Subject: Shared Workspaces

There is a marvelous marriage of technology and humanity. The problem is that we are just starting to invent it.

Seth Godin’s blog post on the future of the library is a wonderful testament to the social value of the librarian through history. The librarian is the data sorter. Today we have more data than ever and we are inventing tools to help us sort through it all: search engines, wikis, and countless social networking sites where personal opinions provide advice—sometimes helpful, sometimes not—on everything from entertainment recommendations, to work life balance, to consumer or charitable recommendations.

What we need more of are connection points, in MY opinion. The best data assimilators remain the well informed, deductive and inductive, sharp human brain. If we combine the power of real social interaction between real people in a real place, and we support that interaction with access to information and guides to help us wend through that labyrinth, we have a powerful tool for change.

I’ve started to see the development of these shares spaces, in somewhat nascent and incomplete forms, at progressive wifi enabled coffee shops, at the Centre for Social Innovation, at the C3 Centre in Ottawa, and at MaRS in Toronto, and the Hub in Halifax, the Network Orange Café in Toronto and a multitude of shared workspaces that are being born for sole practitioners who want to share an office space with likeminded individuals with whom ideas can be incubated.

What these spaces lack is what Seth celebrates: the librarian, the data convener.

As powerful as the internet may be to access information, and identify collaborators, it is insufficient to satisfy our need to work together, face to face. With space, intent and inspired data guides (rather than solely administrative support), collaborative work centres are the way to marry academic rigour, entrepreneurial spirit and intellectual talent to foster pragmatic approaches to improving the world in which we live.