The Big Impact of Small Gatherings
The Backchannel Breakfast Salon at the Ace Hotel in New York.
Hi friends of Backchannel,
Last Friday, we gathered for our inaugural Backchannel breakfast salon: a group of 30 people who met at the Ace Hotel in New York to talk about our relationships with technology over coffee, pastries, and frittata. Steven, Jessi and I wanted to connect with our readers in person, not only through our stories online. We started off with a conversation between Steven and an extraordinary human named Susan Lyne. They go way back — she’d tipped off Steven to the story that first turned him into a tech journalist, the same story that led to his blockbuster book, Hackers.
The breakfast was off the record, so I’ll just summarize by saying she blew me away.
On paper, Lyne has led a charmed life, starting out as a magazine editor before working her way up to president of ABC Entertainment and launching shows including Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy; to chairman of Gilt Groupe; to founder and president of BBG Ventures (with many other high-profile stops in between). But I bet she’d agree that the TV version of her life would dwell on the moments of drama, of emotional resonance. She did just that in the stories she told at our breakfast. After she shared one gut-wrenching episode from her life, I looked around the room and every fork was down, every eye was glued to her.
Steven Levy interviews Susan Lyne at our breakfast.When we turned back to our neighbors around the table, the atmosphere had changed. People were making eye contact. It was as if we had suddenly realized we could be frank and open, emboldened as we were by Lyne. I had conversations that morning that felt like the beginnings of friendships. Being the kind of person who finds networking about as fun as folding laundry, I don’t say that lightly.
Leadership comes in many forms. It involves setting the course for a team of collaborators, foreseeing where the future might take us, and, of course, meeting deadlines. I’d like to add another item to the list. Leadership is also the quality that brings strangers together, building bridges where before there was just air.
So as we approach this day of turkeys and cranberries, I’d like to offer up a thanks for the true leaders in our lives. They don’t have to be responsible for million-dollar budgets or sit in corner offices. They’re also the people who see where stitching needs to be done between us fallible humans, and who get to work.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Sandra
#### Speaking of leaders…
In Backchannel we’ve been examining the tech industry’s response to the President-Elect:
Jared Kushner Might Now Be Our Best Hope for World-Class Internet. Tech policy expert Susan Crawford has discussed internet access issues with Kushner in the past. Kushner, she writes, “knows that where there are uncompetitive markets for data services, businesses suffer.”
How the Tech Industry Can Lead in the Trump Era. Cofounder of the Techonomy conference Simone Ross and UC Berkeley law professor Sonya Katal offer five pragmatic ways that tech companies can become a force for social good — if they so choose.
Foreign Techies Were Already in Limbo. Now They Have Trump. It can take up to 70 years for a skilled Indian tech-sector employee living, working, and paying taxes in the U.S. to get a green card. Not citizenship — a green card. Now they have an anti-immigration White House to contend with, too.
