Freshly back from London last night, I decided to put my body through the time zone challenge and take advantage of my kids being away through Sunday. I’m took a flight to San Francisco this morning to enjoy a few days of fun and distraction before we are reunited this weekend.
The flight was not full, so I made fast friends with a lead developer from the Google Glass project sitting across the aisle from me, and our chatty, witty, flight attendant. What started as her gently teasing him about the “odd thing he’s wearing on his face,” quickly spiraled into discussions about implantable devices of the future, how to lead his team of four new graduates and the odd people you meet on planes. We covered a lot of ground in a short time.
He’s pleasant and trying hard to be humble about his project, but he speaks with the arrogance that many of the uber bright technical guys I know share. It’s clear he relies on his brain to connect with people. When it comes to deeper relationships however, there is a far more limited capability. He's all confidence while talking about his amazing glasses. And then he passed out with an eye mask on. It was on OVER his Glass. I want to tell him I don’t care how smart he is, that look is never going to get him laid. And maybe he doesn’t care. I imagine he does though . We all care at some level.
I loved this random conversation though. Here are three completely different people. We’ve got a 53 year old (she told us) flight attendant from Maine, married with older children. She flies a few times a month to keep some semblance of adventure in her life. Then there’s a mid-30’s (I’m guessing) tech lead for one of the most storied companies of our generation. He’s working on one of the hottest products out there and judging by the conversation, one of the sharpest people I’ve spoken to in a long time. And then there’s me.
The thing I love about conversations like these are the challenge of finding the points of connection. The teenage me would have probably taken one look at this guy and written him off as a total nerd. The adult me was able to partner with the flight attendant to humanize him. We were able to get him to talk about his work in a user-friendly way (a challenge for him at the outset) by teasing him and by ultimately mocking ourselves. All three of us were able to share our own stories about our first forays into technology and the impact it’s had on our lives. What started as a flight attendant killing time with an innocent question turned into a highly engaging conversation I think we all took something away from.
This is what I love about open doors. You literally never know what you will find on the other side of them. Today, I chose to opt into a conversation rather than tune out like I normally do on a plane, and I became the richer for it. Nothing grandiose happened. Just left with a feeling that I met two more interesting people in the world. And no matter how different we may look on the outside, there are ways to connect with just about anyone if you just start talking.
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