The Strands Community Collage (CoCollage) is designed to cultivate community in a café, a quintessential "third place", by bringing the richness of online social software into a physical community space. The system shows photos and quotes uploaded to a web site by café patrons and staff on a large computer display in the café, providing a new channel for awareness, interactions and relationships among people there. We describe the CoCollage system and report on insights and experiences resulting from a 2-month deployment of the system, focusing on the impact the system has had on the sense of community within the café. Presentation at the University of Washington School of Information (iSchool) Research Conversation, 15 May 2009. The presentation is based, in part, on two papers: Farnham, Shelly D., Joseph F. McCarthy, Yagnesh Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood & Josh Lind. Measuring the Impact of Third Place Attachment on the Adoption of a Place-Based Community Technology. Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009), 2153 - 2156. McCarthy, Joseph F., Shelly D. Farnham, Yogi Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood & Josh Lind. Supporting Community in Third Places with Situated Social Software. To appear in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2009), 25-27 June 2009.

1. Supporting Community in Third Places with Situated Social Software Joe McCarthy Principal Instigator Strands Labs Seattle Shelly Farnham Research Consultant Waggle Labs

2. A relaxed, research conversation http://www.slideshare.net/ gumption Too fast / too much? View the slides and follow along / catch up later:

5. But first, a word from our sponsor People-powered discovery http://www.strands.com

6. Strands Labs Seattle Mission: “ To design, develop and deploy technologies that weave together the various strands of our activities, interests and passions to bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds and help people relate to the other people, places and things around them in ways that offer value to all participants .” [http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2008/03/innovating-at-m.html] Bringing people-powered discovery to physical places and events. Location:

11. Perils of [technology in] Third Places Cyber-nomads are “ hollowing out ” cafés that offer WiFi, rendering them “ physically inhabited but psychologically evacuated” leaving people “ more isolated than they would be if the café were merely empty.” -- James E. Katz, Professor of Communications, Rutgers University

12. Local variations on the theme

13. How can technology enhance community within cafés? Four observations … and a solution

14. Social Networking: online vs. offline

17. Existing “technologies” for enhancing community in cafés

19. The Strands Community Collage (CoCollage) A large computer display showing a collage of photos and quotes uploaded to a special web site by patrons and staff in a café or other community-oriented place.

20. CoCollage features People Stuff (photos & quotes) Commenting, voting Uploading Messaging The big screen

21. Sharing your stuff Facebook photos Quotes Flickr photos Photos from your computer Photos via email

22. Conversations & Connections Comment, vote, flag Public & private messages Online Offline

23. Initial deployment: Trabant Coffee

24. Initial Studies Journal of Service Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, 43-59 (2007)

36. Usage after 1 month vs. 2 months Percentage of users who engaged in each type of activity, with means

37. Types of images shared Random sample of 150 images, after 2 months of use

45. Related Work

46. Related Work: Proactive Displays Augmenting the Social Space of an Academic Conference Joseph F. McCarthy, David W. McDonald, Suzanne Soroczak, David H. Nguyen and Al M. Rashid ACM 2004 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2004) Proactive Displays: Supporting Awareness in Fluid Social Environments David W. McDonald, Joseph F. McCarthy, Suzanne Soroczak, David H. Nguyen and Al M. Rashid ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions (TOCHI), Vol. 14, No. 4, January 2008 promoting awareness and interactions at a conference AUTOSPEAKERID, TICKET2TALK, NEIGHBORHOOD WINDOW

47. Related Work: Proactive Displays The Context, Content & Community (C3) Collage promoting awareness and interactions in the workplace The Context, Content & Community Collage: Sharing Personal Digital Media in the Physical Workplace Joseph F. McCarthy, Ben Congleton, F. Maxwell Harper ACM 2008 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2008)

52. Related Work: Commercial Awareness / Interactions at Events Digital Signage Captivate TV ClearChannel, et al. RippleTV Danoo

55. Related Work: Alone Together Two Hours of Joint Solitude http://www.coffeegeek.com/opinions/cafestage/10-19-2005 Alone Together http://blogs.parc.com/playon/

56. The Strands Labs Seattle Team Yogi Patel Tech Lead Shelly Farnham Research Consultant Joe McCarthy Principal Instigator Josh Lind Designer / Developer Dan Norman Design Lead Sameer Ahuja (former intern) Richie Hazlewood (former intern) Tyler Phillipi Bus Dev Manager

57. CoCollage partners, Q3 2008

58. CoCollage partners, Q4 2008

59. CoCollage partners, Q1 2009