This is a very well written story that takes what I already kinda of assumed to be true and made it feel very real. It's quite sad, really.
I don't want to trivialize the plight of the poor, but I'm also concerned with the impact on the world's intellectuals. A somewhat relevant rant follows....
We were down in the bay area meeting investors a few weeks ago, and I took some time to walk around Standford's campus. It's beautiful. It feels somewhat quiet and lonely, but that's simply because it is huge. However, I walked through a few random buildings and delighted in seeing people studying and working. While still quiet, there was an energy to the place. This was a place that brilliant people made magic happen.
It strikes me as odd that so much work these days is done out of coffee shops. I mean, I do it too, but it's really kind of weird. You walk in, all these people have headphones on, are sipping on a latte, and totally ignoring the outside world. People are crammed in like sardines and working like mad men, but it simply doesn't feel like magic is happening.
Neil Degrasse Tyson talks about how NASA is necessary to create the sense of wonder and enchantment to raise a new generation of scientists. He says the NASA budget is simply a great investment. He's right.
I feel the same way about public spaces.
I'd really like to see more energized, magical, beautiful public spaces. I'm not a Stanford student, so I couldn't use their wifi. I had to walk down to University Ave and work out of Paris Baguette. There's just not as much wonder and excitement when you're surrounded by pastries.
Really agree with this point. I've worked out of coffee shops for a long time (many of them Starbucks, which has an even worse chance of some sort of co-working energy) and definitely feel like they are very polarizing (either really good and productive or bad and distracting.) I find a similar effect when working near a university in Chicago. There's undeniably a connected, more euphoric feeling to being surrounded by others who are being productive.
I think this lends itself particularly well to the success in co-working spaces. As more and more people seek to become entrepreneurs, seems co-working spaces provide a perfect in between (as well as much less risk) from working in your home/coffeeshops to signing a lease. WeWork in NYC as well as the handful of others in SF are great solutions to this, providing freelancers and small teams the ability to work amongst others and share that connectedness you talked about while at Stanford. Hopefully Chicago will get some more co-working options as well.
Interesting question is how can a coffeeshop embrace this mentality. In the city, people certainly use Starbucks as an office-like environment. While the mix of people is usually pretty good, seems that it's very isolated, with little to no interaction. I wonder if there's a better way to mix the coffeeshop and co-working biz model, perhaps sort of like how I/O ventures does it with Summit.
Interestingly the original coffee houses of London where used in somewhat simler ways, as places that merchants would meet and conduct buisness (not exclusively of course).
Where I live most coffee shops have tables outside (is there a name in English for that space?), so you can work while you watch street vendors, people walking around and grandparents with children, not to mention the sun, trees, etc. It doesn't have a work environment, but it's very reinvigorating to stop for five minutes and appreciate the surroundings.
I don't want to trivialize the plight of the poor, but I'm also concerned with the impact on the world's intellectuals. A somewhat relevant rant follows....
We were down in the bay area meeting investors a few weeks ago, and I took some time to walk around Standford's campus. It's beautiful. It feels somewhat quiet and lonely, but that's simply because it is huge. However, I walked through a few random buildings and delighted in seeing people studying and working. While still quiet, there was an energy to the place. This was a place that brilliant people made magic happen.
It strikes me as odd that so much work these days is done out of coffee shops. I mean, I do it too, but it's really kind of weird. You walk in, all these people have headphones on, are sipping on a latte, and totally ignoring the outside world. People are crammed in like sardines and working like mad men, but it simply doesn't feel like magic is happening.
Neil Degrasse Tyson talks about how NASA is necessary to create the sense of wonder and enchantment to raise a new generation of scientists. He says the NASA budget is simply a great investment. He's right.
I feel the same way about public spaces.
I'd really like to see more energized, magical, beautiful public spaces. I'm not a Stanford student, so I couldn't use their wifi. I had to walk down to University Ave and work out of Paris Baguette. There's just not as much wonder and excitement when you're surrounded by pastries.