 It's The Cube. Here is your host, Jeff Crick. Hi, Jeff Crick here with The Cube. We are on the ground at the Anita Borg Institute Women's Division Awards in Santa Clara, California. Wanted to come down, talk to some of the winners, talk to some of the Anita Borg folks, excuse me, and now we're going to talk to the emcee of this event who's responsible for kicking it off and keeping the energy. Carolyn Fairchild, new economy editor from LinkedIn. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. So, as we said, do you have a joke? No jokes yet. Still have some butterflies in my stomach about the event. Do you have a joke? Yeah. If you have a joke, let me know. Send it in. Excellent. So, let's talk a bit about Anita Borg, how long have you been involved with them? How did you get involved in getting an emcee of this great event? Sure. So, I met Telly Whitney at Dell World, which is a conference that we had last year, and she sat on a panel that I moderated, and we bonded over our mutual desire to keep things fun and keep events like this kind of keep the energy going as you put it. And she asked me to come down and emcee the women at vision event, which is right now. Terrific. And you're at LinkedIn now. I am. But looking at your history, you've been in the publishing world forever. How did you get at LinkedIn? So, I've always, in terms of media, I've always been interested in what the future of media is going to look like, and I had an opportunity at LinkedIn to join their editorial team. We have a small editorial team that basically oversees the content and the news that you're reading on LinkedIn. We really want professionals coming to LinkedIn to start their day, see what's going on in their industry, so I'm kind of spearheading that new venture. Right, right. There's the whole, you know, publish your thoughts, publish your blog. Absolutely. There seems to be really gaining traction. Yep. So, I work with our influencer network. We have a network of about 500 CEOs and executives who write on LinkedIn sharing their thoughts, and then we also, you know, look and see what other members are posting today. We actually, 10,000 posts are being published today on LinkedIn by members and by influencers. 10,000? When did that, that program didn't start that long ago, I don't think. So, the influencer program launched in 2011, and then we gave members the ability to publish shortly thereafter. Oh, that's great. Okay, so we talked a little bit about off-camera. You're excited. You're here to need a Borg, but now you're at LinkedIn, and LinkedIn's all about getting jobs, right? Right. And holding jobs. So, what part of the conversation isn't getting enough airtime? Sure. I think specifically when we're talking about women in tech, I hear what I'm doing in interviews and talking to women who are in the industry. I'm hearing a lot that mentorship is a key aspect. At LinkedIn, we're really focused internally on mentoring our key talent, just because if you focus solely on recruiting and on leadership, there's a huge gap in between where women are leaving the workforce or leaving technology for other fields. We've seen the need of Borg, also Catalyst report that a lot of women are not staying in the industry. So, that's really what I'm focused on in my reporting and what I think we need to focus on as well. And how formal is the execution of the mentorship program? Is it something that's kind of top-down, organized, thick schedule, or is it a little bit more organic? And how well is it being kind of embraced in the company? It's definitely being embraced a lot. We have a formal partnership, LinkedIn specifically has a formal partnership with Anita Borg and also with, we have a new partnership that we're rolling on with Facebook and Lean In to actually form specific Lean In circles for women in engineering that those women are really excited about from what I hear. And I think that in terms of structure, it's what you want it to be. It can be as destructive as you want it or as not, depending on your level of interest. Right. Okay. So, you will meet with your sponsor once a quarter or whatever. No, it's not that. I don't think it's not like that. It's not like homework. Okay, okay. That's good. People don't like homework. No. Let's shift gears and again, talk a little bit about the changing face of media because again, you've been there and we're seeing, obviously LinkedIn, there's Medium now. It wants me to publish my stuff there. There's a lot of places where you can publish it. And then now the whole periscope thing is phenomenal. Right? You can go to a Giants game, hold up your phone, plug in a microphone and I can pretend to be an announcer. Right. It's really changing. So, from your point of view, you've been in it forever. What's exciting? What's scary? What makes you excited about the evolving media space? I think what's most exciting is, you know, if you think about the old media model, reporters and writers thought that once they did the reporting and the writing and they put down their pen, that was it. But now we're seeing this new evolution where, as a reporter and a writer, whether you are, you know, just not a professional journalist or you are, once you write your story, that's really when the work comes in. So how are you going to get your message out there, where are you going to post it? You mentioned periscope. So really, I like thinking about exactly what the best way is to deliver a message, whether it's through live tweeting or through a post or through periscope. But that's kind of exciting to me and kind of figuring out as a professional what the best way is to deliver a message. And how does that force the professionals to change their game if anyone can just go out and collect the facts? Well, I think that it's how it changes the game is that everyone kind of has to be a one man band. We heard that term a lot when it came to video production. But now it's kind of like you have to be able to do everything. Because if you don't get the story, you don't get the best story, someone else is going to get it and have the same platform to be able to deliver it as well. So it really, I think it actually puts an emphasis on quality writing and reporting. If you are a professional, other than that, I mean, you just really have to be able to do it all. As you know, I'm sure. Exactly. So you look out at the guys who are working hard. So I'm going to give you the last word before we cut out. Again, looking back 10, 20 years at somebody kind of getting started in their career, what advice would you give them? Well, 20 years, a guy was five. So I'm not sure I'm going to go back that far. Like go outside, play 60. You know, I think for me, it's kind of, I've always thought about thinking forward in terms of, you know, it's, it's, you can think, you would think that I started my career in journalism about five years ago. A lot of people told me it was a terrible time to be in the industry. But actually, I think in fact one of the best times to enter an industry is when it's in, when it's in turmoil, when there's a lot, turmoil, when there's a lot going on. Because that kind of gives you an opportunity to really take advantage of some of the disruption and be a disruptor yourself. So I would, I would just tell people that even if things are going bad in certain industries, whether it's media or whether you don't see a lot of women in technology, that it's really an exciting time to join. Excellent. Well, thank you Carolyn for those great words. Good luck on your MC tonight. Send Carolyn a joke if you've got a good one. She's looking for them. I'm Jeff Frick. We're at the Anita Borg Institute, Women of Vision Awards in Santa Clara. Thanks for watching.