Cybercafe
A cybercafe, or Internet Cafe, is a cultural center that has explicit relationships to the Internet. An institution such as the Wikimedia community is an excellent and natural means by which to enhance the purposive discourses that permeate a cybercafe environment. The commercial aspects of maintaining such an environment depend, in varying degrees on some kind of focus or context that provides common elements for sustaining activities rooted and grounded in online sociology. Wikimedia, and its child projects is, by default (in my opinion) an excellent source of this level of common discourse.
I think it would be cool to form, within the meta-context of wikimedia (and MediaWiki) a concerted effort to aid in the commercialization potential of cybercafe culture and to graft into that culture a Wikipedia enfluence. Physical posters, local ad campains, surveys, editing sessions, incentives for producing encyclopedic content and all sorts of other memetic devices can be used to generate interest in both cybercafe usage and Wikipedia-related activities. The reason I am starting this page is because I have a personal involvement in a general business plan for cybercafe establishment and I think a lot about Wikipedia as a unifying force toward an overall catylist for positive internet sociology.
see Marketing | Poster design group | Wikimedia urban postering campaign | Wikimedia online promotion campaign | cafePress
A cybercafe business model is an odd bird. Establishing and maintaining cashflow, attracting investors, defining the market ... you know the drill ... is always a taxing proposition when trying to form something completely new within a community. Stuff like these tee-shirts can help a whole lot, because they allow human agents to propogate the idea, without actually trying. Someone will see "Wiktionary" on the shirt one day and in a Google result listing the next. All of a sudden that person has recieved the memetic structure that lays the foundation for building the wikimedia context. A local cybercafe that promotes and reinforces wikimedia culture will become a physical representative of the abstraction that powers the meme.
Aside from good coffee products and a fast Internet connection, a Wikimedia project focus may be the best thing a new cybercafe could have going for it.
Cybercafe Listing
editIf you own, operate or work at a Cybercafe or similar facility, please list it here. (Even if it's just an idea - go for it.) Thanks. ---Quinobi cq
E Pluribus Unix The Root Access Cybercafe 210 Broadway Paducah, Kentucky USA 42001 http://www.ccky.net/wiki/index.php/CC:RootAccessCybercafe