lift08 |

One year ago, at Lift08 in Geneva, I opened this blog coached by Stephanie Booth, but not really knowing exactly where this would lead me to.

Some things were clear, though: first, I had to dive into that field, would it be only for professional purposes. Actually, how could I ever be able to counsel, roll out general marketing strategies without even having tested a slight, but important part, of social media? I knew part of the theory, time had come to go on to practice! Secondly, I also wanted to experiment that playground to express a personal point of view agregating personal and professional interests. A kind of convergence, that lead naturally to “Convergent Tracks”.

So now, one year later, about to starting Lift09 (my third consecutive year), I take this opportunity to make the point, see a bit of what happened during this past year and how it lead to a personal convergence.

My mind broadened at Lift 08. It is hard to explain, I know I’m not the only one, but after having heard people like Genevieve Bell or Paul Dourish, I felt I could’nt just stay on the side of the road. I had to ride my engine and start off!
Freedom, breaking limits, thinking out of the box: a track was born! Internal.

Then, another intimate event happened: my uncle’s passaway. He was a visionair. A missionnair. His death acted on me like a trigger and, sadly, but happily at the same time (it’s in concordance with his spirit), brought me to my first post. The idea of converging tracks.
Convergence, yes. Ok. But where? To what?

At that time, I started to analyze plethora of blogs, news, and others. I already related that part here, the Mad Link, and From Conversation to Conversion. I started creating public profiles, a Twitter account, linking to like-minded people, linking all these links together, commenting and so on. Always genuily. Following my personal moral code.
The contacts springing out of this were nice, warmful and inspireful, helpful and open. The idea of converging tracks. Again. Slightly more on the public side.
But I also started to integrate the company I work for (and with and in) into my social/public flows. Another convergent track, yet.

Then, a personal “event” happend: the jump into the 40’s!
Short before: plenty of questions, doubts, hesitations.
Then, the birthday. Yes, I think the word “Birthday” has its full meaning, here.
If I could have had any unrevealed dreams, they all happened at that moment! (or close)
At that very moment, in the middle of all the people I so preciously loved, I felt totally INTEGRATED! My inner “me” was integrated.

My past, my origins, my aborted dreams, my friends, my family, my choices, my passions, all had become fully integrated!

The counsciousness of this opened for me an unlimited space of freedom.
Integrating this feeling to what I had learned and experimented during one year lead me to now: A FULL CONVERGENCE, from Lift 08 to Lift 09, from intimate to global convergence.

So, it is with wide open eyes that I am going to first day of Lift09.

What’s next?

Image: by my friend, Lats Kladny, CEO of http://www.inox.com (you know, the guys that make Uma Thurman say: “What are you made of?, for Tag Heuer” Or Eva Herzigova, for Chopard, Luxury Jewels..?
Follow me on Twitter @claudiafalt for realtime LIFT09 ideas, news, insights…

What’s the link between LIFT, blog, coffee, the world, the atom, the intimate and the infinite?
Dottore Ernesto Illy. My uncle.

He invented the espresso, Illy caffè, and brought it all over the world, like a missionair, the coffee evangelist, teaching everyone how to prepare it, how to taste it, even how to cultivate it.
As a chemist, he studied different aspects of the coffee and its mollecules, analyzing its impacts on human health, on the taste. He developed in his laboratory sophisticated engines to obtain the best roasted beans. Saying that one could taste if only one bean was corrupted in the whole process of making a cup of espresso!
So, on one side he harnesslessly researched and created the best possible coffee, say on a technical point of view. He even created international scientific coffe associations. He also helped a whole region in Brazil to develop and learn how to grow high quality of coffe, sustaining them with a higher purchase price (among others).

On the other hand, he travelled all over the world, all his lifelong, to spread the good word, the love of coffee, his science and his humanity.

The purpose here is not to rewrite his whole story. No.
My uncle, Dr. Illy, saddly passed away a couple of days ago. I am very sad, of course, he was an important figure of my childhood and many happy souvenirs relate to him. But I also remember one day when he was explaining the quantic theory: every infinite part of a whole can contain the whole and the inverse (this is what I got !).

And now, I think that I understand what he meant that day. I think that he is the embodyment of this theory.

These last days, I saw on http://www.illy.com all the testimonials praising his extraordinary qualities, from all over the world, in many languages. A taste of universality.
More personnally, my mind broadened a bit more at LIFT08, showing me unsuspected connections between things, between people, where emotion was a connector. A link was emerging between different elements, and I was decided to continue to “digg”, to identify such links. Strangely, the inventor of the “capsule Nespresso” was among the speakers explaining how he invented it… Illy was there! (for me). The link was starting to take shape inside of me. I already knew that my uncle had left us.
After that, I found a very interesting and thourough article on Illy caffè, which also touched me: I found an Illy coffe amateur reading an article on the internet! I wrote to the author, who in turn told me that his father, hungarian like Illy’s foundator (and mine!), started to drink Illy coffe in 1973 and that he never stopped! For him, this coffee is synonymous of special delightful moments in the day.

By allowing such intense experiences, Ernesto Illy touched people in their intimacy. Many times a day. For thousands of people. All over the world.

The universality of an emotion in the specificity of the moment. This universality becoming visible to everyone in the world through technological media and maybe reinforcing it by the way. The community of Illy espresso lovers virtually united through a real emotion.

To the infinite intimate presence of my uncle.
With all my love to him.