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I


n May 2005, Arianna Huffington — a nation- ally syndicated columnist and the author of 13 books — launched The Huffington Post, a news


and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely read, linked to, and frequently cited media brands online. Last year, the site won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. In 2006 and again in 2011, Huffington was named to the Time 100, Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Originally from Greece, Huffington moved to


England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with a master’s degree in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed Cambridge Union debating society, which, she told Convene, helped her get over a fear of public speaking and self-consciousness about her “thick Greek accent.” Huffington recently shared with Convene her


thoughts on leadership, learning, “and the power of bringing people together,” which she learned at her mother’s knee.


You are known to be a person with exceptional curiosity and interest in learning just about everything. How do you learn best? When you need to acquire new knowledge, what approach do you take? Learning is a process, and whether I’m reading, or listening, or observing someone I admire, I learn best when I keep three things in mind. First, knowing that the thing you start with — like an idea or a product — probably isn’t going to be the thing you end with. And second, that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s a stepping stone to success. And third, that I love learning, but I par- ticularly love learning from people who are really passionate about whatever it is they are teaching.


What value do you see in face-to-face conferences — the act of people gathering together in person to learn from and share with each other? I see tremendous value in face-to-face confer- ences. In the Harvard Business Review, Walter Isaacson recently wrote about Steve Jobs’ strong belief in getting people together: “There’s a temp- tation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. … That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say, ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.” So as


74 PCMA CONVENE JANUARY 2013


‘Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s a stepping stone to success.’


virtual contact has become more common, face- to-face contact is more and more valuable.


What advice would you give to improve on conferences that you’ve seen and/or been part of? Napping stations (for between events, of course). And more time for milling around. It’s often in the hallways and lobbies, rushing to catch the start of the next panel or session, that you end up learning a lot from random conversations.


When you convene groups of people to make major decisions, how do you go about doing that? At HuffPost, we pride ourselves on being a flat organization, with very close cooperation among tech, design, and editorial. We thrive on our start- up spirit of inviting as many voices to the conver- sation as possible. It’s an approach that’s in line with HuffPost itself, which as a site is dedicated to opening up conversations made of many voices, and bringing them online.


You are considered to be a leader in our society. How did you learn to be such a standout leader? So much of what I know about leadership — and all things, really — I learned from watching my mother. This would have baffled her, because she did not think of herself as a leader! But she understood the power of bringing people together — especially in the kitchen. That was my mother’s secret: Fill their stomachs, and their hearts and minds will follow. Also, she taught me early on not to take myself seriously. Indeed, one of her favorite quotes was, “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”


Is leadership something that can be taught at conferences, and if so, how is it best done? Yes, by bringing people together for honest, lively discussion with an emphasis on solutions. When we convene people from the same industry, it’s particularly important to challenge the conven- tional wisdom. For example, on a daily basis, I’m invited to media conferences filled with panels devoted to social media and how to use social tools to amplify a message. But very few of those panels ask — or even seem to care — what the hell is the message. It’s good at those moments to remember what Thoreau said: “We are in great haste to con- struct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”


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