It was at the CPRS 2008, Long Beach conference . And I was facilitating a bit of Tabletop Olympics amongst 5 tables of people who run parks and games all throughout California.
Many most remarkable Tabletop Olympics moments were shared. Many, many events of noteworthy notability and truly silly competitiveness. But there was this one table (I really like to learn your names if you were a tablemate) that happened to have, amongst its various shared personal treasures, some significant conference swag. Namely: a couple battery-operated hand-held fans, and some Lego pieces, and a fingerboard. And they put their stuff together to create a well, Tabletop Sailboard, I guess is what you'd call something made out of the fingerboard, a couple Lego pieces, a toothpick and a scrap of paper. And their Olympic Event was a hand-held-fan-powered Tabletop Sailboard event that proved to be at least as funny as it was demanding of Olympic-like concentration and skill.
Behold, therefore you beholder, the Tabletop Sailboard, as fuzzily photographed on the right. Whilst beholding below the slightly less fuzzy image of a Tabletop Sailor in action.
Now and forevermore embedded in the virtual bedrock of Tabletop Olympics History.
You, you Coworkers of the World your very selves, yes, you who are assembled together online, you, the very people this is about.
You are the people connected in these words at this moment, virtually here because you want to be connected, because it’s fun.
And, a short paragraph later, you are still here - because you are still having fun reading something about yourself, and maybe even each other.
At any moment, you could disappear, leaving barely a trace, if you so willed. Not an email address, not a URL or even a user name.
You are the Coworkers. You are the connected ones. You are the ones making connections.
You write together, make music together, chat together, you email and blog, you text and twitter. Because you like it. You like the work you do, online, face- even to-face. You like the conversations you co-create, you like working the way you like working with the people you like working, uh, with.
You work the way you like working, where you like working, when you like working, wearing what you like. You work with people the way you like working with people. You like working. You have fun working. You like yourselves.
And even though any one of you could pop, like a bubble, disappear like a magician, you are reliable as rocks, oh yeah, uh-huh. Could hang up. Change avatars. Block email. Instead you are prolifically productive, remarkably reliable. Even though at any time you can any or all of you go pop.
You communicate, you collaborate, you coliberate. You are free and work freely with each other. Each of you freeing the other, each of you making it possible for each of you to work at our best.
You are the new generation, the regeneration of hope for work and worker and workplace. Because you have fun. Because you work better.
You are the workers of the web. You are the Coworkers, Rejoice!
You have the access, you use the access, you create access for others.
You are the workplace. And many of you do it for free. It’s so much fun doing it, so somehow rewarding, and it’s real work, Internet-enabled. You who blog and twitter and share photos, videos, documents, desktops.
So much fun is this workplace that many of you pay to work here.
This way.
Online.
Writing, reading, making intangible things together for each other. Movies and slide shows and blogs and For free. For fun. For real.
So rejoice, I say. Rejoice in your place in the placeless presence. Rejoice. Rejoice. Intrepid, interdependent, international, Coworker that you are.
It was 2007. October 11. The morning of. Let's say mid-morning. In Atlanta. At the North American Simulation and Gaming Association conference. During my workshop, during which I had planned to spend 90 minutes exploring the various learning ramifications of what I somewhat blithely referred to as: The Junkyard Sports Paradigm.
Because it was NASAGA , and because the people who had registered for my workshop had listened to my keynote and were still planning to come, I found myself inspired enough to want to try something brand new - something I had thought about for many a month, but hadn't as yet actually tried.
And thus was held the world's first Junkyard Sports® Tabletop Olympics.
We had three groups of about 5 players each. Each group was seated around a banquet-worthy round table (officially called a "round").
Their assignment: using whatever you can find in your pocket or purse or elsewhere, create a miniature, tabletop, Olympic-like event.
What you are seeing in this photo is one such event - the High Dive Ski-Jump. The Jumper/Diver (a.k.a. "quarter") is being coached by participant Dave Matte to roll between the two blockish objects (hence kept on edge, so to speak), down the notebook-like ramp, hopefully to land in the glass of water. Yes, some points were awarded for hitting the glass or chair, even. A second team-member, the Jumper/Diver retriever, stood off camera, waiting to catch the rolling quarter before it reached the floor, for that critical extra point.
This was, as you have so intuitively grasped, but one of a minor Olympic myraid of tabletop events, such as, for example, the High Cup Jump, depicted here. Unfortunately, so enraptured were we with our collective cleverness and so deeply impressed by our finger-powered feats of athletic prowess, that we forgot to take any other pictures. And so, the memory fades. The world's first Olympic Croquet game, for example - played with many coins and paperclips and things, simultaneously, in the round - now, despite lingering echoes of all that laughter, partly remembered, partly imagined.
Yes, yes, I wax poetic. Because the Junkyard Sports Tabletop Olympics is everyrthing I had hoped it would be, more than I could possibly have dreamed it would become. An invitation to laughter and teamwork, to creativity and sharing, to surprise and appreciation. Regardless of position, age, gender, family, nationality. And all you need is whatever you have. Pocket junk. A table. People to play with.
Before you click to read this article, the one called "Are We Having Fun Yet," - the one written by Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard - you should know that the subtitle is: "The infantilization of corporate America."
Basically, Labash pans the whole idea of fun-at-work. At least "the 'coercive fun,' the forced-march through the land of clenched-teeth joviality that so often takes place under the dreaded guise of 'team -building.'" His arguments are literate and powerful, and one finds oneself having to agree with the lad, especially about the coercive thing, fun-wise.
Labash is obviously having his own sort of fun, at fun's expense, of course. He writes: "If you thought there were only 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work, as suggested by the smash book that's been translated into 10 languages, then you're shortchanging yourself, because technically, there are 602 ways, according to the follow-up, 301 More Ways to Have Fun at Work. Using examples culled from real companies in real office parks throughout America, the authors suggest using fun as 'an organizational strategy--a strategic weapon to achieve extraordinary results' by training your people to learn the 'fun-damentals' so as 'to create fun-atics' (most funsultants appear to be paid by the pun)."
However, just in case you think he's simply having fun being funny about fun (he really is a very clever sort), try this: "Like a diseased appendix bursting and spreading infectious bacteria throughout the abdomen, fun is insinuating itself everywhere, into even the un-hippest workplaces."
I am not sure that such pun-pounding punches to the comedic kidneys of consulting corporate kidders are really necessary. I'm thinking that the people that are managing to bring fun into the corridors and carrels of the workplace are more like Emergency Services, bringing oxygen to an institution that is gasping for breath, an oppressive, fear-driven institution, mistakingly called "work."
Take us, for example, you, in particular. What are you doing reading this long article from someone who calls himself a "funsmith?" You are "having fun, yet," aren't you? You're doing something that interests you, that makes you feel intelligent, that makes you think. You're thinking, and maybe learning something, and maybe thinking about all the other links there are to visit. So much to learn. So many connections to make. So much real work to do. So much like real work should be. So much fun.
I received an email from my friend and coworker in the Netherlands - Gerrit Visser. Inspired by a confluence of circumstance - his thoughts about the possibilities for changing office culture, Labor Day, a long exchange we've been having about coworking, coliberation, and the like - I wrote the following:
It doesn't take long for us to figure out why we want to change office culture. Or even what we want to change about it. We sit at our desks, sickened by fear and mistrust, by pettiness and isolation. Well-reasoned fear and mistrust. We are asked to be loyal to organizations that repeatedly demonstrate their lack of loyalty to us. Systemic pettiness and isolation. Where we are divided into cubicles and carrels. Where we spend hours drinking the dregs of envy for those who get bigger windows and better parking spaces.
Here, in the States, it's Labor Day. As we battle our way across the freeways towards a spot on the beach, we devote at least some small part of our awareness to the memories of how bad it has been, this experience of labor, of working for a living. How violent and oppressive and corrupt it once was, this whole thing between bosses and those that are bossed. And we think ourselves fortunate, we workers, that today's violence, oppression and corruption is, for most of us, a far more subtle phenomenon - though equally as thorough.
It's that very subtlety and thoroughness that makes it so difficult for us to think about change. We have learned even to mistrust each other, to be afraid even of ourselves. So we don't know, really, how to make it better. So huge and vague is the culture of the office place, so profound and permeating that we are tempted to believe that we, ourselves, are not qualified enough to change anything.
Perhaps we aren't. Not as long as we are part of that culture. Not as long as we find ourselves inside. Which is why I place my faith in the outsiders - those who work outside the walls and halls of industry. In the people who are reinventing work, on maybe an hourly basis. The outsiders who work by phone and fax, computer and Internet, people who meet in coffee houses and kitchens, online, via computer. The outsiders who work together without bosses to tell them how to work.
Instead of changing office culture, they are creating an alternative. An alternative that is not driven by fear, but by commitment. Not by mistrust, but by a belief in themselves, in each other, in their ability, together, to find and create meaningful work. They are the ones who are changing the very definition of office culture, just as they are changing the very nature of work.
The now international Coworking movement has its origins in coffee shops and wifihotspots, where people go to work away from work, so to speak, as it were.
In an article about the newly opened Coworking venue Independents Hall ("Independents Hall," get it? Not Independence, but Independents! In Philadelphia itself, see. Gotta love it.), the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, Jane M. Von Bergen, has one of the best descriptions of the concept I've read so far: "Think of co-working as an entrepreneurial version of parallel play," she writes, "with owners of their own small businesses working side by side in a drop-in place that looks like a coffee cafe, minus the barista, with all the accoutrements of what's hip: high ceilings, beer fridge, pool table and Internet access." Parallel play, in deed!
"I think when people work at home they have to come up with new ways to interact with people...They miss one of the joys and banes of being in an office - the interruptions, the inadvertent contact on the way to the bathroom that sometimes leads to interesting ideas...Co-working gives a set of colleagues who will interrupt them on the way to the bathroom."
Alex Hillman, developer and organizer of Independents Hall, also has a quoteworthy line describing his life before he initiated this Coworking endeavor, after he left his job as a web designer: "Three months working at my house, I was talking to the cat, and I don't even have a cat. I was going crazy without the socializing."
In corresponding with Alex about the establishment of his brilliantly-named Independents Hall, he comments: "The one thing that...Jane missed out on is that we built the community FIRST. Nine months of meetup events and grass roots outreach were done before we thought about signing a lease. That community drives this organization, and that is the key to our success so far. I don't want anyone to think we sprung up overnight (ok, 6-9 months IS pretty fast) BUT, I'm also not solely responsible for it. Everyone has contributed, by becoming a street-team for the concept of bringing coworking to Philadelphia."
Yes, in deed, community is key to coworking.
I highly recommend these kinds of coworking initiatives, and have written about their virtues extensively in my Coworking Visions column.
To get a better understanding of what a Coworking facility is all about, take a look at Alex's video tour of Independents Hall.
In answer to the question, how, oh how can I waste some more time while at work, here's 1000 ways to waste working time, which I, given me, would re-title: "1000 ways to refresh the soul and rekindle the spirit while at work."
Let me exemplify, numerically speaking, by selecting the first ten:
Approach someone at work you don't know and say hello
Add up a series of numbers your social security number, your date of birth, your telephone number, to see if the total is divisible by seven
Add up your debts
Annoy a friend
Argue with a colleague about who is the best football quarterback ever
Arm wrestle with a colleague
Arrange a protest march for a cause you believe in
Arrange a seating plan for the office
Arrange to meet a friend in the washroom to chat
Arrange unpaid bills by date order
Which leaves you with 990 more still to read. In fact, not to be overly meta, but there are at least 1001 ways to rekindle the spirit while at work herein illustrated, the additional one being the reading of the list. And, should you need yet further inspiration, you perhaps could even do more spirit rekindling, seeing if you can come up with working time wasters not already on the list.
"This took me about an hour or so constructed of paper, an eraser, packing tape and paperclips. I used a sprite bottle to take the green shot of the dragon."
From Artwork from the Workplace - a living, blogish testimony to the survival value of playfulness at work.
It was at the CPRS 2008, Long Beach conference . And I was facilitating a bit of Tabletop Olympics amongst 5 tables of people who run parks and games all throughout California. 
Behold, therefore you beholder, the Tabletop Sailboard, as fuzzily photographed on the right. Whilst beholding below the slightly less fuzzy image of a Tabletop Sailor in action.
It was 2007. October 11. The morning of. Let's say mid-morning. In Atlanta. At the North American Simulation and Gaming Association conference. During my workshop, during which I had planned to spend 90 minutes exploring the various learning ramifications of what I somewhat blithely referred to as: 
This was, as you have so intuitively grasped, but one of a minor Olympic myraid of tabletop events, such as, for example, the High Cup Jump, depicted here. Unfortunately, so enraptured were we with our collective cleverness and so deeply impressed by our finger-powered feats of athletic prowess, that we forgot to take any other pictures. And so, the memory fades. The world's first Olympic Croquet game, for example - played with many coins and paperclips and things, simultaneously, in the round - now, despite lingering echoes of all that laughter, partly remembered, partly imagined.
The now international 