Announcement: Guest Writer and recap of Bil
This weekend was busy for us at Sophisticated Relationships. Rather than posting this week, Lighthouse and I have another wonderful guest post for you on Wednesday, this one from J.M. Cornwell.
J. M. Cornwell is a nationally syndicated freelance journalist, editor and award winning writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Columbus Dispatch, and New Woman. Her stories have been published in the Chicken Soup and Cup of Comfort anthologies, eight of which will be published in 2008. Ms. Cornwell lives in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and maintains a blog. She can be contacted at fixnwrtr [at]gmail [dot] com.
Lighthouse was at day one of the Bil Conference and returned to Los Angeles to participate in the marathon with her sister.
I (Lexi) was at the Bil Conference for the weekend, giving a talk with Jonathan on the four principles we believe are imperative to keep in mind when meeting people.
Robert Scoble made a video of that talk and posted it here with his awesome cell phone to video technology. The slides are here as a power point, originally made in Keynote by Matt Knopp. We hope to get our own copy of the talk posted soon.
One of the many things that makes Bil work, is that everyone I met seems like sincere, curious and helpful people with follow through. That’s a lot of people with those traits in one place. Think about it: it is a conference with no organizer, and any one of the attendees was able to figure out their part in making it happen.
We had streaming video thanks to Paul in conjunction with One Click Webcasting. We have many Saturday talks available to the web thanks to Robert Scoble at Fast Company. Our speakers had help with sound thanks to Adrian Cockroft, we had projectors and a huge screen thanks to R.K. at Qtask. Food and a Saturday post talk gathering at a local pub courtesy of Joyent. Many of our power cords that enabled all of the attendees to fuel their electronics were available from Elliott Ng and Social Media Club and Meraki helped provide wifi. Our other sponsors included Creative Spaces and The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (who donated the first monies needed for space rental).
And then there were the speakers, and everyone that I saw has something relevant and important to share with the group, and were approachable after their talks. The attendees between talks, or at breaks, at dinner or the bar were also easy to talk with. I had several wonderful and interesting conversations, where the sincerity of whom I was interacting with really shown through.
For example, although Razib at GNXP is passionate about genetics, we had a great time talking about some of the cultural differences between Monterey, Bangladesh and Atlanta Georgia. Marek from Naviscribe is a scientist and businessman, yet our communication was about our philosophies of life, the balance and acceptance of grief and joy, and the various framing of perception that takes place amongst all humans on a day to day basis. I met too many wonderful people to name all of them, and reconnected with others whom I don’t see that often due to distance.
There were many good talks as well. My favorites include:
1. Aubrey de Grey: How to Be a Successful Heretic
2. Chris Heuer: Transforming the heart of Business Love & Work
3. KV Fitzpatrick: KV Fitz – Gifted Education
4. A Pagidas: Dare to be Wise! – Reclaiming Philosophy from the Anatomists of Thought
There were also many talks that I missed, and hope to find online later. Fortunately, there is a place collecting BIL mentions.
BIL was a successful example of what can happen when you bring curious, competent people with decentralized organization. I look forward to next year, reconnecting with BILders and learning more from the speakers!
If you were at BIL, I want to know, what were some of your favorite parts? What was helpful for you in approaching and connecting with other people?
Lexi & 
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
I felt like this came upon so suddenly and so I wasn’t able the necessary arrangements to attend the event. I hope to remedy this next year.
The material of the presentation is a solid overview of good social interactions. I could easily see these tenets being successful in situations where there is a shared experience or shared event in a shared environment (i.e. Convention, Art Show, Improv, etc.). However, I wonder about non-shared experiences in shared environments (i.e. A restaurant, grocery store, the bus, etc.). I guess what I would call neutral spaces or enemy spaces.
How does an individual engineer curiosity in a sudden conversational partner? How about when their sincerity fails to generate the partner’s curiosity?
I guess what I mean to say is: How do you signal the start of the conversational dance?
Frank, when I really want to talk to someone in a neutral/enemy space, I usually find something that I can (genuinely) compliment or I try and find a question that I (again, genuinely) want the answer to. I find that most people have something interesting about them that will pique my curiosity to some extent. That will at least get the conversation started.
When sincerity fails to generate someone’s curiosity, I may try pushing a little harder to generate more conversation or I will just leave it be (and hope to run into them again).
I think it’s easier for women to initiate conversations with men than visa versa… In general, women are “bombarded” with offers and it’s sometimes difficult to know what to do with the advances. I always find myself wishing that the guy would just be more patient and not ask me out right away… and instead get to know me before initiating a “wanting to date” conversation. I’m often interested in the men I talk to, but get a little put off by how quickly they move and how many assumptions they make. For myself (and many women friends I know), I prefer a slow, gentle, and non-assuming approach.
Lighthouse,
Thanks. I understand. I think what I wanted to address was that the four tenets do describe an outline of great communication between individuals in and out of a vacuum. But there are a good number of situations that exist in our daily life that require us to get others to play along without consciously defining the rules for them. We instead have to rely on some other mechanics. Simply employing sincerity and curiosity doesn’t necessarily make the other person do the same. Though, I’m sure we could define a number of these tactics within the realm of employing sincerity and curiosity.
To go nerd: Computer modems. You’ve defined the protocol that allows two connected systems to communicate with each other. What is not fully defined is the means of creating the connection: the handshaking.
I’m asking far too much from a 15 minute talk on the subject of communication.
Regrading a man’s quick desire to date: I think that men often act out of desire of the person or out of the fear of being thought of as a friend. The latter, being a guess that I’m making based on conversations and interactions with men previously finding themselves in unwanted friendships. Men learn that they should make their intentions known very quickly. While this is not my characteristic approach, I know that if there is any doubt that a magnificent partner would pass me by if I didn’t say something – then I’d say something.
Sincerely,
Frank
p.s. Not being able to edit a post after the fact scares me.
Frank–
If you are approaching a woman, I would comment on what she’s doing, bring her into the moment with you. Body language and confidence is almost more important than what you say. If you can convey that well, you may picque her curiosity about “Who is this guy?”
And yes, you’re right, there is a risk of going into the “friend zone” for a guy. I think it is possible to maintain attraction on a “just friends” level if the “just friends” is situational– i.e. she’s otherwise involved, but if she’s not and you end up in the friend zone, I’m not currently sure how to get out of it.
For me, I often find myself stating that I’ve overheard something and then joining in the conversation– with males or females. And this is generally if I’m interested on a friend level and they’re doing/saying something interesting.
The other thing that might be helpful is- practice. Practice talking to people, make notes of what works for you and what doesn’t.
There are actually a lot of resources that can do a better job of explaining these things on the web than I can. One of my suggestions is the website Kiss N’ Tale run by my friend Khiem.
[...] week ago Sophisticated Relationships mentioned the talk Lexi and Jonathan gave at Bil Conference, and fortunately we had a partial video from Robert Scoble [...]
I didn’t necessarily mean communication with a prospective partners. I was interesting in hearing your enumeration of how you would suggest going about attempting to signal and start sincere communication with another person that perhaps was not of like mind at that particular moment. I believe you answered it.
I’m mostly playing a wolf in sheep’s clothing when I ask some of these questions. I use similar approaches and methods to communicate with individuals and would admit to fairing well socially. But as any craft, practice and a beginner’s mind is essential to continue to learn and excel. I endlessly enjoy talking about social communication and I look forward to hearing more about it from you two.
just being nostalgic and rereading your article… (partly because i missed bil this year). sigh. 2010!
thanks for the shout on the picture/paper. didn’t notice that before.
…and for the record, to answer a question, i think it was easy to talk to people because bil was specifically ‘advertised’ to be open source and ‘free’ – somewhat polar opposite to ted. rather than showing up to something with pre-set standards and/or expectations, i think people embraced the casual freedom and equality-to-all mindset.