The Connector
In the past, plenty have benefited from Jack Hidary’s passion for bringing people and ideas together. Now he’s helping herald a better future for America’s children.
By Jenna Schnuer
A late night and an early morning person. A rare bird. Meet Jack Hidary, entrepreneur, philanthropist, policy guy, meeting junkie (see sidebar) and, most officially, chairman of National Lab Day.
Along with the three for-profit companies he runs (or is getting up and running)—including seven-month-old Global Solar Center (globalsolarcenter.com)—Hidary is involved with developing policies and programs in education and clean energy. He works with government entities and other organizations on “big, big policies that can have a systemic effect and catalyze a whole different marketplace.”
“Basically, we have several national energy policies on transportation energy that we’re able to gain traction on because of our approach,” Hidary says. “Our approach is very much a partnership approach—a consortium approach where we bring for-profits and nonprofits and governments together.”
Hidary was one of the architects of the Cash for Clunkers program and, currently, is working on PACENOW, which helps people pay for the retrofit of buildings for energy independence.
But, really, the work he does that’s guaranteed to rev everybody else up is in education.
National Lab Day (celebrated this year May 12) is an ongoing, don’t-ever-let-it-stop sort of thing—not truly just a day—“a National Barn-Raising for Hands-On Learning.”
The program grew from meetings between Hidary and the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. The group brainstormed about education, trying to figure out what new programs could be built to “re-engage learning and hands-on learning in this country,” he says.
In so many ways, it’s really a marvelously simple program: a matchmaking service that brings together teachers and their students with scientists, mathematicians and engineers.
Hidary based the National Lab Day site on an algorithm he developed for a dating site. (You thought we were kidding about the matchmaking?) But, instead of boy meets girl, it’s teachers and students meet scientists.
They guarantee that the actual matchmaking doesn’t need a middleman—it’s all done by computer.
Teachers register projects for which they need help; experts register themselves and note how much time they can give.
“Then, our system proactively matches those two and e-mails both of them,” Hidary says.
No muss. No administrative fuss.
“The value that we can provide is a tagged, scalable, easy way of finding the expert that you need as a teacher to get your job done,” Hidary says. “For the expert, what’s great is that they can put in some really satisfying volunteer time.”
He adds: “The kids, of course, love it. It’s hands-on, out-of-doors, out-of-classroom and even in-classroom. [We had a class] in San Francisco that just got some civil engineers to help them build a model of a bridge in the classroom.”
Like all of his projects, Hidary has some big goals in mind for National Lab Day.
“My whole mantra is scale. You want to have quality but you want to have scale as well,” he says. “We cannot just focus on projects or programs that could affect 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 people. Cash for Clunkers affected millions of people. PACENOW will affect tens of millions of people. With National Lab Day, we hope to reach 1 million kids by the end of this year.”
Along with its White House supporters—including U.S. President Barack Obama, who has called on all 200,000 scientists on the government payroll to do their parts to get involved—National Lab Day has found plenty of meeting industry fans. At press-time, there were plans for “Why You Should Get Involved With National Lab Day” sessions at National Science Teachers Association and American Chemical Society meetings. And National Lab Day was a featured topic at the über-hip and inspiring TED conference in February.
With more than 1,000 projects under way, it looks like Hidary’s year-end goal is well within reach.
One+ JENNA SCHNUER is a regular contributor to One+
and is co-founder of Flyover America (readflyoveramerica.com), a U.S. travel site.
The Meeting Crasher
OK, so it won’t be as funny as Wedding Crashers, the bawdy Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn Hollywood flick. At the same time, it’s doubtful that Hollywood will develop a script based on his unconventional conference-going behavior anytime soon. Maybe the meeting industry should consider launching a meeting-goer walk of fame with Jack Hidary’s star sitting in a place of honor. Or, at least, give him the honorary title of “The Meeting Crasher.”
No need to shudder in fear. Hidary’s brand of meeting crasher is, as a certain domestic diva would say, a good thing.
A self-described “meeting junkie” and chairman of National Lab Day, Hidary doesn’t just sign on for the same old conferences every year. In his quest to keep his brain churning and create new connections between people and ideas, he likes to find out what conferences are going on at whatever hotel he happens to be staying at and register.
Topic relevance to his existing interests is unnecessary.
“It opens up different opportunities and ways of thinking when you go to these conferences that are outside your immediate realm,” Hidary says. “I probably shouldn’t admit this in public but…whatever is there, I’ll just walk into that conference.”
He walks in and he listens.
“Every conference and meeting is its own genre, its own world,” Hidary says. “It has its own language.”
As the new person who doesn’t necessarily belong to that world, he says, “You can think of new ideas. The people in the meetings often can’t see the big forest. But as an outsider, you can see the big forest.”
If the thought of an outsider brings on a wave of anxiety—who is that guy?—worry not. Opening the doors to outsiders can be the best gift for your meeting attendees. A few years ago, Hidary did a walk-in at The Aspen Institute Energy Policy Forum. Already in the building for another conference, he decided to check out the rather intimate gathering of just a few hundred people. In 2009, he returned to Aspen as the co-chairman of one of the event’s tracks.
But because Hidary is who he is—the connector—and likes to pass ideas along, here are some of his thoughts for amping up the meeting and conference experience for attendees old and new, insider and outsider.
Fill newcomers in on industry lingo, acronyms and key issues of the day. A one-day pre-conference track for those new to the industry can help everybody get the most out of the main event. “Let them take five, six hours intensely studying the industry with an expert [so they don’t] feel stupid when they get to the conference.”
Pair outsiders with an insider mentor—a conference sherpa. Before heading into the unknown world of the massive Licensing International Expo, Hidary contacted a friend who worked in licensing to see if he would mind being his guide. “He knows everybody and he’s familiar so it was a good entrée into that world.” Consider setting up a mentor program to pair newcomers with industry insiders. Everyone involved will walk away with new ideas.
Don’t shut out the future—and make sure your organization pays attention to its own conference topics. OK, this one is especially important for industries that are getting wiped out—or, at least, nudged aside—because of changes in technologies and customer behaviors. Along with his entrepreneurial and philanthropic endeavors, Hidary also publishes an online newsletter through his foundation, OpinionSource.com. But when he tried to sign up for a news editor organization, he was turned away from membership since the newsletter is online only and the organization’s bylaws required all members to publish in print. But he did attend the conference. The topic? How online and digital media was changing the news industry.
Encourage people from outside your immediate industry world to attend. Invite pediatricians to your neuroscience meeting. Get accountants to check out your real estate conference. “When people are put in these strange contexts, their juices really get flowing.”
Make sure your conference is as open and welcoming as you think it is. If everybody already knows everybody else at your meeting or it’s loaded with hard-to-break-into cliques, how much of a chance is there for people who haven’t interacted before? Hidary recently suggested that the organizers of a digital media conference take a look at the degrees of separation, connections and structure of the social network of their conference. Of the 1,000 attendees at the five-year-old conference, they found that there was less than three degrees of separation between everybody. If it’s too close for comfort, make an extra effort to bring in fresh blood.