Team Members:

Anthony Townsend (Institute for the Future), Georgia Borden, Amanda Kross, Jung Hoon Kim, Antonina Simeti (DEGW), Dana Spiegel (NYCwireless), Laura Forlano (Parsons The New School for Design), Tony Bacigalupo (New Work City), Sean Savage (PariSoMa), Elysse Preposi (Sarah Lawrence College)

The coworking movement is pioneering a migration of independent knowledge workers away from traditional office spaces.

Breakout! is a festival of work in the city, that explores the dynamic possibilities of a single question: what if the entire city was your office? Drawing inspiration from the shared office spaces of the coworking movement, Breakout! creates alternative venues for collaborative work outside of traditional office buildings by injecting lightweight versions of essential office infrastructure into urban public spaces.

Originating in Lower Manhattan, Breakout! explores the potential of public plazas and parks throughout the Financial District to serve as gathering points for workers from throughout the city. From this hub, organizers fan out across the city, bringing satellite “breakout sessions” to diverse public locations. During the second half of Breakout! our growing social network will “breakout of Manhattan,” by turning transit into workspaces as we travel to coworking hubs throughout the region – in Westchester, Brooklyn, New Jersey and Philadelphia.

Every Breakout! session provides three sets of tools to help office workers escape dull cubicles and conference rooms and re-locate their work in public settings:

* Lightweight infrastructure – chairs, tables, electrical power and wireless Internet

* Social software – a web portal accessible locally and remotely for scheduling sessions, seeing who’s there, and recording their social media produced during sessions.

* Facilitator’s guides – An automated help system that will provide cues and information for session facilitators to help jumpstart collaborations and sharing, to create value and a novel work experience that takes advantage of public spaces.

For a listing of current and scheduled Breakout! sessions go to www.breakoutfestival.org and follow us on Twitter (@breakoutnow)

Breakout! draws on the stimulation of public spaces to spark collaboration and creativity.

A social network helps organize and publicize “breakout sessions”, and document them by aggregating participants’ social media streams.

Bios:

Tony Bacigalupo is founder and “mayor” of New Work City, a community coworking space in Manhattan. He is co-author of “I’m Outta Here: How coworking is making the office obsolete,” and co-organizer of BarCampNYC and TEDxNWC.

Dana Spiegel is a Software and Product Development Consultant and the President of sociableDESIGN, a company that helps start-ups create and refine their online software and services. He is also Executive Director of NYCwireless, a non-profit that creates free, public Wi-Fi hotspots in New York City.

Laura Forlano received her Ph.D. in Communications from Columbia University, where she explored the intersection between organizations and technology and the role of place in communication, collaboration and innovation. She is an Adjunct Faculty member in Design and Management at Parsons and in the Graduate Programs in International Affairs and Media Studies at The New School.

Sean Savage has ten years of experience in user research and experience design, with a focus on digital design for physical spaces. He co-founded PariSoMa, a co-working space in San Francisco. He also invented and served as CEO of PlaceSite, a location-based digital service that enhances offline social interaction in cafes and other work spaces.

Anthony Townsend is Research Director in the Technology Horizons Program of the Institute for the Future, an independent research group based in Silicon Valley. He has authored over 20 journal articles and book chapters on the role of telecommunications in urban development and design.

Georgia Borden is a Director in the San Francisco office of DEGW, a strategic design consultancy. With a background in urban planning, she is particularly interested in helping DEGW’s clients use their space more intensively. Her recent work has centered on helping technology clients develop workplace solutions that reflect the changes in work practices brought on by their products and services.

Amanda Kross is a consultant at DEGW, where she incorporates her background in interior design and spatial analysis to provide corporations with design solutions to improve productivity, reduce real estate, and enhance the work environment. She is interested in how design of the built environment affects the people, organizations, and communities that use it.

Antonina Simeti is a consultant at DEGW, where she explores her interest in applying urban economic and planning principles to corporate workplace and learning environments. She has a special interest in knowledge industries, and specifically spaces in which innovation happens. She has experience in urban planning, public policy research, and environmental review.

Elysse Preposi is a senior atSarah Lawrence College. Last semester, she studied abroad at NYU in London. She has taken a wide range of courses, including anthropology, psychology and computer science. She previously worked at NYCIP, a non-profit that encourages the growth of indie and small presses in the publishing community.

Funders/In-Kind Contributors:

NYCwireless