office buildings are vestigial organs

they are a solution to organizing bureaucratic work - bringing people and paper together for routine information processing

workspace design has stretched the useful life of the office building

but what if work just left the office? where would it go?
Over the last few years, as the growth of the distributed freelance economy collided with a tight commercial real estate market, the co-working movement was born.

Co-workers gather together to create spaces for individual and collaborative work, informally structured around cafes, rented offices, and regular meetups and "un-conferences".

Co-working is a response to the need to provide face-to-face touch points for a community of people who do much of their work in distributed online collaborations.

But co-working just isn't scaling fast enough - in many cities, the realities of the commercial real estate market make it hard to obtain traditional office space for co-workers.
new infrastructure, like free public Wi-Fi in the parks, is letting us repopulate public spaces with creative knowledge work
historically, this is where work took place - especially in New York
How can we escape the daily grind by pulling meetings out of dull corporate conference rooms and injecting them into dynamic, stimulating public spaces, and third spaces.
Evolving Co-Working
BarCamp at La Cantine (Paris, France)
Google, Workplace design by DEGW
AIA New York Chapter Technology Committee meets in Bryant Park.
July 9, 2002.
Third, how can we create refuges from torrents of email, IMs and tweets but still use networks as tools in face-to-face collaboration?
How can we replicate the ad hoc collaboration that occurs at the best co-working sessions but avoid laptop-ification?

How can we choreograph co-working without creating too much structure that constrains creativity?
Block outside
wireless signals..
..to collaborate
locally instead.
September 17-October 31, 2009
New York • Barcelona
http://www.breakoutfestival.org
What if your office was a park?
For eight days in September 2009, freelancers, entrepreneurs and mobile workers all over the world will take to the streets and bring their work with them.
We are breaking out of the box to reinvent work, organizations and the city.
We're creating a way to scale co-working faster and more cheaply, and intensify collaboration.
What is BREAKOUT!?
We're liberating knowledge workers form Powerpoint, conference rooms and cubicles, to stimulate creativity and collaboration.
We're re-activating public spaces sapped of vitality by fortified office buildings.
We're hacking the recession, using lightweight technologies to turn public space into a community hub for newly independent workers.
Mobility and Creativity
We're also going to try out working in some extreme public spaces, to explore the connection between mobility and creativity. 

Mobility is in our DNA - our ancestors spent their lives constantly moving, and movement stimulates our brains. Yet our most highly paid creative workers spend all day at their desks.

Can we turn digital nomads loose to roam the city and metropolitan area, seeking stimulative and creative niche spaces wherever they may be?
a "telepathic" mobile conference on bikes, connected by mobile phones and Bluetooth helmets
turning the individual commute into a dynamic networking space
bringing all kinds of creative work,  like music composition, not just traditional office work, into public spaces,
INSPIRATIONS
Re-thinking the office building
re-thinking the office building
evolving co-working
re-integrating work into public spaces
the connection between mobility and creativity
Documentation and Licensing
Our goal is to document and license these toolkits under a Creative Commons license that allows groups around the world to hold their own BREAKOUT! festivals anytime, anywhere.
Every BREAKOUT! session needs four key components for success:

1. A social network

2. A venue

3. Temporary, mobile infrastructure

4. Facilitation
MAKING IT HAPPEN
Three experiences that illustrate the kinds of experiences we want to create:

1. Escape the Daily Grind
2. Breaking the Same Ol' Co-working Scene
3. Escape from the Internet
SITES
What makes an ideal BREAKOUT! site?
places where work used to happen outside
indoor public spaces and "third places"- atrium, mall, cafes
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
INFRASTRUCTURE
FACILITATION
on-demand
mobile
temporary
POTENTIAL EXPERIENCES
Scenario:
Escape the Daily Grind
activate public space
bring work back to public space
spur creativity
Scenario:
Shake Up the Same Ol' Co-working Scene
evolve co-working
spur collaboration
Scenario:

Escape From the Internet
spur collaboration
reactivate public space
RE-INTREGRATING WORK INTO PUBLIC SPACE
our social network will help people form small groups around shared interests, professions and projects

it will combine and aggregate some of the functions of sites like Twitter, Dodgeball and Meetup

groups decide when and where to BREAKOUT!

links venues, context and history
every BREAKOUT! session will have a facilitator skilled in cross-fertilizing collaborations, providing support tools and making connections
"A facilitator is someone who helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to plan to achieve them without taking a particular position in the discussion."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitator