San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Salons and dinners with agendas beyond socializing.
New social network: Wave of salons aims to bring back human connections
In a modern Edwardian-style home in Russian Hill, more than 60 women gathered recently to hear the founders of billion-dollar children’s clothing company Gymboree, venture-backed health elixir brand Rebbl and the largest nonprofit treating anorexia, Project Heal.
The women weren’t there for a standard “how I succeeded in business” lecture or afterwork networking event. The draw was an unfiltered conversation about battling the unhealthy aspects of results-driven perfectionism that can lead to anorexia. “This disease can affect anyone,” said Project Heal founder Kristina Saffran. “People don’t realize how common it is.”
Among intimately set chairs and a wall-size portrait of Frida Kahlo, women of every age listened and bonded — sometimes laughing, sometimes tearing up. They’re all members of Parlay House, an informal club of accomplished executives, lawyers, artists, writers and technologists who gather once a month to hear industry leaders, watch documentary screenings, and to exchange literature and, most consequentially, ideas.
In the current Information Age, largely powered by Silicon Valley’s innovations in digital media, some tech leaders are opting to take civic discourse offline and connect the old-fashioned way. Reminiscent of the French salon gatherings that fanned civic discourse among philosophers, artists and nobility during the Age of Reason, collectives are the social network du jour. Sprouting up in private homes, organized clubs and co-working spaces throughout the Bay Area — modern salons like the Cosmos, 50/50 Zero Gap, WeWork’s Town Hall and Parlay House provide a forum and context for the zeitgeist, from cryptocurrency to genetic testing, and a lot of politics in between.
Researchers believe the resurgence of face-to-face discussions, often facilitated by local conversation series, is driven by the inefficacy of online conversations, information overload and rising loneliness.
In the wake of the presidential election, Parlay House’s programming includes more conversations with activists like civil rights attorney Elaine R. Jones, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s first female directorcounsel and president. “We all feel the need to course correct and don’t necessarily know how,” said Parlay House founder Anne Devereux-Mills. “Now more than ever, we need role models and inspiration.”
A celebrated advertising executive, startup strategist and social justice activist, Devereux-Mills launched her
organization in 2012, intent on providing women with an intimate, transaction-free space devoid of superficial networking. Throughout the years, Devereux-Mills has hosted dozens of salons, delving into prisoner-reform policy, a how-to on dealing with narcissists and learning opportunities with the female CEOs of Tatcha Cosmetics, 23andMe and Louis Vuitton North America.
“This organization started long before #MeToo and #TimesUp and has been a forum for us to discuss and share our real experiences in an empathetic space,” said DevereuxMills. Since Parlay House’s inception six years ago, headlines concerning social media began to focus on the mediums’ tendency to exacerbate loneliness due to unfulfilling “snackbite” interaction, passively scrolling through feeds, giving out superficial “likes” and comparing your life to others’ throughout the day.
Social data researcher Georgia Glaze doesn’t entirely fault social media for the country’s reported loneliness and recent political fragmentation. After all, we’ve been “bowling alone” for decades, as described by Robert D. Putnam in his 2000 best-seller describing the decline of civic organizations, clubs and even bowling leagues.
Yet Glaze and her colleagues have found that addictive social networks like Facebook can exacerbate isolation
with news feeds that create siloed echo chambers in which users interact only with people who already agree with them. In online silos, opposing views are trolled, taunted and sometimes met with psychical threats. “Pair that with a data smog of overwhelming information and you’re left with asynchronous, filtered conversations that feel fruitless,” she said.
Glaze believes that social media is a good places to keep up with out-oftown family you wouldn’t see otherwise and unusual interest groups. For instance, she has a three-legged cat and is in touch online with other tripod feline owners. “It’s fun, but they’re still just cats,” she said. “I think everyone was expecting too much from social media. It can’t mimic the nonverbal queues humans need to foster civic debate and deep social connection.”
Studies by psychologist Daniel Kahneman, and many of his contemporary researchers, point to community and purpose as the fundamental ingredient for joy. Yet the nature of today’s frenetic economy has led to cities chock-full of transient strangers without roots in their local communities.
“We found that people have a yearning for authentic human connection,” said Padden Guy Murphy, head of policy and social impact at WeWork. “We want to give people what they used to get at church or city hall — those serendipitous moments of human connection that are as old as the village itself.”
Murphy helped the co-work space giant launch a series of themed town hall dinners hosted for diverse guests. WeWork’s town halls bring together an ethnically diverse group of influential men and women from technology, government, the arts and other disciplines to spur civic engagement.
At a town hall dinner in May, Zero Gap founder Sarah Gerber guided several dozen men and women in a salon-style 50/50 discussion. Her aim is to build a culture where men and women have equal seats at the proverbial table.
Gerber propelled the conversation by asking questions like: “What gender-related messages did you hear growing up?” The table of strangers was surprisingly candid, citing parental pressure to adhere to stereotypical masculine and feminine ideals.
The prompts gave rise to organic discussion, delving into the stigma of taking paternity leave for men, equal pay and gendered etiquette. A female engineer said she felt patronized by her predominantly male colleagues holding doors for her, and several men admitted that it was a confusing moment in time. “It’s unclear when holding a door is a micro aggression or a welcome gesture,” shared a male marketing executive.
A Millennial woman in management asked the group: “Does it make me a bad feminist if I appreciate that kind of chivalry?”
To Gerber, the discussion and uncomfortable questions signaled that both sexes were taking ownership of the issues and moving beyond gendered silos. At the end of dinner, a male guest asked Gerber to share her list of prompts with him so he could continue the conversation at his office with his peers.
“It’s encouraging that people are engaging in this way,” Glaze said. “There’s something inherently vulnerable about sharing a meal and connecting eye-to-eye.”