Arthur Tillyard opened the UK's first coffee shop in Oxford in 1655 and it became the meeting place for the Oxford Coffee Club. The club included Oxford's leading scientists, such as Sir Robert Boyle, and eventually it led to the founding of the Royal Society, one of the world's greatest scientific organisations. Edward Lloyd opened a coffee shop on Tower Street in London in 1688, and that one turned into Lloyds of London, insuring the world. Now coffee shop are the places where internet businesses get going -- in San Francisco.
Greg Olsen has written about Going Bedouin and Jackson West echoes this idea in The New Office Space:
My own experience helping to organize the WebZine conference pretty much echoed this. No office space was rented, communication was primarily through email lists and a private wiki, and meetings were held at cafes with free internet, with notes and ideas quickly disseminated to those who couldn't attend. When a contact was needed to help out with services such as advertising, sponsorships or donations, cell phones came out and calls were made, and issues were often resolved before the meeting was even over. Even during the conference itself, local cafes served as press rooms, panel development forums and, of course, somewhere to get some lunch.
The problem is that coffee shops are there to serve coffee and cakes etc, and not provide shelter for venture capitalists and other freeloaders. West adds:
Coffee to the People in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury is trying to come up with guidelines, and the issue of coffee shop etiquette is a popular topic of discussion among digerati. Some cafe owners only share the WEP or WPA key with paying customers, limit the number of wall jacks to recharge batteries, or shut down wifi on the weekends to encourage offline socializing.
He provides a useful list of cafes in San Francisco "chosen by popular acclaim and personal recommendation. Any one of them will keep you fueled with caffeine, connected online and give you a chance to network with fellow travellers." There are many other suggestions in comments to the post.
If someone at Ritual Coffee Roasters or Coffee to the People can turn this phenomenon into another Lloyds of London, it would be amazing, but not without precedent.
