Category: Places and Spaces
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A Starbucks Experience
I’ve always liked Starbucks — the coffee, the stores and the company. Yesterday, I had an especially inspiring experience at a Starbucks store, with special coffee and personal service by a wonderful barista, while meeting with an extremely creative former Starbucks employee. I went to the Starbucks at Overlake Village to meet with Paul Williams,…
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Togetherness vs. Interaction: Enjoying Aloneness in a Crowd
Chris Pluger wrote "Two Hours of Joint Solitude", a very thoughtful and provocative essay about his insights and experiences in a coffeehouse, sitting alone in a crowd, and philosophizing about issues of aloneness, togetherness and transcendence. We haven’t fallen for a cleverly invented Madison Avenue advertising campaign when we gravitate towards coffee shops, where we…
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Howard Schultz on Human Needs: Community and Health Care
I keep coming across inspiring references to Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. Last week, I discovered a recent interview in KNOW Magazine entitled The Art of Creating Passionate Consumers, which included the following quotes: … consumers are demanding more. They want products or services that create a powerful and enduring emotional connection. The fracturing…
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More Community Displays in Cafes
Shortly after my last post about the community display at Common Grounds Coffee Company in Woodinville, I visited C. C. Espresso in Duvall and discovered another collection of community displays (photos of members of a community — in this case, customers — on a posterboard). An interesting variation is their "Customer of the Month" display…
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Community Displays at Common Grounds Coffee Company
There’s a great little drive-up espresso stand that recently opened down the road with a friendly and outgoing proprietor (Stephanie) and tasty organic espresso (Kalani). Another feature I like about the place are the low-tech community displays — photos of customers snapped by Stephanie that she’s mounted on cardboard and placed in the windows of…
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Wirelessness and Shamelessness
I met Rick at The Lyon’s Den coffee shoppe this morning to talk more about my business plan(s). In addition to enjoying our conversation (he offered lots of great suggestions), the cozy atmosphere of the place and my first taste of Keemun tea, I was struck by a sign I saw posted on a meeting…
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People, Food and Other Objects of Sociality in Small Urban Spaces
In his book "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces", William Whyte presents a number of observations and insightful analyses of the factors that promote or inhibit sociality in various spaces in urban areas. I was reminded of the concept of object-centered sociality that I recently read (and blogged) about: shared objects providing the catalyst…
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Free WiFi Zones vs. WiFi-Free Zones: Virtual vs. Physical Communities
The Victrola coffeehouse in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle has shut down its free wireless Internet access (WiFi) on Saturdays and Sundays, in part because people were squatting in — and tuning out from — the physical place, and using WiFi-enabled laptops to instead tune into their virtual worlds. Glenn Fleischman has an excellent…
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A Gathering on Gatherings
I attended the Pomegranate Center’s Annual Gathering today, whose theme was "Community-Built Gathering Places". The center’s gathering places model is based on the premise that "unintentional encounters happen in intentional environments": Gathering places are where social encounters happen freely and unexpectedly, contributing to a stronger sense of community, better relations among neighbors, reduced vandalism and…