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In designing these technologies, explains John Seely Brown, 59, director and chief scientist at PARC, "We're looking for a way to support a constantly evolving conversation in such a way that we don't have to reset it each time someone comes along." The key to informality lies in giving people a degree of freedom to pick and choose which interactions to join. And that, says Brown, requires a physical space that "allows people to move easily from the periphery to the center of a conversation, and back out again."

In its search for other ways to use technology to support its talk shows, PARC sees live video as a promising avenue. Many organizations already use videoconferencing, but few have had much success in using it for informal collaboration and conversation. "When people meet on video, they often try to use the same resources that they use during face-to-face meetings -- the body language and visual cues that are so important to conversation," says Whalen. "On video, those cues don't always come across."

Whalen argues that this difficulty stems partly from the low bandwidth of current video technology and partly from the inherent conflict between virtual communication and true informality. Yet he and others at PARC readily concede that, when it comes to using technology to support informal interactions, even the best technology can be rejected outright -- or put to use in an entirely unexpected way. "No one anticipated that computers would be used as a communication tool," says Whalen. "Computers were supposed to be for data processing and analysis: Who would have thought that email would be the real killer app?"

Hewlett-Packard Laboratories: The Following Talk Show Is Brought to You by Your Local-Access Channel

Think of a talk show. What comes to mind first are the big-budget extravaganzas, complete with a slate of sponsors, a list of nationally known guests, and a host with star power. But for information on local issues, you turn to local shows -- small-time productions that may suffer from poor production values but that offer up-to-date information about issues that matter.

That, at least, was the idea when Chandrakant Patel launched the equivalent of a local cable-access talk show at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories (HPL) in Palo Alto several years ago. Patel, the 39-year-old leader of hp's thermal-research lab, was starved for talk. A few years earlier, he had transferred from the company's PC division, where he designed disk drives for computers and where his work environment had been constantly abuzz with conversations among colleagues. By contrast, the HPL division seemed to be as quiet as a museum. Most researchers and engineers were grouped by discipline, and there was little interaction among them -- which meant that Patel, as the division's only cooling expert, was cut off from the daily discussions that he'd come to love. "I was dying," jokes Patel. "Who was I going to talk to? Myself?"

So Patel started a kind of garage talk show. Whenever the affable engineer encountered a coworker at the coffee station, he introduced himself, discovered his new acquaintance's research expertise, and then invited this coworker to give an informal lecture, or "chalk talk," to other hp employees. Some people balked, but most were eager to share their expertise. Over the next several months, hp staffers from the lab's 14 divisions were treated to lectures on everything from Inkjet technology to error analysis to "The Future of Silicon Technology" to "How Big is the Universe?"

The results exceeded Patel's expectations. For their efforts, "guest lecturers" received vigorous, informal peer reviews of their work. Researchers were able to mingle after each chalk talk, taking part in dozens of spontaneous conversations -- in effect, spin-offs of Patel's original talk-show idea. New relationships formed between individuals and entire divisions, and some of those relationships have since yielded key product developments. Patel, for example, was able to hook up with cooling experts from HPL's other divisions, and they have formed a permanent research network. Nicknamed the "Cool Team," the group has (among other accomplishments) completely changed the design of hp's computer-cooling systems.

The success of Patel's chalk talks points up a key rule: "Local" talk shows succeed by tapping into needs that traditional corporate-communication systems simply can't meet. "There's a real hunger for a much richer, messier, more ad hoc form of interaction," says Barbara Waugh, 53, HPL's manager of worldwide organizational development. "There's a hunger for a diversity of perspectives -- and for a chance to bring them to bear on people's research questions."