They didn't need to be transactional spaces, they need to be spaces that attract people regularly.
The local chicken farmer who works 16 hours a day to keep his farm running isn't going out of his way three times a week to visit the community center for board game night.
He's definitely in the local Tractor Supply store three times a week though...
It's about creating community where people naturally gather, not creating a gathering space then hoping people show up.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book — your latest — in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say — I'm getting — I'm going to buy an envelope.
KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then?
KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know…
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
It is the computer people. The 'owning' people were computer people that founded these companies. Its computer people that sit in these meetings and go through designing these changes and building these systems. I'm a privacy person and yesterday my boss asked me to pull up records on a users device to see a record of what they were doing and I did it even though its disgusting micromanagement that I hate.
The local chicken farmer who works 16 hours a day to keep his farm running isn't going out of his way three times a week to visit the community center for board game night.
He's definitely in the local Tractor Supply store three times a week though...
It's about creating community where people naturally gather, not creating a gathering space then hoping people show up.