Collaboration Space: The Final Frontier?

Collaboration is hot. However, in all the surrounding excitement and hype about flashy social media, abundant communication, and innovative co-creation processes, we almost seem to forget the key role of "space" in allowing people to fruitfully work together. People jointly producing lots of tacit and more or less explicit forms of knowledge require many different technologies enabling them to do so. Social media are only the tip of the collaboration technology iceberg. Contrary to what many afficionados suggest, these tools do not operate in splendid isolation, but are embedded in a mesh of virtual and physical space. This point was driven home to me at Ton Zijlstra's birthday unconference at his house, where we experienced a wonderful variation on the space theme. Although objectively speaking we were just in an overcrowded family home, it felt like we were in a huge and spacious conference centre. Different rooms or even parts of a room were dedicated to a wide variety of emerging, constantly changing themes. The buzz of all those exciting and excited people expressing and comparing their multitude of opinions, made us literally forget where we were. It was as if the space receded in the background.  Obviously, the practical details mattered (enough locations, chairs, refreshments, programme, etc.) However, even more important seemed to be the overall combination of people, energy, and flows that literally filled this space. So, what is collaboration space? Rather than just meaning "emptiness" it seems to be some kind of substrate that needs to come to life (then ideally to disappear out of sight) by its community of users. What are the key physical elements of this substrate? How is this collaboration space filled/appropriated/embodied by its community of users? To what extent is collaboration space a function of the physical props provided, the energy levels of the crowd, and the flow of activities they are involved in? Perhaps we need some Relativity Theory of Community Space and Time? Any Einstein 2.0 out there? :-)