When in doubt,
make a fool of yourself.
There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative
and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth.
So what the hell, leap.
Cynthia Heimel

From Friday evening through Sunday lunchtime, we gathered to share our ideas and our work, our passions, and our preposterousness, all with the underlying goal of building community. Fools were challenged to dance on the edge: of their thoughts and ideas, of culture, of their work and play. The edge is a threshold and dancing upon it can invite both spectacular insights and equally spectacular pratfalls. That is its genius and its delight.

In David Miller's paper At the Edges of the Round Table, he shares an anecdote about his first visit to the famous Eranos conferences in Switzerland. In the story, he turns to his neighbor after the end of a lecture and asks if there would be a Q&A afterwards. She responds:

"You see...the presenters are invited to speak at the very edge of their disciplines. If they manage this edge, they are in no better position than the audience to answer questions. It would be premature. On the other hand," she concluded decisively, "if they do not manage to speak at the edge, then they are not worth questioning in the first place!"

This idea makes our toes tingle. What edgy thoughts, edgy ideas, edgy visions are cooking in us? Where are the edges in our work and play, and what edges are we on, imaginally, socially, intellectually? We agree with the elderly lady at Eranos: it is on the edge that magic happens. This is a conversation by and for all of us. So -- what does this mean? Ultimately, it means that you are invited to share your edge with the group. This can take the form of a presentation, a workshop, a "show and tell," a poem, a Socratic Question, what have you.

With the "edge" as the big idea of the gathering, here are three themes that we'll be playing with throughout the weekend:

• Mything in Action: what work are Fools doing bringing their thoughts on imagination and myth to life? What mechanisms are we using? How are they working and how can we help one another to work them better?
• Consilience: where are the conjunctions, the intersections between seemingly disparate ways of our thinking? For example, between math and art, science and myth? Where are the frictions and the conjunctio in your ideas?

and the big one, that we're all wrestling with:

• Authority: where does it lie? Who holds it? When do we hand it away? As we engage Fools to come and play for this event, one of the issues that consistently arises is how to balance the belief in and shyness over standing in the authority of our own ideas. We're going to blow this out of the water.