There was one LIFT08 moment for me. It happened during the Gaming session while both Guy Vardi and Paul Barnett spoke. The energy and content of their presentations delivered something into the discussion that Nada Kakabadse and I were having over what is the basis of Theoretical Man. What intrigues me is how technology enables humanity's evolution. Nada and I cracked the one pièce de résistance that I have been pondering for the past few months. I could not have done it alone - not that quickly - it was two brains thinking as one. It was one of those magic moments when you know that alone you are nothing, and together you are everything. I was elated!

First of all, congratulations to the team of LIFT. You have worked like fools and loved like giants, and I do feel very loved and privileged by being part of such an event. Each and every LIFT for the past three years has changed my life in one way or another. This year my personal insights started to pour in some time during the wee hours of Saturday while roaming the streets and clubs of Geneva.

However this feedback is not about me and my belly button or my fictional diversions that are so very entrenched in my own narrative, this is about the part that I usually send to Laurent via email, but that now needs to go on the public record. I already gave Laurent one big hug on Friday afternoon.

You guys - the LIFT team - must know that I have some experience with dealing with other events of this nature and that I have deep appreciation and respect for the immensity of the work that goes behind the scenes. Thank you all for the effort, the lost sleep, the raw nerves and what is invariably the unavoidable fatigue.
So here is what I liked about this year and what I did not like.
What I liked:

So what was LIFT08 like? For me: fantastic!
The Creativity Utopia Workshop went beyond my expectations. Now the kind of third-loop-learning workshops that I do are usually a bit rough on the participants, you are asked to think, think critically, and to think from a place deep within yourself. I am however fair enough to also give the participants the chance to put me on the spot and make me think then and there. I was on the spot a few times. It is all about authenticity and self-expression, and that is exactly what the workshop was about. Remember that I never claimed to know what creativity is, and I still do not know. Shani Lee did take fantastic notes and I had very valuable feedback from Yann Mauchamp with whom I spent the wee hours after the closing party roaming the streets and clubs of Geneva. Rough is a bit of the nature of my being and there is a certain kindness to that roughness that Yann offered a term for: amour vache.

It is Friday morning and LIFT has one more day and night to go according to the plans. I just woke up at one of the nicest addresses in town in a flat where one can easily get lost and am all happy that on my third year attending this conference I finally made it to the fondue. I do not eat cheese fondue and went yesterday for the company. I sat across Nada and next to Francesca at the end of one of the tables, engaged in fun discussions and then left much too early so as to not arrive at my host's residence too terribly late.
I like this year's format. So far every year the format has been different, and I have no expectation in the world that the experimentation with the format will ever slow down. Humans love to play and tweak things, nothing is ever perfect and we are always drawing from utopia. As resistant as we all are to change, we love it! It is like having a natural schizophrenia that amounts to seeking the safety of the known while desiring the excitement of the new.
My experience of LIFT this year so far has been a lot more relaxed than in the previous years. There are many reasons for it, one being that this is a community that is starting to mature and where the relationships are beginning to rest on firmer ground. Other reasons are more personal and hang around my own decisions as to how to be present here this year. I like what I observe about the dynamics of community around this conference.

It is my third LIFT conference and I feel like a little kid! All the people, all the ideas, unfortunately also the bloody fondue! Now back to life...

The Creativity Utopia Workshop is something that has me all excited at this late hour. However due to my own inaccessibility - not answering phone, out of skype or ignoring IM - for the past couple of weeks and Henriette's quite exciting OpenStage talk, she will let me do the whole thing by myself. I will miss her bubbles and enthusiasm in the workshop, and am looking forward to exploding tabus, exploring utopia and getting real about finding access to that wonderful chimera of one's butterfly's dream.

Transhumanism and Calvin did not make it as a program discussion, and that in itself is interesting to me. I was cryptic about what I was trying to get at... but then there will be Kevin Warwick as a live cyborg, and we are in Geneva anyhow and ready to give Calvin's heresy a good go.

Anticipation is a wonderful elixir, and when it comes to this conference, it is part of the crack that makes the whole so damn exciting. I could never predict how these things go, but then I could not ever predict much.

There are many ideas floating around and I am writing and reading a lot. There are the central issues of identity, public and private, evolving media, and humanity's relationship to both technology and psychology... and all of this I am writing about.

Time to muse a bit here on this corner of the blogosphere, this corner of Switzerland. I am sitting here and pondering a few embryonic ideas for an interactive workshop at lift08. Here are some of these ideas:

- The Art of Digital Identity
- The Business of Freedom
- Speed, Time, Money and Sex (I can not be serious about this, can I?)
- Waiting for Godot on the Matrix
- What happens when a Transhumanist meets Calvin?

What do you think?
What is it that as a lift08 participant you want to spend a few hours exploring?

Do you know why geeks are such wonderful creatures? They make mistakes all the time, and are always busy fixing something or other, on occasions even broken links and broken hearts.

Now for a broken link from my previous post: Here is the write up in uncondition.