So another thought on a local cafe as newsroom, as meetup spot, as collaborative space that I and others have been talking about recently. If it really is to be more of a community space or a collaborative environment and needs to be designed around the needs of web users then why don’t web users own and design it? Why don’t we get a few hundred of the people that are interested in the east bay (bloggers, journalists, software developers, web junkies) to pony up for it the way My Football Club did with Ebbsfleet via small investments to start it up? Let this majority owning cooperative help design the features it should have for them and their community while the space hopefully becomes self supporting as a cafe.
While drinking coffees and dunking scones in grungy local cafes the last few weeks I started thinking about how there are so few places that really are built for the new connected world we are living in. Cafes and libraries are the only places that are filling the wireless needs of the unemployed, the self-employed, and college aged students by allowing them to access a signal and spend lots of time online. Cafes and libraries aren’t designed to do that, they are just filling the void until a better thing comes along. For the self-employed, coworking spaces are definitely a step in the right direction.
Coworking offices are designed for the lonely self-employed geek. There is at least one space that I know of in Berkeley, quite a few around the country, and it seems like the numbers are growing. They provide a consistent place where workers can collaborate, socialize and get to know each other while still getting their work done. Many coworkers would otherwise spend their days working alone from home or quietly hunched over their laptop in a cafe where socializing isn’t so much of any option and where rent comes in the form of multiple snacks and shots of espresso.
With all the empty store fronts in Berkeley, its abundance of students, self-employed geeks, and new-thinkers, I think there is a great opportunity to design a space similar to a coworking office that is intended to support the kinds of activities that the connected cafe goers of today really want to partake in. What kind of place would this be, what are the needs of the users, and what do the users really want to do? I tried to answer honestly the following questions.
When on the internet do I want to:
- Drink coffee? Not necessarily.
- Sit at a table by myself? Not necessarily.
- Be antisocial? No.
- Feel bad for being on there all day? No.
- Feel bad for not buying enough stuff? No.
- Talk and connect with people? Usually.
- Meet new people? Would be nice.
- Share things? Yes.
- Learn things? Definitely.
- Teach things? Sure.
- Suggest things? Usually.
- Affect things? Yes.
- Get work done? Sometimes.
- Play? Usually.
- Create things? Sure.
- Collaborate with others? Yah.
So for the laptop toting, cafe nomad that is not self employed and looking for an “office” but still feels stifled by the cafe or library what is the next option going to be? I think it will have elements of coworking setups, cafes and bars, as well as a more communal element that I have not put my finger on yet. Something that will more enable the sharing and collaborating types of activities that we are online to experience in the first place. Will this place have a community classroom? Will the space be funded by memberships since people don’t want to be forced to buy food? Will it even sell food, coffee or alcohol? Will people bring their own?
I think there will be value for customers and businesses in letting people have access to the internet, all the amenities of a nice office and a social setting without forcing them to buy food or drinks to stay. I think that like successful websites of today this space’s value will come from the community that it creates and the loyalty of its members.
I would like to see the Us Now Film but it has not come to the SF Bay Area yet.
I think the new Brower Center in Berkeley is the perfect place to show this movie and have at least a little chat about it and the issues it deals with. If anyone is interested in helping coordinate a little meetup with this film screening or perhaps a #gov20/transparency unconference then please get in touch and let me know.
I thought I’d list a few more services I imagine I’d love to use with the ginormous sensation that is twitter. I’ve already gone on about the location based idea that is sort of a twitter craigslist with users being able to create threads for their favorite hangouts or where ever people congregate and are connected (cafes, malls, schools, stadiums, airports, etc.). A potential revenue coming from charging private companies like stadium owners for more admin features for message control or design. Hard saying though, as it is all total theory.
I think the most obvious next step is to allow anyone to create sites like StockTwits.com based on whatever theme or topics the community may be interested in. Give me the Wordpress.com version and or the Wordpress.org version where a community can grow and add to the software.
A new twitter search cool Twazzup has added some handy features that basically puts to use “trends” within each search which is quite handy. This search of Berkeley breaks it down and shows 8 trends within that specific search. For filtering real news or the topics you are actually interested in this extra data is very significant.
One of the features that I think has been left out of a lot of these that is terribly surprising to me is the full screen display. I’m pretty sure this is where we headed. I expect to see more live threads displayed in public. Here is the BrightKite “Wall” for Berkeley posts from twitter.
I think that if someone can filter worthy twitter news posts based on location [craigslist] they’ll become one of the main distributers news. Add a clean wall type display and you’ll see these threads being displayed in all sorts of public places putting the streams to use in the physical world. The difficulty is creating community tools to filter out important or worthy user updates that qualify as or are interesting enough to be news. So how to moderate and filter real time posts, but keep them real time. Seems like a challenge. Can we filter on user authority or karma (maybe), community tags or votes (unlikely & slow), premium or otherwise trusted users (I have no idea)?
Anyway, those are my thoughts for now.
