the real social

I have spent the last dec­ade nat­ur­ally evolving towards a work day that largely takes place in cof­fee shops. Hav­ing writ­ten my MA largely at the Second Cup in Guelph and turned to the Star­bucks before that to do busi­ness plan­ning, I cur­rently spend the bulk of my time at the Second Cup in West­dale. Dur­ing this time, I have evolved from rely­ing on pen and paper to hope­lessly attached to my laptop. That same append­age has gone from teth­er­ing to an elec­trical out­let to crav­ing attach­ment through wire­less con­nectiv­ity. The way in which I work away from the office or home has evolved, tech­nic­ally and socially.

The pen and paper days also involved a good book and allowed for read­ing dur­ing the day. As data con­nectiv­ity has pro­gressed, dir­ect social con­nectiv­ity has decreased. Yet, I am increas­ingly unable to be pro­duct­ive in an envir­on­ment where I am not at least socially ‘exposed?’. I pay my rent (an expens­ive latte every morn­ing) and then work within the milieu for the next 4–12 hours. People come and go and some­times I notice, some­times I don’t. I exper­i­mented with wear­ing head­phones (with and without music) to cre­ate a sense of isol­a­tion within the envir­on­ment, but have actu­ally found I usu­ally don’t need them. The tone and pitch of voices dictates…there are some voices that are just more pier­cing and I am unable to shut them out. If I key on a phrase in ambi­ent con­ver­sa­tion some­times I can’t pry myself away and have to resort to audio dis­trac­tion. Traffic and the occa­sional re-arranging of fur­niture some­times distract…there is of course cer­tain rules that not all may be aware of. That’s a topic for another time. I talk less with the people around, and am able to usu­ally be quite pro­duct­ive. Envir­on­ment is cru­cial to this pro­ductiv­ity how­ever and the West­dale Second Cup works quite well as it has huge win­dows that I focus on and away from the cafe proper. If its sunny I am in full pro­duct­ive mode. If its inclement, I am some­times depressed by that. Increas­ingly so. The bot­tom line is I like to work in private in pub­lic.
And I don’t think I am alone in this. How many laptops click­ing within a 25 foot radius here…5 (and that’s a low sample). 16 people…just over 25%. Its often con­sid­er­ably higher here. There’s tran­si­ency and bet­ter time for some than oth­ers. I sense I tend to work longer than most. What do I need? An elec­trical out­let, wire­less access (although for writ­ing tasks I find I do bet­ter without it), my table and some com­mo­tion. I tend to work through the day fairly con­sist­ently, but I used to take breaks and engage with someone for an hour or two and then go back to work. So we digital nomads have cer­tain needs, but they dif­fer amongst the group I am sure.
Which brings me to the point at hand…Josh joined the Queen Street Com­mons in Char­lot­tetown when he was in PEI last sum­mer for an exten­ded spell. To me it was a unique devel­op­ment that offered social net­work­ing, stim­u­la­tion and pub­lic private place to work. It is not unique and there are many cooper­at­ives spring­ing up through which indi­vidu­als are cre­at­ing spe­cial­ized envir­on­ments to sup­port his need. Quite often these are digital nomads. On another area of the spec­trum is the Core Club, which Dave poin­ted me to yes­ter­day. It is also a group of indi­vidu­als com­ing together to cre­ate an envir­on­ment to sup­port their social needs. In this case its by invit­a­tion only which raises a sense of elit­ism, yet they are ded­ic­ated to embra­cing diversity.…and provid­ing a wide vari­ety of social and cul­tural events to stim­u­late their mem­ber­ship.
Which raises one of the lar­ger ques­tions in my mind: how much of the social can actu­ally be engin­eered from without? I was just speak­ing with an acquaint­ance here who admit­ted that there are a lim­ited num­ber of places to find to work in this nomadic cof­fee shop envir­on­ment in Hamilton. She admit­ted to know­ing of a club down­town that was try­ing to encour­age the social work­place and match­ing it with stim­u­lat­ing events, but that from exper­i­ence, it lacked the crit­ical mass of par­ti­cipants to recre­ate an appro­pri­ate milieu. So there are some pereive­able para­met­ers that go along with the factors that ‘we’ are look­ing for. How much of this can actu­ally be turned into met­rics? What are these crit­ical masses? Inquir­ing minds want to know.…

to be con­tin­ued.…