You don’t know what you’ve got, till it’s gone (Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi). This seems to apply to serendipity, as well as paving paradise.
A recent article in The Conversation discusses “The rise of the virtual water cooler” in the era of COVID-19. Companies trying to stimulate serendipitous meetings between employees using online tools. Attempting to replicate something that arises naturally in physical workspaces, such as the cliched water-cooler conversation.
Such meetings are just as important in educational settings. At Monash University I designed serendipity (as much as possible) into the Physics and Astronomy Collaborative-learning Environment (PACE). For example, the openness, as well as the location, of the drop-in tutorial space (which sat next to the main admin area, the main formal classroom, and the main thoroughfare) meant there were many times I, and others, got drawn into interactions with students. I hadf tried to get a coffee outlet in the building… but you can’t always get what you want (Rolling Stones).
As it is, a similar, new, larger building, ended up with a coffee outlet… great ideas live on.
Why is serendipity important?… because of the unknown unknowns (Donald Rumsfeld). You can’t ask for information, find solutions to problems etc. that you don’t know exist. I remember travelling to a conference in Europe, shooting-the-breeze with a colleague from Monash, and finding out about things happening back at the university of which I had no idea. How else would I have found out, than by traveling to Europe (OK… I might have… but you’ve got to justify these trips somehow 😉 ).
I’ve had numerous similar revelations, or opportunities for collaborations, arise over a casual coffee at work, in the local strip, in the city etc. At conferences, for example, the most important work is often done at conference dinners or casual get-togethers.
That’s not to say the formal structures of a conference, or formal meetings at work etc. don’t play a role, it’s just a very different one. Hence the importance of not trying to force serendipity. By its very nature, it can’t be forced. As it mentions in the article in the Conversation, “As soon as we try to design them too tightly, they [people] tend to flee elsewhere…”. If people think you’ve designed a space deliberately to get them to work in their “off-time” they’ll go elsewhere. Also, people want to carve out their own social interactions, not be forced into them.
When I designed a social space for senior students (which just “happened” to be near where they had to attend classes) it was deliberately designed with a variety of furniture and resources they could configure to their own liking… as they did.
It’s also not just the spaces themselves but the relationship between the spaces, as I mentioned, the location of the drop-in tutorial space (and the senior student’s social space) just “happened” to be where people would naturally pass by to get elsewhere. Similarly, I’ve had serendipitous encounters walking to get coffee (which included securing funding a couple of times) not just during the casual conversations over coffee.
So ensure you design time, and space, for the possibility of serendipitous interactions in your day, and your educational settings (as well as, at the moment, in online interactions too) … but don’t try and force it.
By the way:
- You don’t have to drink coffee… tea, hot chocolate or any similar beverage will do!… and to be fair, I’ve had a fair few interesting conversations over food, beer etc.
- I have to apologise to anyone who’s been embarrassed to order me a large, weak, skinny latte… it’s flavored milk, not coffee, apparently! I also drink very weak instant, at home. I found if I didn’t watch my caffeine intake I would half wake in the middle of the night with “anxiety attacks” over which I had little control (only being half awake). I found the best way to get out of it was wake up completely and go do something for a while… of course, then I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I could have cut down on the number of cups of coffee… to the chagrin of some, I chose to go weak instead.
