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One week to LIFToff!!

I bet Laurent is tired of all the cheesy LIFT puns people come up with, but I just couldn’t resist :-).

The LIFT Conference in Geneva starts on Wednesday next week. I’m still trying to figure out what sessions I want to cover and how, whether I’ll stay there over night or travel back to Berne each day, what equipment I should take with me (contrary to previous plans I’ll probably carry my brand spanking new MacBook along, if only to show off the elegant Brenthaven Edge bag), and all the other minutiae connected to conference-going.

Truth be told, I haven’t been to a conference for about ten years – and that was an origami conference, in the days before Microsoft even had plans for origami and origami still meant paperfolding, which is way more fun than staring at a screen the size of your palm anyway.

But that’s not the point. What I do know from those origami conferences, and my experience with workshops at namics and Swisscom and a whole bunch of other companies whose names I could mention just to show what a hot-shot guy I am, but won’t because modesty is my middle name, is the following fact: Scheduled sessions are just there to fill the time between breaks, which is where the real action is. There’s nothing like a cup of coffee or a stiff martini to get the creative juices flowing. It’s common knowledge: Ground-breaking new devices are cobbled together from toothpicks, olive stones and left-over canapes; billion-dollar deals drafted on a page ripped out of someone else’s scratchbook; breathtaking new designs sketched on soiled coctail napkins. I could go on, but you get the picture.

So I’ll probably concentrate on the breaks, make sure to watch the important guys, and see whether I might get someone drunk sociable enough to spill a couple company secrets or at least some juicy gossip. That should be far more entertaining than a dry account of who said what about The Next Big Thing, shouldn’t it? And if all else fails, I can still write about this year’s fashion in smartphones.

What I’m trying to say here is: LIFT07 IS JUST ONE WEEK AWAY!!! If you forgot to sign up, I think there’s still a few seats left, so hurry up!

3 Comments

  1. Gris-Gris wrote:

    Possibly you can even hand shake Mark Twain. Gonna tell us then!

    Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 22:01 | Permalink
  2. Dannie Jost wrote:

    I had a good laugh with your observations on conferences and workshops! But wht do you want? A structure without empty spaces isn’t a structure, it an an amorphous pile of junk. I am looking forward to seeing you in my workshop!

    Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 08:18 | Permalink
  3. Matthias wrote:

    Dannie, you’re right of course. No day without night, no Cailler chocolate without tons of plastic, no coffee breaks without work in between. What I’m not sure about is which is the empty space, and which is the structure :-).

    For those who didn’t know, Dannie is holding a workshop on creativity, together with Henriette. This is an applied workshop, do come prepared to work on your own goals and to scream.

    Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 09:58 | Permalink