Powerful impact, Silicon Alley Sports, and you
My name is Darren Herman and I’m the Vice President of Content Services at Mozilla and for the past ten years, I’ve hosted the Silicon Alley Golf Invitational. I can be found at @dherman76 on Twitter.
One of my all-time favorite songs is Scenario by A Tribe Called Quest. It’s a song that I’ve listened to maybe a thousand times in my life and one that brings back amazing memories of some of my closest friends.
The lyrics from one of the verses in the song flows:
Watch as I combine all the juice from the mind Heel up, wheel up, bring it back, come rewind Powerful impact, boom, from the cannon Not braggin, try an’ read my mind just imagine
I’ve been thinking a lot about powerful impact since I’ve joined Mozilla. How can I, Darren Herman have powerful impact on the world?
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Eight years ago, my wife Sherri answered the house phone, the caller on the other end introduced himself as Elliott and invited me to an all-expenses-paid, high-end entrepreneurs retreat in Mexico. I wasn’t home at the time but he left his number and upon my return, I called him back. I thought it was a prank so I didn’t take him seriously. Also, how did he get my home phone number?
Fast forward to today, where Elliott has created one of the leading give-back, be-all-you-can-be organizations called Summit Series. Elliott and his team have impacted the world in creative ways that push the boundaries around community (they bought a friggin’ ski resort) and achievement (new ways of learning). Talk about impact.
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I’ve watched in awe over the years as my friend Michael has raised incredible amounts of money for Charity Water. I’ve watched another buddy, Fred, raise money for a variety of causes using his powerful blog. My brother Kenny and his friends have raised a bunch of money by hosting an epic party for the Make-a-Wish Foundation. And recently, my friend Saneel launched Greatest Good. This list of friends doing good and making an impact goes on… But my friends are not unusual. We all know people who do this. Real impact.
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So where is my impact? I don’t feel that my cannon has gone boom and I’m not getting any younger. It’s now 2015 and I’m currently thinking about this.
I mentor. Check.
I donate. Check.
I (now) help keep the web open. Check.
But there is something else I’ve been doing for years, and I realize I have underestimated its impact.
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I’m not an extrovert by any means but I do like bringing smart, talented, successful and driven people together. I’ve done this in various ways during my career: WineTables, darrenSalon’s, Coffee & Chats, and The Silicon Alley Golf Invitational (“SAGI”). I tend to curate the people, the location, and the agenda and then let magic happen. More often than not, it generally does.
Over the past decade, the Silicon Alley Golf Invitational has come into its own. We’ve had had full page spreads in the Wall Street Journal, and our guests have been some of Silicon Alley’s top entrepreneurs and investors, who are all strong donors in their own right.
Through SAGI, we’ve delivered financial impact, network impact, business impact, interpersonal impact- and joy. I want to continue this and find a way to scale this without diluting the brand or attendance of senior executives in digital media.
Introducing: Silicon Alley Sports | Be well. Do good. Play with us.
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Silicon Alley Sports was recently created to help scale the impact that I want to deliver. We started with golf (SAGI) and now we’re adding tennis (the Silicon Alley Tennis Invitational). In 2015, we’ll host an invitational in both sports and introduce an event or two to bring the communities together (i.e. cocktail parties).
You might think that 2015 isn’t much different than 2014 other than adding another sport to the roster of events. True, but it allows us to scale our impact to the world and that’s what is most important, IMHO. For each event we host, the excess dollars over the cost to produce/run the event gets donated to charities. It’s my hope that with two full events in 2015, I’ll be able to double my impact.
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If you are a founder, entrepreneur, digital media executive, venture capitalist, angel investor, or other ecosystem supporter, I welcome you to check out Silicon Alley Sports and play with us. We’ve not figured out our exact dates and locations for our events yet but we’re actively working on this.
Boom goes the cannon.
