I’m blogging to you live from right outside the Metreon in San Francisco. The Metreon was Sony’s attempt to open a hyper-technically stylized shopping center showcasing their products and those of its partners. When it opened, it contained a Microsoft store, a Playstation store, a massive Discovery Channel store, a Sony store and a giant theater complete with an Imax screen. It had an arcade featuring the latest in 3D and virtual reality type games. In short, it was a pretty phenomenal place to visit and Sony intended it to be the heart of the tech boom rapidly growing in the SoMa areas surrounding it.

Times have changed.

It used to be that you could here just about any hour of any day and it would be crowded. I’m here at 11am on a Friday and the place is barren. There are still a couple of high-end restaurants and an enviable food court (sushi, Buckhorn Grill, noodle house) and the Sony and Playstation stores are still here. The theater still seems in operation. But the Microsoft store - which not too long ago was converted into another Sony showcase store - and the anchor Discovery Channel store are both empty. The amazing “How Things Work” and “Where the Wild Things Are” attractions are gone, replaced by a comic book store and $20+ admission Titanic exhibit, respectively. There’s now a somewhat laughable “Walk of Games” up on the third floor that recognizes Sony licenses like Everquest as well as game luminaries such as Id’s Jon Carmack and Atari’s Nolan Bushnell (where’s Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, though?), but it’s so hard to follow and so lacking in stars it’s hard not to giggle. There are no fewer than two display booths showcasing the marketing blitz used to promote this thing - more crap than actual stars.

Once of the escalators is broken - it always seems to be broken when I come here - as is one of the urinals in the downstairs men’s room, covered over with trashbag plastic and a big handwritten sign reading “out of order”. The Metreon was intended to represent the bright future consumers can look forward to, sort of like the best of Walt Disney’s “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”. Instead, it’s just becoming a sad shadow of what was once dreamed.

I hate talking about problems without coming up with solutions so, Metreon folks, here’s my solution. First, acknowledge that the techno boom was a bust. Do a retrospective and focus on the groundbreaking things that happened in and around San Francisco during the boom. This is your new exhibit where the Titanic is now. That’ll end in a few months and you’ll need a replacement. This is it.

Next, get an electronics boutique store in where the Discovery store was. The store will feature - hold on to your seats - non-Sony items right next to the Sony items. Sony just doesn’t do enough to warrant its own store. The primary feature of this boutique will be massively hands on interaction for your customers. That is to say, let them touch, play with and even break everything you sell. Hire expert staff to answer every conceivable question. Pay them well.

That arcade on the second floor? Blow it away. In fact, blow the whole second floor away and replace it with one gigantic arcade featuring custom titles that can’t be played anywhere in the world featuring independent developers. Give them exposure, share the revenue of dropped quarters with them. Gauge audience response. Hold gamer competitions. In fact, host monthly rounds of gamer competitions in the bigger, well known games as well, then bracket them to a Gamer World Series. You want geeks? You do this and you’ll get them by droves, with all of their disposable cash.

Shift the focus of the entire place away from showcasing technology and, instead, build a social space that uses technology to facilitate interactions. Open up some large meeting spaces and invite the public to sit back, relax and meet other folks. Have networked terminals at each table and provide easy to start and play games (i.e. trivia, checkers, etc.) that folks at one table can play against folks at another table. Encourage them to use these terminals to interact, meet and form new connections. And plaster that Sony logo on everything, if you must, to pay for it. You already have a Starbucks ands a Just Desserts. Why are they separate booths? Move the Chronicle Books area somewhere else, put Just Desserts and Starbucks together and create this open interactive space.

Once you’ve done everything I just described, get together again and discuss what you will replace it all with. The Metreon is about the future, which means it needs to change constantly. You need to reshuffle everything at least once every two years. The spaces you create should be easily reconfigurable to make up for this. Don’t sign contracts with tenants for more than a year at a time and put the onus on them to also stay cutting edge lest they lose their highly coveted space.

In short, make the Metreon cool, not just for now but forever. There is nothing but potential here. Take the radical step to make it come true.