As part of the projectday 2009, we organized the workshop “Have a break!”. Breaks are an important, yet sometimes undervalued part of effective knowledge work: you change contexts, clear your mind and fuel your engine. Additionally, breaks provide an opportunity to interact with people outside your usual circle to benefit from cross-pollination over traditional organizational boundaries or simply to get inspired.

The workshop consisted of two parts: one in which the group explored and experienced how an interactive tool at the coffee corner could help trigger conversations and one part where they discussed key elements to make breaks valuable knowledge sharing moments, assisted by a visual thinker. For the experience part we used the prototype of Buzzcuit, pre-loaded with profiles of some of the workshop participants.

Some of the outcomes of the discussions that triggered me:

• Make sure you have breaks in pure virtual meetings (phone conferences, meetings in a virtual world) as well – and facilitate the chitchat that in non-virtual meetings proves to be so important for trust building.
• When using an interactive screen with profiles of people, target the information to the people around the screen (e.g., based on Bluetooth or RFID). That also allows for matchmaking.
• When talking about the office as a meeting space, the term “break” may be misleading. Talking to people, insiode and outside your team, is an important part of being a knowledge worker.
• Management should lead by example and take time to talk to people outside their usial circles.
• And although it is sometimes difficult to fit breaks in, realize that in the 21st century breaks is where an important part of the work is done. Break = work!

Dennis from Jam visualized outcomes of the discussion. More of the results (also from the other workshops) can be found here.