Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Have you ever played the game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? The simple premise is to pick any actor or actress and then connect them to Kevin Bacon through common movies. The goal is to find the connection in as few of movies as possible. It is a fun little twist on the more serious assertion of Six Degrees of Separation that any two people in the world can be connected within six relationships…or fewer.

LinkedIn relies heavily upon this concept. Who are your 1st degree connections? How can you get connected to someone else’s 2nd or 3rd degree connections? The algorithms behind the scenes are doing everything possible to establish more and more connections for each of us – expanding the BREADTH of the number of connections. The results is that many of us are focused on trying to find a common person we each know. What is missing is the DEPTH of the connections they already have.

In the “Zoom year” of 2020, I have had an opportunity to engage with many people for the first time. My preference, like many of you, would be to meet face-to-face and casually get to know someone. There is a great personal bond established during live meetings that only strengthen your professional connections. It is so difficult to get to know someone through Zoom…but you can still take many of the techniques you might use in a face-to-face meeting and apply them in a slightly different manner on a Zoom call. Here are some examples of what’s been working for me.

Work experiences

Whether with the current organization, or their past work experiences, I will find a few questions to ask about someone’s background. My most recent version of this is a fun story of a discussion I had with a friend in the Venture Capital space. We were discussing some of the other investors in their company. He mentioned a name of someone who had played an important role across several of their portfolio companies. He also just happened to work for a company that I worked for. Ironically, and because we were both in Seattle, that person happened to be my first interview with that organization and the manager who hired me. I am not connected on LinkedIn to the person who hired me…but my friend in the VC space and I bonded over stories about this common person for nearly fifteen minutes. One degree of Kevin Bacon – He Said, She Said.

University background

The proverbial alumni network is another great way to connect with others. I will use air quotes here to say it’s “easy” to connect with someone you went to school with…and almost as easy if you didn’t attend school during the same time period but can share common experiences. But the idea of a university background goes well beyond that. I “met” someone on the east coast last month. There was zero overlap in our university experiences. But, as we talked about schools, we discovered we both went to the same football game one year. A friend from high school and I went to his Big Ten school’s homecoming game – which happened to be this person’s son’s university. We talked about the game, the fun times in the college town and shared experiences that weekend. One degree of Kevin Bacon – Animal House.

Sports/Music/Theater/Arts/Science

Though I am a huge sports fan, I’ll also find great ways to connect with other via the arts or science or other methods. During a discussion with another new “Zoom friend”, I quickly discovered this person was interested in the theater. I shared an experience with one of my all-time favorite plays – “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”. If you have not seen it, do what you can to chase it down. Written by Steve Martin (one degree from Kevin Bacon in what movie????), it is a play based upon a true event in 1904 when Albert Einstein met Pablo Picasso in a bar in France. I challenge almost anyone NOT to find some common stories about one of those three. P.S. The answer for the One degree of Kevin Bacon – Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

Movies/Concerts/Experiences

Sadly, going to a concert or any live experience seems like something we did such a long time ago. When meeting yet another person the first time (through Teams this time!), we started to discuss the last concert we had each been to. Mine happened to be late last year – the Rolling Stones live in Seattle. We discussed the quality of the live performance and quickly discovered we had seen several of the same live concerts. Again, our connection had nothing to do with knowing common people – it was all about the music. One degree of Kevin Bacon – (I’m “cheating” here with music…) Footloose.

Travel

Yet another experience many of us are missing in the COVID year of 2020. When we are all “trapped” in our home offices or 2nd bedrooms or wherever you are operating right now, travel seems to be one of those adventures we are craving to get back into. Or at least dream about. And unlike several of the previous examples, travel is a discussion topic that can range from “I’ve been there” to “It’s on my bucket list”. I spoke with someone the other day who has traveled to South Africa. I have never been but we spoke for nearly an hour about the culture, the animals, the safaris, the oceans and more. What an incredible discussion. Of course, talking about Africa means… One degree of Kevin Bacon - The Air Up There

Current location

And it is not exactly the polar opposite of traveling TO some other location. But talking about your current location can also be fun. And it is even more fun in COVID times with our crazy Zoom backgrounds and people relocating to their basement bedroom or garage or even farther away. One of my funniest stories is about a friend of mine in Seattle. Pretty early on in COVID times we were playing “Zoom poker” as a fun way to connect on a Saturday night with friends from around Seattle. And with the game being on Zoom, I was able to add several friends from around the country to join us as well. About ? way into the game, we were asking my one friend why he had not been as responsive as usual. It was almost as if he was invisible (PS – foreshadowing…) to us in Seattle. He revealed to us that he was with his family in Hawaii and had been there for weeks!!! Too funny. In this case we were already friends, but the poker party paused for ? hour to talk about Hawaii. One degree of Kevin Bacon – Hollow Man.

Admittedly, I had to “cheat” and look in IMDB to see whether Kevin Bacon was in a movie with Steve Martin. The list above is my own based upon experiences over Zoom calls in 2020. But as I searched across Kevin Bacon movies, I can use his roles as a proxy for many other examples of how to connect with true DEPTH with others – food (One degree of Kevin Bacon – Diner), family (She’s Having a Baby), government/military (A Few Good Men), history (JFK), cartoons/animation (Balto), television (Mad About You, Fraiser, Guiding Light), science fantasy/fiction (XMen), outer space (Apollo 13) and so many more.

The key is to discover the right balance of BREADTH of your relationships in terms of quantity with the DEPTH of your relationships in terms of common experiences or understanding or passions and more. 

Lastly, if you are interested in a great thriller/mystery, my favorite One degree of Kevin Bacon movie is Wild Things. Be warned if you watch it with kids around – it earns its “R” rating…but it is a fun ride in COVID times or ANY time in our world of streaming. And focus on the DEPTH as the mystery is very intriguing…enjoy!