Serendipity at the Southbound Inaugural Dinner Debrief

The inaugural #Southbound last week was "THE room where it happened." SO MANY awesome dots connecting, insights gained, and friendships forming.

Still unpacking (and will be!) on Monday morning.

The ONLY way I can begin to share even a fraction of them is to begin with the ending.?

Which was an amazing blessing.?

A ?? bucket list ?? opportunity to dine and debrief with THE core TEAM!?

Including some new friends as well as favorite voices from LinkedIn and the GTM "industry."

Here are just a FEW take-aways, insights gained, and connections made from the 2-3 hours of non-stop life-giving conversation in that single evening.

Rob Jones

Our consummate dinner host and RevPartners "Creative Lead" from Jackson Mississippi.

Not to mention the day's combo of comic relief and co-emcee with Billy Boughey .

Over the course of the night in what seemed like the blink of an eye I went from "just met that guy" to "I'd like to know that dude for the rest of my life."

Genuine, nurturing, and one heck of a host.

Made sure everyone had a chance to shine, felt known, and incrementally shared more and more transparently over the course of the evening in a way that kicked the door wide open for everybody to feel comfortable in doing the same.

RARE leadership.

In RARE company.

Alina Vandenberghe ???

The Co-founder & Co-Ceo Chili Piper and an awesome human being on a mission to align people with whom she crosses paths with “their zones of genius.” Their #GivenGifting

She shared an awesome story (and book recommendation) of how Mo Gawdat stepped down as Chief Business Officer of Google [X] to pursue happiness, his primary topic of research, diving deeply into it with some of the wisest people in the world on a mission to elevate "One Billion Happy" #HumanBEings.

After further research I found him a fellow #AiCuriousHumanEnthusiast who is passionate about what he sees as dangerous implications of rapid #AI development.

"Solve for Happy" and "Unstressable" are now both on my reading list!

As is pretty much everything Alina posts on LinkedIn.

The Founding Superheroes of Supered?

?? Stephen Bussey is Co-Founder (and CTO) of and I had the opportunity to sit with BOTH -- with fellow Co Founder (and CEO!) Matt Bolian ? right next to me (and a special shoutout to Matt for ensuring I had a seat!)

That is when and where I was hit with a COOL connection with Stephen I didn't see coming.

I was sharing how I had just been struck by the power of (and Atlanta's lack of) #StartupDensity at a panel moderated by Moritz Schoenheit (Global Director of WW AI Startup Ecosystem 谷歌 ) at ATL Tech Week on the Friday just previously.

I shared the combined serendipity that the inaugural #Southbound was held in CallRail 's Centennial building offices - just up the street from Atlanta Ventures recent real estate purchase and establishing the new South downtownATL "Startup City."

Turns out Stephen worked at Salesloft and not only worked with ATL Ventures (and Atlanta Tech Village ) CEO and Founder David Cummings , his friend and former Salesloft executive colleague Brian Culler had just accepted a position leading operations for David's / Atlanta Ventures South Downtown Atlanta project (pictured above in between Jon Birdsong and April Stammel in the April announcement article in the AJC) a few months previously.

Not to mention our common Salesloft alum connection Aly Merritt whom I had also just seen (thanks for hosting at the ATV!) the previous week.

So what? Sure, the "startup density" thing, but downtownATL is also VERY near and dear to me.

I moved to Atlanta just after the Olympics and owned 3 condos at 300 Peachtree ...just up the street from the 100 Peachtree Centennial building (CallRail's offices - the site of Southbound.)

I become passionate about the elevation of downtown Atlanta, joined the advisory board of Central Atlanta Progress , and was honored with the opportunity to take over from the neighborhood’s “Fairlie Godmother” Cooper Holland to become the second president of the Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Association (ADNA) as we transitioned into a new century from 1999 into 2K.

Shortly thereafter I became engaged to the woman who ran the volunteer team of our (shoutout to my VP Wendy Darling and Maria Balais for orchestrating!) first-ever Downtown Neighborhood Festival ...and then we were married in 2003!

So not only is downtownATL ground zero for my family, I still own the URL for downtownATL.com and have those same dreams of assisting in the revitalizing.

Maybe the Big Guy Upstairs is trying to tell me something...