[lewisl9029]

Personally, I loved working in an open office at my last job (a software consultancy).

Knowledge sharing by osmosis was a very real phenomenon there. I can't count the number of times I discovered interesting new technologies or was enlightened on some architecture tradeoffs thanks to a discussion taking place around me.

I realize that the whole experience around open-offices is very YMMV but I feel it can have many tangible and valuable benefits for the right kinds of people (i.e. those who are not too easily distracted and/or can easily context-switch back and forth).