🎉 Coworking celebrations.
Supported by The Coworking Alliance Summit
This week’s coverage is supported by the summit for coworking alliance leaders, which returns on February 16th 2022.
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📰 Coworking updates.
🛍 Coworking space announces retail collective.
Garret Tichy and Alyssa Pressler from hygge coworking have started Lokal (pronounced lo-kay) with the goal of creating a ‘collaborative retail space’ for small businesses who want a physical presence. The space features various local brands selling clothing, accessories and other handmade items. Whilst 9 vendors have been announced, they aim to announce 25 in total.
There’s a huge opportunity to bring retail into coworking, not to mention the massive hyperlocal economic impact of supporting more than just desk-based businesses.
🗞 Global publication highlights third places over WFH at Home.
Nicole Kobie shared a productivity tip for remote workers in a recent WIRED piece. In short, it’s recommended to explore and work from third places instead.
Coworking spaces (and indie and neighborhood hubs get a big nod), local libraries, museum memberships, hotels and pubs are highlighted as options.
🖐 5 FoW trends to watch.
In this interview Tushar Agarwal from Hubble shares 5 future of work trends worth watching, alongside some other interesting questions and answers.
In short they were workplace strategies are not talent strategies, the employee revolution, an emphasis on softer skills, the rise of HR Directors and FoW now being the ‘future of living’.
🇵🇹 Portugal passes bill protecting remote workers’ rights.
Kate Lister shares that the Portuguese government have passed a bill that prohibits employers from contacting employees outside of office hours, made it mandatory to cover increased electric and internet bills, bans monitoring, and allows caregivers to work from home without employer permission.
This follows recent stories we’ve shared and discussed around other incoming remote work legislation.
🚨 On the $4T dumpster fire.
Michael Przytula shares 8 takeaways from the recent CoreNet Global Summit in Seattle, in a post titled with a quote from Mark Gilbreath‘s keynote where he said “Corporate Real Estate is a $4T dumpster fire”.
The takeaway titles are a little wordy for this short summary, but they’re worth checking out, and seeing which ring true for you, and your market.
h/t Giovanni Palavicini
☝️ Could this be the founder of the worlds first coworking space?
NearU shared an interview with Rolf Fällström, co-owner of Block Stockholm, which they say holds the impressive title of the world’s first coworking space. An interesting read, and a beautiful space.
Where they first? Know any coworking spaces started before April 2001?
💃 Q&A with owner of coworking spaces “by creatives for creatives”.
Cat Johnson shares a Q&A with Nancy Sexton from The Muse Rooms over on the Satellite Deskworks blog. The post dives into the backstory of these niche spaces, color schemes, inspiration, and the community vibe.
Another well executed example of niche-focussed coworking communities.
🕺 The first coworking space for strip artists?
In LA a coalition of current and former strip artists are collaborating to create a coworking community for themselves and their peers. The space, the first of its kind within this industry, aims to offer production assistance, a pole suite, photography suites, cinema room, library and meditation center.
With demand for digital content skyrocketing, could we see more niches being carved out by industry insiders, or will we ever see established brands exploring these sectors through partnerships?
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💻 Coworking technology.
💼 On helping employers connect their employees to flex spaces.
In this Market Makers Q&A post for Syncaroo I share Ginger Dhaliwal and Christophe Garnier‘s founding story and look into what Upflex is, how it works, and what makes them different from other platforms.
📲 Local booking platform hits 1,500+ workplace milestone.
Reinier Reijnhoudt shares that Ultrecht-based localdesk now have 1,500+ workplaces available for PAYG access in their network. This number includes meeting rooms, and spans 35+ locations in 3 countries.
📲 Booking pass app marks their 34th city launch.
Deskpass announced that they’ve launched in Columbus, Ohio making the city their 34th, adding 7 bookable locations to their growing network.
🗺 A glimpse of just the European-based workspace tech industry.
Anne-Camille Renaudeau, Eléa Sirvent & Guillaume Meulle from XAnge share their views on existing trends & the European startups shaking up how physical and virtual workspaces are operated.
Coworking data.
📊 Dive into the 2021 State of Remote Work report.
Owl Labs and Global Workplace Analytics have released their 5th annual State Of Remote Work report. The interactive (and downloadable) report digs into hundreds of data points work exploring!
What caught my eye is that when it comes to future trends, 60% of the 2000 US employees asked were interested in working from coworking spaces (26% were very interested), 31% worked from coworking spaces when working ‘from home’, and more than a quarter of mid-to-large employers (500-5k employees) added the option of coworking for some or all of their employees.
On that last point, the least likely to offer coworking space access were the largest employers with 10k+ employees (9%) and the smallest with under 50 employees (11%).
h/t Liz Elam & Kate Lister
🤩 7.1M Creators in the USA!
A study by Emergent Research and MBO Partners found that 7.1 million Americans earn money by creating and monetizing content online. They include independent writers, musicians, designers, artists, instructors, video makers, online influencers, and others.
The article and the linked report dig into the demographics, platforms, and more. A notable number is that 55% of content creators reported that they’ve teamed up with others on projects. Sounds like they’d be a great fit for coworking communities IMHO.
🎢 First quarterly results since going public.
WeWork shared their first quarterly results since going public through a recent SPAC merger. In the results they shared a number of interesting data points, including that occupancy sits at 59% and that they count 579k members (both up from 9% and 542k last year).
Whilst quarterly losses were still a massive $844.3M, that is down $155.2M from $999.5M in Q3 2020.
Worth noting here that the quarter included one-time expenses of $262M and the firm said it ended the quarter with $2.3B in cash and unfunded cash commitments (ie contractual obligations for future funding).
Coworking market moves.
𝐁 Space-as-a-service brand expands into Manchester.
Caleb Parker shared that Bold (now a part of NewFlex) has announced that they’ll be opening a new 13,731sqft workspace community in Manchester’s popular Spinningfields area. I understand this new hub is a partnership agreement with the landlord Orchard Street.
🔥 Workplace Analytics sector heats up.
Stuart Appley shares a story about Density raising $125M in funding, and noting that this follows VergeSense‘s recent $60M raise.
As landlords and building operators adopt technology to better run and keep their spaces safe, we can expect to see a bunch more money going into the Analytics side of the proptech sector.
📱 Management system adds hardware integration partnership.
Proximity announced a new partnership with PowerBx, who provide enterprise hardware and integrated technology. The deal brings the former’s customers more choice and easier access to enterprise-grade hardware.
In short: integrations are on the up and up. Watch this space.
📹 Coworking videos.
🖖 Could hologram-rooms be next?
With all the talk about the metaverse and augmented reality, the idea of holograms seems to be back on the metaphorical table. This PBS NewsHour clip features a hologram company that’s partnering with WeWork to bring holograms into their meeting spaces.
h/t Liz Elam via GCUC community.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
John Kennedy and Brian Moron from NoCo discuss the benefits of remote working locations in Ireland.
Tim Lowe and Nick Donnelly chat about the formation of WorkClub and the early days and how everything changed when the global pandemic struck.
Cate Maiolini from Salto, Kofi Oppong of Urban MBA, and Victoria Omobuwajo of Sunmo discuss “What if everyone was an entrepreneur” in this recorded panel from a recent London Coworking Assembly event.
Bernie Mitchell chats with Barbara Andreatta of MOBacademy, Marc Navarro, and Sam Bender from Cobot about how to create and curate diverse and inclusive events.
📆 Coworking events.
🤝 Coworking + Sponsors
Nov 19. Coworking Convo dives into working with sponsors to strengthen coworking brands.
🤓 Blog topics that members want to read.
Nov 22: Taylor Mason @ Talemaker will be hosting a webinar to share tried-and-true blog topic categories for coworking spaces. Attendees will get a framework for their blog article writing so they’re not just hoping for the best but rather creating content that will actually have an impact with their target members.
📙 ‘Around the world in 250 coworking spaces’ book launch.
Nov 25. Join the Coworkies team for their official coffee table book launch.
💻 Livestream of IDEA keynote.
Dec 1: The European Coworking Assembly and the Coworking IDEA Project invite your to watch the live stream of their Coworking Europe keynote on “How to transform diversity and inclusion into a driver of growth for your community, your membership, and your revenue”.
💼 Coworking jobs.
Find or post coworking jobs for free here.