interested in the interaction between humans and the Internet.