Bastille Day Cheese Day, Episode Trois: Madame Fromage Gets It

For a bit of the history of Bastille Day Cheese Day, read Russ’ blog post from last year.

My Uncle Bernard and Aunt Nadine lived in a suburb of Paris within spitting distance of the Château de Versaille. Staying with them was always a treat. Whenever I visited, I always made it home in time for dinner to enjoy their company and a home-cooked meal. After dinner, Bernard would open the tupperware container that held a variety of cheeses, waft the scent into his face and declare, “Ahhhhh, comme les pieds des anges” which translates to “Ahhhhh, like the feet of angels.” If you were a guest at Think Brownstone this past Thursday, you know what Bernard was talking about. It was the third annual Bastille Day Cheese Day and the Think Space smelled like a locker room in heaven.

There are many signs that we threw a successful event: 1) the party lasted longer than we expected 2) many guests reached out afterwards to tell us not only that they had a good time, but that they learned something 3) while Brownstoners were cleaning up, everyone started to throw out new ideas for Bastille Day Cheese Day 2012.

Guests Mingle Before the Festivities Begin

So I spent some time this weekend reflecting on what made our quirky little event so successful. Here are a few of my thoughts on how we approached the event – not surprisingly, they are very similar to what we do every day at Think Brownstone:

Have a Goal

We never wanted Bastille Day Cheese Day to just be a party; it’s an experience like anything else we do. In this case, we apply our design process to something different from our normal routine, but the first step is always the same: clearly articulate what you want to accomplish. My personal goals for this event have always been to educate friends of Think Brownstone about artisan cheese and make sure that everyone has a great time doing it. Our old venue was getting in the way of some of that. So, this year we moved the event to the Think Space, bought some wine, and invited a guest speaker.

Bring in the Experts

I’m no stranger to cheese. I learned the difference between my bries and my blues by following my father into small cheese shops throughout my childhood, but I’m no expert. So, after two years of being the host of BDCD, I knew we needed to bring in the big guns. That’s why we reached out to the super-talented cheese blogger Tenaya Darlington, a.k.a Madame Fromage. Madame Fromage designed a four-course tasting menu focused on four styles of cheese. Each course paired a classic French with an American counterpart made in the same style. Tenaya worked with the cheesemongers at DiBruno Brothers to ensure we had the best selections at their peak of ripeness.

Madame Fromage and a Perfectly-Ripened Wedge of Humboldt Fog

Tenaya also provided us with the types of wine to pair with each course. Although a few of us at Think Brownstone have been known to enjoy a bottle of wine now and then, we wanted to do this right. So we reached out to a friend to help select the right pairings for each course. The only contribution I made to the selections was the addition of the Belgian ale Duvel, so our beer drinking friends had a good alternative to the bubbly that went with the first course.

Trust

When we first started planning this, I asked Carl, “What’s our budget?” His answer was at first frustrating, but I totally got it. He said, “Let’s do this right.” Every time I was about to commit to spend some money, I went back to him and said, “I want to do this, it’s going to cost this much.” Carl’s response was always something like, “That sounds right. Go for it.”

Carl knew that when Tenaya suggested sparkling wine with the first course, we weren’t going to buy a case of Dom Perignon at $150 per bottle, but we also weren’t going to buy a Andre Brut at $4.50. His direction was clear, “Do it right.” He didn’t want to constrain us and he knew that I was going to check back every once in a while to make sure we weren’t completely off base. Our biggest splurge was that case of Duvel (I was thrilled to see a few bottles left in the fridge for our post-yoga cocktail hour).

Phil Walks the Crowd Through the Wine Pairings

Working with this level of trust is liberating and something I often see clients craving from their leadership. Nobody wants to break the bank, and there are checks and balances in every organization to make sure that doesn’t happen. While being trusted is liberating, it also instills a sense of responsibility.

Have Fun Expanding Your Horizons

We talk about the value of fun all the time. BDCD is a great example of what we’re talking about. We get to show off our skills in designing experiences beyond the typical projects we do every day and we all get to have a great time doing it.

One of my favorite moments of the evening happened with the blue cheese course. Blue cheeses get a bad rap sometimes. When Tenaya noticed a group of people struggling with the Roquefort, she grabbed a bottle of Sauternes and walked them through the blues very carefully. They became fans. When it comes to designing a great cheese experience, Madame Fromage gets it.

We often hear from our friends and clients that Think Brownstone must be a great place to work. Not to toot our own horn too much, but they’re right. We love what we do, we love who we work with and I love the fact that it gives us the opportunity to apply our skills to something quirky, fun and delicious like BDCD.

Russ described the evening best in an email to the company on Friday morning: “BDCD is an awesome tradition… what started as another gentle ribbing of Phil’s Fabulous Frenchness has really become a celebration of craftsmanship, attention to detail, and genuine interest in different cultures and backgrounds…” The success of the evening was due largely to the contribution of Madame Fromage. If you like cheese, want to learn more about cheese or just like good food writing, read her blog (beginners start here) and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

If you want to recreate your own Bastille Day Cheese Day, download Tenaya’s tasting notes, take it to your local cheese shop and talk to the cheese mongers. They may not have everything in the list, but they will be able to suggest alternatives. For tips on how to lay out a beautiful cheese board, check out our BDCD flickr set. Oh, and if you couldn’t make it this year, hit us up around May 2012 when we start planning it again.

CDC’s Zombie Apocalypse Goes Viral

It’s been a busy week at Think Brownstone and I’ve been trying to post something on the Think Blog. Although I have a backlog of topics to get to, every time I put hands to keyboard I had a bout of writer’s block…  until Brad mentioned the odd juxtaposition of the upcoming Rapture and the CDC’s blog post on preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse May 16th.

Since the original publication on the 16th, the CDC’s article has been going viral at a slow, lurching pace. It finally landed on the front page of CNN at 2:09 May 19th. Coincidentally, most scientists agree that’s about the same amount of time it would take the Solanum Virus to overtake the US Eastern Seaboard.

Braaaaaiiiinnnnsssstorming

I’m confident that the CDC’s blog post and the Rapture events are purely coincidental, but I wanted to take a moment to commend the CDC’s courage in publishing this story. The article is actually a well thought-out piece that uses the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for emergency preparedness. As it turns out, most of what you need to do to prepare for a zombie attack is similar to what you would be doing if there were a hurricane or tornado warning.

If I had to guess how this article was approved for publication, I’d imagine some government stuffed shirt raised concern that this serious topic deserves a serious treatment. Turns out, the government has tried that approach before with mixed results. One or two wise folks in the room pointed out that the goal of the article was to raise awareness. What better way to raise awareness than to get attention with a tongue-in-cheek title and introduction?

Perhaps this mini-campaign came out of a technique we use at Think Brownstone when a team is having trouble generating new ideas: Reverse Brainstorming. In a reverse braaaiiinnnnssss storming session, the participants come up with ideas that would prevent them from achieving a goal or that would cause their problem state. Once you have a good list, brainstorm ways to prevent those things from happening. Poof – you now have a list of things to help achieve your original goal. It’s the reverse-reverse psychology of brainstorming methods and, among other things, it can help get you out of a rut.

The CDC only gets one chance to do something like this before it starts to look schlocky, and I think they aced it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to buy some duct tape, canned beans, a baseball bat, and some extra shotgun shells (’cause you know, rule #2 and all).

Standout Sessions At SXSW

After my post about the overall experience of SXSW Interactive (an experience that left some things to be desired), I wanted to also do a quick recap of the highpoints. Despite the hit-and-miss scorecard for the sessions I attended, there were a few real standouts and two earlier ones that I have some sketchnotes on to boot.

“The New Frontier Of Social Gaming”
Brian Reynolds of Zynga
One of my favorites, this session provided some great insight around the secrets of designing successful social games and was one of the few that had actual bullets that could be taken away and applied to your own projects and ideas. I tend to like sessions that are broadly interesting but also have some take-away potential for practical application – this fit the bill nicely.

Some SketchNotes From The Brian Reynolds Session

“How Many Rungs? Social Change & The Engagement Ladder”
George Weiner of Dosomething
Laura Cochran of Gannett
Patty Huber of Groupon
Tom Dawkins of Hopelab
Robert Rosenthal of Volunteermatch
Panels can be tough depending on how they’re run. Pitfalls at the opposite end of the spectrum would be a quick 5-10 minutes from each participant with a loosely unifying theme following by quick Q&A, or a bicker-fest right out of the gate with no common thread (like the one I attended with folks from big banks and “indie” banks sniping at each other for an hour). But this particular panel worked – it was more unified than most with some engaging participants with compelling ideas and points. There was a novel take on the typical engagement ladder model and good conversation around it, as well as some talk about companies like Zamzee and their unique engagement model. Definitely some folks and companies worth following.

SketchNotes From The Social Change Panel

“Cheaper, Better, Faster: Can Casual Games Save Education?”
Gary Goldberger of Fablevision
Kristy Bowden of D2D Fund
Scot Osterweil of MIT Education Arcade
Ward Tisdale of Advanced Micro Devices
Another panel, and one that suffered a bit from the time constraint – I think that panels have the potential to be extremely valuable, but when you’ve got one with 4-5 folks on it and it’s stuffed into an hour slot, it can be limiting. Though all of these participants did well, it was a real pleasure learning about the work Scot Osterweil has been doing and I think in particular he captured the imagination of the audience, based on the volume of questions aimed at him afterward.

That leads me to the Heath Track, and the two sessions I attended over there – both of which were outstanding and had me so engaged that I actually forgot to take notes.

“Your Computer Is The Next Wonder Drug”
Jonathan Richman of DoseOfDigital
A fascinating session on the future of the integration of technology in healthcare and in particular, how we’ll integrate this kind of technology into our own lives to personally track and monitor our health on a daily basis. But interestingly, there was also a lot of talk about the psychology around it all and how certain technologies may address curious habits humans have regarding proactive vs. reactive measures toward increasing health. I’ve found myself thinking about messages from this session since, and even quoting it to others – a sure sign that it hit the mark.

“Health Communities: Superheroes Who Need A Justice League”
Jenni Prokopy of ChronicBabe
I was already a fan of Jenni’s from seeing her at BlogWorld in Las Vegas back in November, but this session really hit home for me because it aligned very closely with some of the conversations we’ve been having around Think Brownstone on how to take action on the promise of “Social Health”. There’s a lot of talk about it, but few seem to take active steps toward doing it – not Jenni. She not only created a space to start walking the talk, but has been actively monitoring it to see what’s working and what isn’t, making adjustments and improvements, and distilling the learning so it can be replicated elsewhere for communities in need. A superhero in her own right!

Those were really the standout sessions for me, despite attending nearly double this amount while in Austin. But hey, this post is about accentuating the positive – and if SXSW beefs up the speaker list with ringers like these, we could be on the road to redemption. Well done, folks!

Update from SXSW: Buster and Thor Get It

I know once you found out that Russ and I are at SXSW Interactive it put you on the edge of your seat, waiting for another batch of sketchnotes. Well, you’re just going to have to wait until next week for the full sketchnote reveal. Just a quick post about Day 1:

SXSW is gigantic. For example, Saturday morning I have to select from over 20 sessions happening between 9:30 and 10:30. With all of those options, choosing is difficult…and it’s more hit and miss than you might think. Landing in one that’s disappointing means you are missing something valuable somewhere else. Finding a home run session is huge, and that’s why I decided to write this post. If you’re considering presenting at a conference – take note:

Buster Benson of Health Month and Thor Muller of Get Satisfaction get it: they practiced what they preach in their session Gamechanging: Turn Your App into a Cooperative Game. Rather than just talk about game design for an hour, they designed a game into their session. Within minutes of the beginning of the session, around 500 people in ballroom 12AB of the Austin Convention Center were arranging themselves chronologically by birth date. Each month was a lifeboat, and we all had to find our boat and arrange ourselves chronologically by day or we’d drown. I found myself standing on a chair screaming “OCTOBER! OCTOBER IS HERE!” while two new friends stood by me holding up handmade signs reading the same thing. Five minutes later, October was complete, and so was every other month of the year. Five minutes, folks. 500 people arranged themselves in chronological order in five minutes.

What does 500 people organizing themselves chronologically by birth date look like?

This led into a discussion about an important aspect of designing collaborative games: emergent self-interest-based cooperation. Soon, they introduced a second challenge designed to demonstrate their next aspect of game design. This time, they offered bourbon to the winning team.

Buster and Thor ran out of time before they could run the third challenge, but it didn’t matter. They showed rather than told – and that’s so rare at a conference, I thought it deserved its own post. Not only is it good design, it takes guts to ask 500 people to change their carefully-chosen seats in a packed room. Bravo, fellas!

More next week after we recover. Unless perhaps one of us is blown away again in the meantime and moved to post. Fingers crossed!

Inspired By The “Think Truck”

When was the last time a dump truck made you think?

I snapped this picture about 2 weeks ago and I have to admit, this dump truck, in all its classic soot and grime, has stuck with me. At first I spent some time thinking about the dump truck industry and how that truck in particular driving down route 263 fits into a global puzzle of more-than-epic proportions (perhaps you might be able to intuit my political leanings from this, just maybe). But what are we to do with all our garbage?

Then the Think truck made me wonder what might be boldly painted on the back of its fellow fleet-members.  When the dump trucks are all tucked in at night is it a modern version of the seven dwarfs with, “Question,” “Decide,” “Challenge,” “Do”, “Learn”, and “Change” snoring away beside lovable ‘ol “Think”?

Then I noticed something else, I’m reading the backs of cars and trucks all the time now.  Hunting for the gems in the rough.  I pull up close to make out the messages on the back of the snow- and salt-encrusted cars.  Today I was behind a Tastykake® truck that had a bumper sticker saying “This Truck Equipped with Tasty Breaks.”  I have to admit, I’m a total sucker for things that make me think, if only for a split second and no matter how cheesy– but think!  And then the light turned green and I drove off looking for more.

It’s sort of like an example of real-world Easter Eggs – those hidden messages and bits of fun embedded in digital designs – albeit maybe not as hidden. But like their digital counterparts, these little messages can make the routine a bit more interesting and engaging, while capitalizing on the “fun factor”. Though I’ve created this game myself across a wider system that may be oblivious to me as a target audience, it speaks to the human tendency to turn things into games, to explore, and to want to be surprised. Food for thought in our designs – digital and otherwise.

So here’s to the Think truck that gets it.  One well-placed, unexpected word has got me thinking and seeing the world with fresh eyes.  I hope Think’s fellow truck-dwarfs are out there somewhere cause I can’t wait to find myself behind another and to see where it takes me.

Blackfish Gets It

Congratulations to Conshohocken’s own Blackfish Restaurant for being named #1 of the “50 Best Places to Eat Right Now” by Philadelphia Magazine.

Have you ever wondered what happened to that gift bottle you brought to the Think Brownstone Holiday Party? There’s a good chance one of us grabbed it and walked a few doors down Fayette Street with a client, spouse or friend to Blackfish, one of Conshy’s best BYOBs.

In fact, we love Blackfish so much, we have them cater special events in the ThinkSpace. If you’re hungry and anywhere near Conshy, make a reservation, grab a bottle and get ready for a great meal.

Congrats Chef Chip and all the staff at Blackfish, you deserve it.

[Psssst Phillymag - don't think we didn't catch your not-so-subtle jabs at Conshohocken in the writeup. Our office may be in the 'burbs, but we love Philly. We're there all the time for fun and work. Some Brownstoners even live there. It's a shame you can't find a way to congratulate a place in the 'burbs without taking a shot at it.]

BlogWorld Social Health Recap Part Deux

Keynote: e-Patient Dave

I’ve seen Dave speak in the past so I was thrilled that he didn’t just pull out a standard keynote. CLARIFICATION: Having seen Dave speak once in the past, I was thrilled to see he’s not the kind of speaker who pulls out a standard keynote. If you want to understand the profile of the fully engaged patient of the future, find out where Dave is speaking next… and if he asks for his data, give him his damn data!

Session: Health Care Industry Issues

Industry Stats; Industry Panel

Marc Monseau of Johnson & Johnson moderated this panel with Greg Matthews, Bob Stern from MedPage Today, e-Patient Dave and Frank Eliason. The discussion extended into the audience where physicians, patient advocates, lawyers and regulators from the industry added to the conversation. Some of the main takeaways were:

Session: Social Networks and the Medical Blogosphere – Compatible or Competitive?

Kim McAlister (emergiblog) moderated a discussion with bloggers Kevin Pho (KevinMD), Bryan Vartabedian (33Charts) and Kerri Morrone Sparling (sixuntilme) about the decisions they make when blogging vs. engaging in social media platforms.

The two big notes in my notebook:

Blog to create value; Use social networks to develop relationships.

Whether it’s conscious or not, these successful bloggers have a keen sense of content strategy. The key to engaging their audience across multiple social platforms is knowing what they are publishing, who it is for and what the best outlet is for that message. Read Kerri’s thoughts here and Dr. Pho’s take on it here.

Session: Whiteboard & #SOCHEALTH

Marc Monseau of Johnson & Johnson and David Armano from Edelman Digital bravely facilitated an open-format whiteboard session that energized everyone in the room.

The audience represented many of the social health stakeholder groups: “Big Pharma”, patient advocate / e-patient bloggers, blogging health care professionals, consultants, and interactive agencies. Not represented, but ultimately required at the table are the insurance industry and the FDA.

What transpired was a frank conversation about the current state of the social heath space. Marc passed the microphone and facilitated one of the most productive and collaborative conversations I‘ve witnessed at a national conference. Armano’s visual notes can be found here, and if you follow the Twitter hashtag #sochealth you’ll likely find a slew of summaries. My thoughts:

1. Social health communities set up by patient and physician bloggers are thriving. Decades of mistrust across many of the players and the lack of trusted, comprehensive, community-curated information sources are becoming an issue for the leaders in these communities.
2. Industry can have a positive impact by simply providing reliable information. The communities are independently effective at assessing, curating, and sharing information they find to be credible and valuable.
3. It’s important to note that “information” means data that helps patients and clinicians understand medical conditions and the risks and benefits of treatments. We are not talking about marketing messages, pretty pictures or fancy gadgets.
4. While it wasn’t highlighted throughout the day, I think it’s important to note that research demonstrates that industry-provided information is regarded as biased more often than it is considered to be balanced. This is a barrier we will need to continue to address over time, but the first step is to clear out the messaging that created those perceptions of bias in the first place.

Wrapping Up

The final keynote was Rohit Bhargava interviewing Doug Ulman about how http://www.livestrong.org/ has embraced social media. Doug is a two-time cancer survivor, the CEO of Livestrong, and an inspiring speaker with a calm demeanor. Livestrong practices deliberate strategies when engaging their audience through social media. Go here for Rohit’s summary of the session and a video of the discussion.

After that, a bunch of us got together for some good food, a few drinks and a lot of laughs with new friends. Nice way to end the day.

The High Road: Conversion vs. Coercion

To follow-up on Russ’ Teavana post from last week, I thought I would take some time to further expand on good sales experiences from a designer’s perspective. As experience designers we would create a few buyer profiles based on analysis of elements like existing customer traffic, consumer objectives and client business objectives. In the case of Teavana, I will guess there are three types of buyers to consider:

• The Browser – someone wandering into the store just to see what it’s all about
• The Learner – someone intending to get an education about tea or tea products
• The Experienced Buyer – someone who knows tea or has purchased from Teavana before. Ideally, your experienced buyer becomes a loyal customer.

This is an example of cascading user types and how your experience design and sales model can focus on converting one user type to another. Ideally, you want to convert browsers into learners and learners into experienced buyers. In the long run, a large portion of your revenue would come from your experienced buyers. Train your staff to focus on these conversions – even if the success rate is low – and you’ll experience long-term success.

Volumes of guides have been written on the topic, but most sales instruction takes the perspective of the sales person rather than the customer. After a dozen years on the technology side of the Sales Training industry, I have seen a lot of sales models. There are a lot of self-proclaimed sales experts out there whose models treat the buyer as nothing more than a mark who simply has to be convinced. How they are convinced is the “secret sauce” of each sales process.

Here’s a secret, though: regardless of your sales model, your best sales people put themselves in the head of the customer, understand their needs, and then fulfill those needs. Furthermore, if they don’t have a solution, they recommend someone who does. It’s that simple.

So, how do we drive those conversions? Well Teavana, it’s not by alienating your customers or aggressively upselling them on things they don’t want. Let’s look at a few of my own experiences as a retail customer that demonstrate conversion.

Customer Intimacy

I had the pleasure of buying a custom suit a few years ago for my wedding. I entered the store as a learner, but quickly became an experienced buyer. Even though they have customers who spend much more than me, they still remember my name when I walk into the store to buy a pair of socks. Any man who has ever been fitted for a completely custom suit has likely had an excellent sales experience. From selecting the fabric and style to your final fitting – the entire experience is about you. For the price you pay, you deserve it… and the next time you want to buy someone a pair of cufflinks or a tie, you’ll probably go back.

Bryn Mawr Running Company: GETS IT!

Expertise

You don’t need to be purchasing high ticket-item products to have an excellent sales experience. Very recently I wandered into Bryn Mawr Running Company to purchase a new pair of running shoes. I had a strained tendon from the discount running shoes I was wearing and I was wondering what the store had to offer. I was a browser, but the sales associate approached me and casually asked if he could help. After explaining my dilemma, he asked me to take 10 steps away from him. When I turned to walk back, he was practically lying on the floor watching exactly how my foot landed. He pulled three different pairs of shoes that would address my needs. We made the final selection based on fit and comfort. We never discussed price and there was never a hard sell. By chance I selected the cheapest pair. They were still double what I paid at the discount store, but it was a small price to pay for a relatively painless morning jog.

A Reason to Return

Excellent service is something we come to expect when paying a premium for a product. Most new customers who walk into Teavana expect more than a $3 box of stale tea bags, they just don’t know what to buy. Teavana has taken advantage of this need for consultation. I suspect this contributes well to short-term sales, but really destroys the rate at which your customers return. They may be able to convert a browser to a learner, but they fail when converting the learners to experienced buyers. As we’ve seen in the comments and in the articles posted – customers don’t appreciate being aggressively upsold every visit.

My tailor now has my measurements on file. As long as I haven’t subsisted exclusively on cheeseburgers and onion rings since my last visit, I could call in a brand new suit. Bryn Mawr Running Company keeps track of my sizes and brands for me. I am a dedicated customer to both stores even though the prices are higher…something I wouldn’t be if they had tried to sell me things I don’t want.

The profiles above are a simplistic view of Teavana’s business model. I offer them up to prove a point: developing a customer-focused sales experience takes time and analysis. Even so, while sales is often about conversion, it should never be about coercion. The most talented and successful sales people I have ever worked with all have one thing in common: they know when to walk away. Their time is way too precious to be spent convincing someone to buy something they clearly don’t want or need – especially if that means that’s the last time you’ll see them.

Simple Things That Are Awesome

Sometimes you stumble on things that are simple and awesome. This Gmail feature is far from perfect, but I stumbled over it the other day. I was sending an email and referred to the attachments in the email, but forgot to attach anything. When I hit “send” I saw this:

Gmail

I played with the feature a bit and there are some holes in it… for instance, if I write, “In the attached files…” and don’t attach anything, I don’t get the same warning.

Perhaps it is looking for generic phrases that indicate attachments or perhaps they’re looking at my linguistic tendencies around attachments. Regardless, I’m sure the feature will improve over time. The main point is the intent is there. We know Gmail is looking at the content of your emails to place ads (hooray). While they’re there, they may as well do some good (non-sarcastic hooray).

Google Labs has a slew of lab features you can add to Gmail, including two of my favorites, “Don’t forget Bob” and “Got the right Bob?”. Pretty much any feature that involves Bob has to be good – everybody likes Bob.

We have been spending some time with our clients talking about the Google Labs model. Google didn’t invent the idea of fostering small R&D projects from within. One of the best examples of how lab projects can benefit a company is the story of 3M and Post-It Notes. Few people realize Gmail itself was a lab project as well. Fostering innovation from within and freeing it from the typical bureacracy of your organization can result in simple, awesome things.

Then, once you’ve built it, you can name it Bob.

The Piazza At Schmidts GETS IT

OK, the last of our summer vacations is over (mine), and it’s time to get some new thoughts and ideas up on ye olde blog! So here’s something that has been on my mind for a few weeks now…

Our group of extended colleagues and friends, much like yours I’d expect, has been having an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of the different types of online communities available to us. That’s not my direct focus with this posting, but suffice to say that I have a love/hate relationship with them that continues to ebb and flow weekly. One thing that doesn’t waver for me though is that even when I’m in “advocate mode” they still just don’t rival actual, real, tangible communities that you can get up off your nerdy computer butt and go walk to.

Piazza Images Courtesy of GoPhila.com

However, I’d suggest that one of the reasons online communities have gained such a stronghold (and I’m quite sure I’m not the first), is that many traditional communities have gone the way of the dodo thanks to poor urban (and suburban) planning that has given preference to sprawl, strip malls, auto traffic over pedestrians, and the relentless focus on quantity over quality that started plaguing us going back to the 1950’s.

I know that other areas of the country have made strides against this trend, especially in recent years, but in our stomping grounds of the greater Philadelphia area there haven’t been enough. Sure, we’ve got some great squares in the more glamorous parts of town like Rittenhouse – but there’s an elitist quality to what surrounds them that makes it feel a bit inauthentic. You just wouldn’t expect to stumble upon Rittenhouse on a mid-summer afternoon and see an incredibly diverse group of folks sporting big smiles and un-self-consciously dancing together with their kids and pets to live music. This, however, is standard fare at the recently opened Piazza at Schmidts in the continuously evolving and improving Northern Liberties section of the city.

My wife and I stopped by earlier in the summer when a good friend of mine happened to be in town promoting his new album and had a performance scheduled in the square as part of one of the regular afternoon shows that are staged there – free of charge. This time it happened to be one of the fantastic shows organized by Sundae Philadelphia – so we’re not talking about puppet shows here; this is the real deal. In fact, here’s a video filmed the day we were there:

We had no idea what to expect, but stumbled upon what she called “a little utopia”, the kind of place we fantasized about bringing up our kids around.  We marveled at the huge open-air plaza with new apartments atop rent-controlled artist studios, funky shops, market stands, and affordable cuisine (including killer pretzels and bubble-tea right next to fancier restaurants) – filled with people of all ages, races, hairstyles and lifestyles strolling around happily interacting. Then at the end of the plaza was the giant 400 square foot year-round LCD panel that is used to project everything from “Family Movie Night” during the week to the Phillies games – with the stage below pulsing with fabulous musicians from around the world being joined by locals dancing on roller skates and playing with hula hoops.

At The Piazza with Nickodemus

Yeah, it was all “peace and love” but in a very urban, modern way – and it was completely refreshing. There’s a lot of sensational media out there aimed at scaring the pants off you – that’ll keep you tuned in and the advertising money flowing – but by and large, people are awesome and it’s worth it to get out there and meet a few new ones every now and then. We honestly didn’t want to leave, and talked the whole way home about how this model might be applied to our own neighborhood, our work, online communities, and elsewhere. We also hoped out loud that what they’ve created over there is sustainable and will be supported by the city and the people who live in it. Maybe the climate is finally right for more Piazzas out there, breaking down superficial social boundaries and mirroring the same diversity found in friends lists and iTunes playlists in the “real” world.