Recently I started working at Blankspaces. This is a coworking office environment designed for freelancers and independent professionals who work solo, but who want to do so with others in an office environment. This can be a temporary, or somewhat more permanent solution to the isolation of working from one’s home. It’s a fantastic idea that embodies the best aspects of collaborative work and the potential for cross-pollination of ideas. The proximity encourages conversations that might only arise seldomly at a cafe or cocktail party, thereby increasing chances of serendipity in one’s business and life.
Blankspaces is the paradigmatic example of the intersection between physical and online space–they have an online community that compliments and augments the offline community. Some of my graduate school work looked at examples of synchronous and asynchronous online/offline collaboration; I’ve been looking for more examples ever since.
Looks like I’ve found an important place, in that this office space provides the perfect research laboratory for the study of how offline and online interaction mutually affect one another, and how online tools in an intimate environment can facilitate friendships and business in physical space. It also uncovers what humans in this culture prefer to do online versus offline, when given the option to choose.
Kudos to Jerome Chang for creating a well-designed office space and in many respects a community center. Unlike Starbucks, Blankspaces has the potential to become a true “third place” that merits a mention to the sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who first discussed the necessity of such a place for the social vitality of a given community.
3 comments ↓
Congratulations, Michael. That sounds like an exciting potential, for the online-offline interaction you’ve got with BlankSpaces.
But it leaves me hungry for more:
* What tools are the space using for online community interaction? Off-the-shelf? Mashup? Custom?
* Does the online community extend beyond those participating through onsite memberships? Does it have a public or extended-community side?
* In what area of research did you study online-offline interactions? Any conclusions from that earlier work in grad school?
* I’d be dubious about how anything in L.A. can be a “perfect research lab,” but hey, that’s my bias.
I’ve been looking at the parallel evolution of tools in cohousing neighborhoods over the past decade, and helping people find the appropriate technology/IRL mix, and I suspect we’ll find some interesting overlaps/shared lessons.
Raines Cohen, Coworking Coach (and Cohousing Coach)
Planning for Sustainable Communities
Berkeley, CA
Hi Raines,
Blankspaces is using a NING online community as well as a Facebook Group and Page. Essentially off-the-shelf tools, although custom could be in the works for the future…
As far as extending beyond the confines of online community: Blankspaces encourages the online community members to come here physically for the events, and many of those members also work here during the day.
I did my doctoral work in the field of Communication, specifically communication technology. My conclusions were that online could augment offline interactions in positive ways, and vice versa. For instance, an online gaming team would actually use physical space within the game center to disrupt the cohesion of an opposing team who happened to be in the same center competing with them at the same time.
You’re dubious about LA? How so? And if I said “perfect,” then I should correct myself — no lab is perfect.
I graduated from UC Berkeley as an undergrad and lived there for quite some time, so yes, I’m sure we will find much that overlaps!
Thanks for continuing the discussion.
-Michael
Michael,
I am really interested in learning more about this topic. You say that online could augment offline interactions in positive ways, and vice versa. I believe that but would like to know more about the work you have done. Why is it important to have offline interactions? Why can we not just lived with our virtual communications? How do the physical and online interactions work together to make us whole–or more than whole?
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