My trip to Oakland/San Francisco was magical. Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang for inviting me to the #llamalounge with ten AI companies, 27 investors and almost two hundred total people jamming into a great pizza place to chat about all the promises of AI.
Jeremiah is an amazing energetic event organizer. He’ll never personally benefit from the huge number of valuable connections people make because of him, but I hope he keeps doing this because he loves it and finds it fulfilling.
Ben Parr gave a great speech and emphasized the insane unprecedented speed of innovation along with the need to think about social responsibility. He’s an outstanding thought leader.
Maybe it’s the pep in my step because of this trip, or maybe I’m just unusually observant today, but i noticed a bunch of normal everyday things on this trip that were really positive and made me feel good.
The manager of Hampton Inn Oakland Alemeda gave me a free upgrade and checked me in yesterday super fast and in the most friendly way.
Today two women were cleaning hotel rooms together and were chatting happily in Spanish. It made me think of Gallup’s research on how having a “best friend at work” boosts your engagement at work by a factor of 8.
One of my high school teachers said he had a monotonous job doing dishes at a restaurant but he made friends there and all summer long they saved the uneaten jello so they could fill up a tub with it and jump in. He said it was the funnest job he ever had. Any work can be made way better if you do it with a friend.
My Uber driver was very nice and drove a Tesla.
Two women working security were walking along the drop off at the airport talking happily. Again I thought about best friends at work.
At TSA check in the agent asked me if I was living the dream. He was nice.
At security the TSA agent wished me a good flight.
Two TSA agents looking at their X-ray screens were arguing about the Celtics/Heat series in a fun way.
I just kept seeing best friends at work doing work together and enjoying it.
This all makes me wonder: how many corporations could more intentionally assign people to work alongside their best friend at work? Is Hampton Inn doing that already? Is the Oakland Airport? Is the TSA? Can it be done with remote work?
Or were these “friends at work” purely organic, spontaneous and not actually planned.
In any case, my mind is spinning with the possibilities of how AI can not only make our work lives easier and better by eliminating many tasks we find boring or even painful; but also perhaps AI can play a role in getting more people to work more often with their best friends at work—or even better, to help people make friends at work so loneliness goes down and work satisfaction soars.
So many possibilities when you have AI emerging that can make all kinds of things possible!