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The words "Dear Good People" written in script across a green boka background. Images at bottom of covers of The Person You Mean to Be and A More Just Future

My Six Ah-Hah Moments at SXSW

Dear <<First Name>>,

March is a promising month.

More outdoor pickleball. The return of Ted Lasso.

The character Ted Lasso in a puffer jacket on a soccer field.

Longer days where I live make pep talks less necessary. And, for sure, I love me some March Madness.

But this time around, I experienced a different kind of March.

I went to my first SXSW. Some call it March Magic.

Wait, what is SXSW anyway?

Well, March Magic rolls off the tongue more easily than the bulky "SXSW" (said aloud as: “South By South West").

The cool kids just call it “South By.”

Imagine: if the Sundance Film Festival and Coachella the music festival and a TED conference and CES the big tech conference and a hip Hollywood cafe had a baby … maybe it would be SXSW?

I was delighted to be invited to be a Featured Speaker and do a book signing at SXSW which is … gulp … a big deal. I don't have the official video and pictures of my talk yet so stay tuned for that!

Dolly Chugh sitting behind a table looking up at a man. With one hand, she is holding a page down on a book that is on the table. She has a pen in her other hand. The man is standing with his back to the camera looking down at the table.

March Magic

One of my many magical SXSW moments was realizing that one of personal heroes, Preet Bharara, was signing his book DOING JUSTICE at the table next to me.

He exemplifies what I call a gritty patriot so I was thrilled that he showed interest in my book.

And, next to him was Nita Farahany whose important new book THE BATTLE FOR YOUR BRAIN I am eager to read!

Whether they are front page headline makers like Bharara or change makers in their localized orbits, every conversation and experience at SXSW was a spark to my intellect and soul. March Magic, indeed.

The People Behind the "Magic"

I am also here to reveal that the magic is not, well, magic. It is the result of careful design and painstaking execution by thousands of people. Here is a peek at the behind the scenes of my talk where you can meet just a few of these amazing folks. They dazzled me.

The tech video and sound board that has Dolly Chugh on the monitors. while she is on stage speaking in the background.

Ah-Hah Moments

As I soaked up the experience, I was on the look out for ah-hah moments that Dear Good People readers might appreciate about being the inclusive person you mean to be. There were many! Here are six ah-hah moments I really loved.

Join or Die

In 2000, political scientist Robert Putnam noted that while more people were bowling, fewer people were participating in bowling leagues. He connected the dots between this “bowling alone" trend and other indicators of the decline of social capital (social networks and the norms that come with them) in his classic book BOWLING ALONE. He argues that this is bad for us and bad for our society.

The answer: join a club.

Robert Putnam and Dolly Chugh standing side by side. Both are holding the book Bowling Alone. They are standing in front of a bowling lane .

A sister-brother filmmaking team - Rebecca and Pete Davis - premiered their Bowling Alone-inspired documentary JOIN OR DIE with this takeaway. Both critics and I loved it - this documentary is as fun as it is informative.

Thanks to this new film, I can't stop thinking about the role of clubs in my own life ... and why I need to be more deliberate about this.

Dolly Chugh and Pete Davis are standing side by side, both smiling at the camera. Dolly is holding a white Showtime canvas bag. There are large framed pictures behind them.

I also somehow got invited to the movie premiere bowling party (get it?!) with Professor Putnam and the filmmakers themselves as well as other heroes of mine like Yale rock star and Happiness Lab podcast host Laurie Santos. Pinch me.

Laurie Santos and Dolly Chugh are smiling broadly for a close-up selfie in a large room.

My hope is that Join or Die will land on a screen or platform near you sooner rather than later! In the meantime, watch the trailer and join a club!

Dolly Chugh standing on a sidewalk in front of a movie poster. Join or Die.

Queendom

A movie in Russian about a queer artist who does radical drag art / creature art performances in public is not my usual fare. In fact, it’s the kind of thing I might scroll past with more judginess than curiosity. I'm not proud of that.

Still, a friend heard the movie was good so off we went to see QUEENDOM, directed by Agniia Galdanova and starring Gena Marvin (tiktok, instagram). I grew so fond of Gena and the movie was mesmerizing.

4 people standing on a stage. 3 men and 1 female. All looking in different directions and two of them are holding microphones.

My life and inclusion muscles better for having seen this movie I would have scrolled past, because I didn't understand it. Let’s call this a big win for the expanded dessert menu I talked about in last month’s Dear Good People - diversifying content you love to consume is an easy, powerful inclusion move.

View of the stairs leading into an underground metro stop. Two men dressed in conventional uniform clothing are coming up while one person wearing an otherworldly costume with high heals and revealing clothing is heading downstairs.

I hope this movie is picked up soon so you can see it too. Here is a clip in the meantime.

Why Can't We Have Nice Things?

I am a long-time fan of Heather McGhee's work, including her book THE SUM OF US (she also has a new Higher Ground Productions podcast coming out this summer). So I was pretty tickled that we ran into each other at the conference and again at the airport.

Heather and Dolly pose smiling for a selfie.

In her highly-attended talk, Why Can’t We Have Nice Things, McGhee challenged the fixed pie mindset that what is good for some is bad for others.

For example, when ordered to racially integrate their public pools, many communities drained their pools instead.

The better response, she argues, is to leverage the “solidarity dividend” in which people across racial lines join forces to improve the public good; then everyone gets a pool.

In the Q&A, I asked her what she had found most surprising about the reaction to her book and she described the enthusiastic reaction of young reader s. This got me thinking!

And, I'm on the lookout for nice things and ways we can work together to have them.

Getting Along

Amy Gallo is a long time editor and writer for the Harvard Business Review, as well as host of the Women at Work podcast. Hundreds of people lined up to hear her fantastic over-capacity talk.

Amy Gallo standing on a stage with her left hand raised half way up. She is wearing a navy pant suit and a red belt with red earrings. A bright colored video screen is behind her.

Gallo described 8 archetypes of difficult co-workers (I will neither confirm nor deny that I recognized every one!) and tips on how to handle each one, all from her book GETTING ALONG: HOW TO WORK WITH ANYONE (EVEN DIFFICULT PEOPLE).

Dolly Chugh is holding up the book Getting Along Amy Gallo. She is wearing a tan blazer and animal print top. She has SXSW lanyard around her neck with her name on it.

What I love most about the work, and why it is a Dear Good People Ah-Hah moment, is that Gallo also challenges us to examine the role of our own (and her own) biases in our (and her) perceptions of “difficult” people.

I love her insight that we can be good-ish while striving to get along.

Flipping the Script on Aging

This amazing panel featured venture capitalist Tracy Gray, actress Judy Greer , What Not to Wear’s Stacy London, and journalist Samantha Leal.

They began by describing our current world as one with five generations in the workforce and in which the first person to live to be 150 years old has already been born.

Wow.

A Panel of 4 women. From left to right, Samantha Neal, Tracy Gray, Stacy London and Judy Greer. All 4 are sitting in white chairs and holding microphones. Judy Greer is talking and the other three are looking at her.

Now, consider that every year, 1.3 million people in the U.S. enter menopause with 34 potential physical and mental health symptoms, and yet, physicians receive little to no training about the issue. Rather stigma and ignorance surrounds a transition as significant as puberty.

Image of Stacy London. she is in the picture twice. Once wearing a blue pants and blue shirt and the second image is of Stacy London wearing a pick pants, pink blazer and white top. Between the two images is a advertisement for Board Drop by Stacy London.

It's time for economic, medical, cultural, and personal change. This powerful panel convinced me that it is going to be up to us “grown women” to change a system not built for us or by us.

Radical Connectedness

I was stunned that the Opening Keynote Address was Simran Jeet Singh. His family history is eerily similar to mine ... which is to say, not that universal.

Laurie Santos and Simran Jeet Singh sitting in brown chairs on a stage. Simran Jeet Singh has his leg crossed over the other and looking out in the crowd with a smile. Laurie is sitting there with her hands crossed on her lap and smiling.

While his and my story may not be universal, his message was. Singh was there to set the tone for the conference, based on his lovely book THE LIGHT WE GIVE: HOW SIKH WISDOM CAN TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE.

Image of the book cover for Simran Jeet Singh. The Light We Give. How Sikh wisdom can transform your life.

He shared remarks and then engaged in conversation with Dr. Laurie Santos. He shared the realities of being from a marginalized community while wearing a turban in the United States AND stories of solidarity and radical connectedness, bringing tears to our eyes.

I came away thinking differently about how my specific faith and story might be more universal than I realized before.

Simran Jeet Singh and Dolly Chugh standing next to each other in a large room with chairs. Both are smiling and looking at the camera.

Dear Good People

Whew! I think this was one of the biggest, people filled newsletters that I have done. And, this was after I cut it down by a lot lol! That sums up the overwhelming nature of SXSW. It's a lot of March Magic.

As always, my goal in this newsletter is to offer you free, bite-sized, evidence-based, action-oriented, zeitgeisty tips on how to be more inclusive (check out past issues here). I hope to reach as many hearts and minds as possible so feel free to share and if you aren’t a subscriber, you can hit the subscribe button below!

Personal images and images taken by folks in the Special Thanks below, Edited in Canva. Amy Gallo, The Stateman, Rebecca Davis Instagram, Join or Die, Getty Images (Pictures of Dolly speaking) goodreads for The Light We Give and The Sum Of Us, Stacy London picture, Queendom movie poster. Several pictures from Katie and Kayla from the SXSW team, Amy Gallo, Kelley Boyd, Shalou Dhamija.

Special Thanks to everyone who worked on SXSW 2023 especially Katie Perera and Sabrina Smith, as well as Stern Strategy, Shalou Dhamija, Erin McPeak, Amy Gallo, Laurie Santos, Roop and Ashok Chhabra, Sab Singh, Kelley Boyd. Anna McMullen remains a godsend. And CJ Singh remains the best husband ever.

Dolly Chugh is the Jacob B. Melnick Term Professor at the New York University Stern School of Business in the Department of Management and Organizations. She studies the psychology of good people and teaches leadership/management courses. All views are her own.