Engineering Serendipity

One topic that makes sense, but wasn’t talked about much previously in our community, is the role of serendipitous interactions. Recently, I wrote about The Power of Serendipitous Interactions and Startup Communities and how I was experiencing it first-hand at the Atlanta Tech Village. Now that we know it’s important, how can we engineer it to happen more frequently? Here are a few ideas:

• Cool hangout areas with soft seating, games, kitchen amenities, and more
• Regular events like happy hours, speaker series, show and tells, workshops, hackathons, etc
• Startup launch parties and product demo sessions
• Community clubs like running, sports, and shared interests
• Great coffee in an awesome coffee shop
• Free coworking times or areas
• Mentors and catalysts that like to connect people and help solve problems

Engineering serendipity is one of the most abstract topics we talk about regarding building community, and possibly one of the most important.

What else? What are some other ways to engineer serendipity?