As I talked and envisioned with Larry this past week during my visit to Cincinnati, the importance of THIRD PLACE returned as a conscious topic around which to organize my thoughts and plans and hopes. The Old St. George model of the Great Good Place for Community and Spiritual Renewal presents itself to me at a real moment of Kairos; at this pinnacle of purpose and calling where I now find myself. I brought home with me a copy of the Second Edition of The Great Good Place, and also the followup study, Celebrating The Third Place, which collects a few “incarnational examples” of the kinds of Places sought in the initial study.

Far from being the “detriment” to the creation of and renewal of Third Places, the computer networks can be utilized as “Scaffolding” that collects and highlights the things that make for Great Good Places. To provide ways to “keep conversations alive” is a good thing. The only “self-awareness” growing there is that of our own and the sense of collaboration and comradery that we expereince in the Third Place. And now, the Third Place generates “virtual places” that are extensions of the physical environment, but carry with it some pieces of the personal effects of the Third Place—- perhaps even generating a new “sense of place” that is given prestigge becuase of the connection it gives us to the “overall Third Place”. In other words, Third Place grows outward and is available to us in previously “dead times”, like when we are on the bus, in the car, waiting for someone at a meeting place. We are “away” from the Third Place where we long to return and relax and engage, but we can bask in some of those qualities that make for the Third Place by re-reading and perhaps posting a response or an additional thought to a previous conversation, or explore a link to something posted by another participant, or set up a meeting/get-together with another with whom we have “branched off” a sub-topic of another conversation upon finding that we share a particular passion for exploring the possibilities in a particular direction (say, Online community software, and its installation on a newly upgraded Windows 2003 Server— what a geek I am).