Coffee morning next week

10.22, Tuesday 19 May 2015

Seems like it’s been a while since we last had a hardware-ish coffee morning. Let’s have one next week.

Thursday 28th May, 9.30am for a couple of hours, at the Book Club (100 Leonard St).

Same as before: Super informal, just hanging out and chatting, bring your cross-stitch or circuit boards if you have em. If nobody turns up it’ll just be me checking my email, and that’s fine too.

So why has it been over a month since the last coffee morning? I’ve been hiking in Colorado for one thing.

But also I’ve been trying something new… does the coffee morning format transfer to other situations? This term, Durrell Bishop is running a course at the Royal College and he asked me if I’d like to get involved. I suggested that we try doing weekly coffee mornings for the students: A place to chat outside the studio, something we can invite others to, but not a crit and not a talk and not unrelated to work either. So we’ve been trying that.

It’s risky, because the informality means no outcomes can be guaranteed. And anyway, is there any benefit to organising something like this, beyond what you get anyway from grabbing a cuppa in the canteen? Well I don’t know, which is why experimenting with Durrell and his students is so cool.

At the back of my head, I’m wondering whether there’s a commercial model for convening coffee mornings inside corporations. I don’t really want to do trad consultancy again. But the idea of establishing a DMZ on the edge of a company… a place where serendipity can happen, over time… no talks and no audience, but catalytic conversations, convened once every couple of weeks for several months… I’m curious about whether that could work.

Anyway. See you a week on Thursday!