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.