Week 1 Round: Audit a place you already use

The first Round. You take somewhere you go anyway and hold it against the eight rules, in writing, on the premises.

25 February 2027

Pick somewhere you already go. A café, a gym, a library floor, a game shop, the smoking area outside your workplace. It does not have to be a good third place; it is more interesting if it is a bad one.

Go there this week, on a day and at an hour you would normally be there. Stay forty minutes without doing the thing you normally do there. Write while you are in the room.

What to write down. Who else is here. How many are alone. Who speaks to whom, and who speaks first. What the staff do that they are not paid to do. Where people sit when the room is empty, and where they sit when it is full. What it costs to stay an hour. What time it closes, and who is still there at closing.

What not to write down, yet. Whether it is a “real” third place. Whether the people are happy. Anything about atmosphere that you could have written before you arrived. Description first — the analysis is next week’s problem, and it is worthless if the description underneath it is thin.

Bring the raw notes to the Round, unedited. We read three of them aloud and compare what different people thought was worth recording in the same kind of room. That comparison is the actual lesson.