🎉 Coworking celebrations.
🎂 Spacemade turned two!
Congrats Jonny Rosenblatt, Dan Silverman and the whole Spacemade team!
This Week is sponsored by…DeskNow
Manage your coworking space with DeskNow and reach more customers through our integrated HybridWork marketplace. Digital. Flexible. Free.
💌 This Year In Coworking lands in email inboxes next week.
This Year In Coworking for 2021 will be email-first. This means that email subscribers will receive the summary via email a couple of weeks before the web version is published online.
Got any colleagues who might want early access?
Invite them to subscribe for free today.
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Coworking news & views.
📱 Maps profiles now default to video verification.
Following on the changes to Google Business Profiles (prev. Google My Business), the platform now asks users to use video to verify new listings.
Videos should include the current location (including outdoor signage and/or street name), business equipment and proof of management in one continuous recording.
Given the changes to rules for businesses in coworking spaces back in Feb, it may be a matter of time before these will also need to be shown in video verifications.
😲 Why some companies and brokers are leaning away from flex.
Cynthia Bernard from Leosquare (a boutique office-hunting firm in Paris) shares that most searches that began seeking coworking or ultra-flex space, landed up taking longer-term leases, in order to lock in prices and avoid rent spikes.
I’ve not heard of ramping up coworking prices for happy members being a popular tactic, not since the early days of business centers, but maybe I’ve missed this. Alternatively could it be a market-specific strategy?
🖐 Quizzing one of Europe’s most influential coworking leaders.
What if I told you there was one human that (apart from being part of a volunteer association to restore an old local brewery) is on the board of a national coworking federation, leads the world’s largest coworking perks program, is heavily involved with rural coworking across Europe and helps out with the Global Coworking Survey?
Well that person is Johanna Voll, and in this short Q&A Sam Bender from Cobot quizzes her about each of these coworking-enabling projects.
🖐 Another 5 trends to watch in the future of work.
Mara Hauser, the Founder & CEO of the independent brand 25N Coworking and GWA board member, was interviewed about the future of work, societal changes, how tech has advanced working from anywhere and more.
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💻 Coworking technology.
✅ Reservation-less flex bookings for all platforms via unified API.
Syncaroo dropped a surprise end-of-the-year upgrade for all platform developers leveraging their multi-platform data syncing API & infrastructure.
The upgrade allows booking apps & other end-user platforms to reserve access to a space or desk, without making the employee or member manually reserve a specific desk, and have that reservation double-checked and handled in all two-way integrated property management systems.
As a bonus, live availability counts (for now, today and ‘soon’) for synced resources were also added to help speed up the development time for platforms across the ecosystem.
🤖 Management system adds AI predictions to the equation.
Nexudus shared that over the last 12 months, a dedicated team of data experts have been trying to create a set of artificial intelligence models to help operators identify patterns that have a direct impact on the way the different amenities are used and the predicted demand for them.
In short, they’re mixing close to 10 years of data and nearly 4 million bookings across 90+ countries, with other data sources (like local weather, events and road traffic) to give operators an accurate behaviour and demand prediction. These predictions are then turned into actionable insights and recommendations.
🇳🇿 NZ shared space platform upgrades search experience.
Matt Knight shared that Sharedspace are wrapping up 2021 with an upgraded search experience. Although the platform lists more than just coworking and flex space, it does map 344 office spaces in New Zealand alongside other shared resources like car parking space, commercial kitchens, event space, retail spaces, shoot locations and storage space.
I am a huge fan of bringing coworking and flex space discovery and bookings into wider networks around sharing different kinds of resources, spaces and experiences.
Booking platform expands to almost 50 countries.
Desana shared their annual summary, which included that they’re now offering desk/office booking in almost 50 countries and tripled the number of workspaces in their network.
2022 is going to definitely be an interesting year for the booking infrastructure around coworking & flex, but more on that next week in the annual summary.
🚀 Booking app expands out of the UK, and into 53 countries.
James Solomides shares NearU‘s annual summary, which apart from their geo-expansion included a complete rebrand, quadrupled the number of workspaces available, introduced an employee collab tool and developed advanced analytics for enterprise clients.
Coworking data.
🔮 7 predictions for 2022 workspace strategies
Instant have taken inspiration from the seminal model set out by Stephen R. Covey in his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ to highlight their workspace strategy predictions for 2022.
The blog post, and it’s attached report dig into a wide range of stats worth noting including that in the UK coworking space occupancy sits at up to 80% (and is higher in some locations) compared to less than 40% in conventional office space and that demand in regional cities and suburban locations continues to increase despite lockdowns abating.
🇸🇬 More flex components expected in Singaporean officing next year
Charlen Chin looks into the Singaporean CRE market for this EdgeProp piece.
The piece dives into utilization data alongside insights from Alan Cheong (from Savills Singapore), Tay Huey Ying (from JLL Singapore), Tricia Song and David McKellar (both from CBRE).
h/t Lawrence Tan for sharing.
Coworking market moves.
🎥 Coworking OG returns to Hollywood space.
Jerome Chang shared that BLANKSPACES are once again operating the coworking space he had designed back in 2016, located right on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
An interesting development for the brand that’s been building coworking communities in SoCal since 2008, as this space will also be the largest of their 6 locations.
🇨🇭 Swiss network restructures
Jenny Schaepper-Uster shares that the VillageOffice association will be re-established with a new structure from January 2022.
In short: they’ll be moving IP and brand to a non-profit, ongoing projects will be taken over by CommunityOffice, and a tech offering called Flesk is being rolled out as a tool for coworking spaces.
This announcement ends the network’s (of 82 Swiss spaces) run as a coop, but aligns their focus on 3 ways they believe they can better support their original vision of “a comprehensive coworking network in Switzerland”.
🇮🇳 Brand looks to add 1M sqft of coworking space in 2022.
WeWork India are looking to add one million more square feet of coworking space to their portfolio in 2022.
Some interesting points to note from this story and remarks from CEO Karan Virwani: they are already leasing out 1.7M sqft (or 3-3.5k desks), over 50% of their planned expansion is already pre-committed by large co’s, the expansion will largely consist of asset-light rev-sharing deals, and they’ve turned profitable since November with Rs 800 crore (approx. $106M) in revenue for 2021.
A very insightful snapshot into the standing of a brand that hosts 65k desks across about 5M sqft in 36 locations in one of the worlds busiest coworking markets.
🎯 PropTech co. announces yet another listing site acquisition.
Rob Teel shares that Yardi have acquired 42Floors. The website becomes the fifth addition to their CommercialEdge Listing Network.
Although this is more CRE than flex/coworking, it’s def a sign of where things are/might be going in listing, data and aggregation in our part of the market where transactions are smaller, but far greater in volume.
🎲 Brokerage triples down on flex.
Colliers have taken their focus on flex to the next level (see Market Moves in w45/21 for when they doubled down on flex), releasing a Flexible Workspace Trend Forecast 2022 downloadable report, dropping a podcast (see discussion section for the first two episodes) and streamlining points-of-contact across Americas, EMEA and APAC.
The worlds biggest brokerages are shifting increased focus into flex to help enterprises adapt rapidly to the constantly changing world of work today.
🆕 Brand announces new location in Provo, Utah
Brighton Youd announced a new Kiln location opening in fall ’22 in Provo. This hub will join the 5 locations the brand already operates across Utah, Idaho and Colorado.
There’s definitely a growing trend of brands expanding to offer spaces across the entrepreneurial hubs of ‘The West’.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Jack Macejka and I chat about the future of coworking, and how the next 5 million members may find, access and leverage flex workspaces around the world.
Kofi Oppong, Carmen Lecuane, and Aiden Saunders discuss how the Black Lives Matter Movement has come so far and how has it made a difference.
Liz Elam and Miro Miroslavov discuss the FlexIndex report and where the industry is headed.
Will Burchfield chats with Michael King from WeWork about how enterprise orgs are integrating flex workspace into their wider strategies.
Jonathan Wright and Ryan Simonetti discuss how Convene is supporting corporate occupiers, navigating the new hybrid working future and how they partner with landlords.
📆 Coworking events.
🔔 Last day to submit 4min Coworking Trends survey.
Dec 31: The survey that aims to examine the current business situation of coworking spaces and other providers of flexible workspaces around the world is closing on Dec 31st 2021. If you’ve not taken the 4-8min questionnaire, this is your chance.
💼 Coworking jobs.
Find or post coworking jobs for free here.
