The team at Syncaroo wishes you and yours a safe, healthy, happy, and prosperous 2024.
As for your coworking business, may your year be filled with human connections, sales, growth, and as little tab-switching, copy-pasting, and keyboard-smashing as possible.
Looking to get your team back to doing more of what they joined your business to do, and less repetitive screen-based work? Let’s chat.
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β Coworking impact.
π Revitalization gets historic building removed from Heritage at Risk Register #
Warren McGrath shares how Castleforge (a PR real estate investment firm) bought the Bromley Old Town Hall added coworking (Clockwise), a hotel (Brama Hotels) and an eatery (Dorothy and Marshall) during the restoration.
The building was built in 1907, had additions in 1939 and served as a hub for the local community till 2007. In 2009 it was added to Historic Englandβs Heritage at Risk register, which identifies sites that are most at risk of being lost as a result of neglect, decay or inappropriate development.
Good save Castleforge! Great to see coworking as part of the saving mixture.
π Read this.
Coworking news & views.
π€ “Coworking is failing” says shared space co-founder #
Codi founder Christelle Rohaut shares their thoughts in Fortune magazine about how both commercial real estate and and "WeWork’s co-working model" are failing.
We can all (probably) agree that WeWork’s previous model needs work, but that their "latest bankruptcy filing represents an indictment of the coworking business model as a whole", I think not.
Do more people want access to private spaces? Yes. Do teams want more meeting and thinking spaces? Yes. Are corporations getting involved with, and allowing their teams to pick spaces? Yes. Can, and will, amazing community and business leaders around the world adapt to serve the changing needs? Again, YES.
IMHO: Coworking, with or without the hyphen, Christelle, is indeed part of the answer.
π Read this.
π‘ Who TF rents out houses as a workspace anyways? #
The Onfolk team (and others like them) use platforms like Jarvo to book houses for their teams to hang out and build together IRL. I love seeing more usage of different types of flex spaces, and am watching eagerly to see the usage of this against, or alongside, ‘traditional flex’ options in the long term.
As noted in the 2023 recap, what flex space looks like or will look like is in flux. Some may book homes, some may book private offices, others may book open plans, whereas an entire organization may have teams and individuals who leverage all depending on circumstances, projects and work styles.
π Read this.
πͺ And behind (locker) door one is… an owl!? #
Geoff Wood shares that since 2019 a fake owl has lived within a locker at Gravitate Coworking Downtown.
This raises three immediate questions: 1. What’s the owls name? 2. Are lockers no longer popular with members? 3. If this locker was actually booked this whole time, by whoooo?
π Read this.
π©βπ³ What’s missing from the recipe for a coworking renaissance #
Tony Bacigalupo shares the one thing we need for 2024 to be a coworking renaissance: the message. More notably, what’s been left on the table in our collective messaging to date: spaces of belonging.
In this post, and video, Tony shares how we can create a new, urgent story that parallels the "return to work" storyline: "Belongful workers are better workers. Coworking is in the business of belongfulness."
π Read this.
π¨β𦽠3 tips for designing wheelchair accessible workspaces #
The team at Rayon shared 3 reminders for workspaces who need their offices and open-plan workspaces to be more accessible (ie all of us).
In short: 1. keep pathways wide (150cm+) and obstacle free. 2. use clear, visible signage to help with accessible navigation. 3. offer adjustable-height workstations.
π Read this.
π Paper: emerging trends and categories of rural coworking #
Marko Orel, Associate Professor and Head of Centre for Workplace Research at Prague University of Economics and Business, shares that their latest paper (alongside Ignacio SΓ‘nchez, Valeria Ferreira Gregorio and Andrej Rus) has been published.
Key takeaways from the paper on rural coworking trends are the focus on community, their business opportunities and their strategic importance. Looove seeing academic papers expanding their scope outside of traditional coworking in city centers.
π Read this.
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π» Coworking technology.
πΉ Floor plan app adds inter-system notifications #
Aaron Fritsch shares that floorplanning software Archilogic have added webhooks, a feature that lets their system notify other systems about changes.
Expect more and more integration-focussed features from almost every single workspace/proptety tech platform and company throughout 2024.
π Read this.
π§βπ» VO booking platform introduces management software solution #
Ramon ten Tije shares that Flexado (the virtual office and office booking platform) have rolled out their own software solution for running a virtual office business.
The software (which includes automated compliance, inventory management, risk analysis, post management & scanning, and member communication tools) enters a pretty crowded market, but with virtual mail becoming a bigger part of the coworking revenue stack, there’s potentially room to carve out a new kind of management system.
π Read this.
π€ What many gen AI use-cases get wrong. #
Allie K. Miller nails the growing trend of using generative AI, at least IMHO, by saying that it is "creating a bunch of cr*p". In the post, a cartoon by marketoonist pokes fun that one person uses AI to turn a single bullet point into a long email, and the recipient uses AI to turn that long email into a single bullet point summary.
But on a more serious note, we’re seeing a LOT of noise created by AI or AI-assisted tools. From comments, to posts, to videos and even blog content around coworking (tonnes of which get filtered out by TWIC filters each week), if everyone has the ability to quickly "generate" 100s of pieces of content – then it’s only a matter of time before those channels lose their usefulness to anyone not creating better-than-great content.
Keep this in mind as you no doubt assess where you should or shouldn’t leverage Gen AI and automation to streamline your business in 2024. Pro-tip: automate tedious processes, but keep everything that reaches customers controlled by those who understand them the most, your humans.
π Read this.
π° 3D space planning software co closing β¬2M round with β¬150k crowdfund #
Bright Spaces, which offers tech to turn 2D plans into 3D tours and 3D digital twins for both office and residential buildings, are closing off their latest funding round with around 7.5% of the allocation listed on crowdfunding platform SeedBlink.
Is this coworking-specific? No. Is the tech cool? Yeap. But we’re also seeing a lot of innovation from "floor-planning" platforms like Rayon and Archilogic, so def an area worth watching.
π Read this.
Coworking data.
ποΈ 26% of employees made their desk bookings on Tuesdays #
Omar Ramirez from inspace shares two bits of interesting data from their employee-centric booking platform in 2023.
Namely they share that 57% of bookings are between Tue & Thurs, (only) 4% of bookings were made on Sunday whilst 26% were made on Tuesdays.
π Read this.
π 10 industry trends driving coworking in 2024 #
The andcards team compiled insights from 150+ industry professionals to produce a report of the top 10 trends in coworking to keep an eye on.
They include community connections, rural retreats, boutique-vs-corporate vibes, redefined offices, niche experiences, eco-friendliness, coliving + coworking, franchising, live-work buildings, and tech-driven coworking. The report also includes some insights from some of the industry’s top community leaders.
π Read this.
Coworking market moves.
π¨ Brand opens registrations for their work club in historic Atlanta hotel #
Switchyards 10th "work club" location in Atlanta opens on Jan 12th in the historic Biltmore Hotel.
I love their approach to preselling memberships and think it’s a technique others can/should also leverage to grow excitement and avoid the dreaded empty-space dilemma of touring a newly opened space.
π Read this.
πͺπΈ Coworking operator awarded fintech hub project in Barcelona #
Naiara Chaler and Quino FernΓ‘ndez share that the Generalitat (the political institution that self-governs Catalonia) have awarded the financial ‘hub’ of Borsa de Barcelona to Cospace, who own the Aticco coworking chain.
The 6-year contract requires Attico to pay β¬224,240 per year (approx β¬18,700 p/month) and that they "must convert five of the nine floors into offices specialized in the promotion and development of national and international financial projects, which provide support for sturtups in the emerging and growth."
Interestingly, the Tech Barcelona association, who proposed the plan to turn emblematic buildings into offices for digital companies 3 years ago, did not participate due to the Government’s requirements for the project.
π Read this.
π΅π° Kickstart gets 40k sqft and PKR 200M investment via landlord partnerships #
Saad Riaz shares that Kickstart is planning to double it coworking footprint in Karachi in Q1, adding 40k sqft in a market where "quality office space is scarce".
The space is being added, and funded to the tune of around $700k, through landlord partnerships. This is the network’s 12th coworking location.
π Read this.
π¨π¦ On-demand workspace network installs 6th Toronto location #
Jesse Sharratt shares that LAUFT‘s 6th on-demand workspace location on King Street in Toronto just got their news signage installed.
This is definitely an interesting twist on coworking, and I’m curious to watch how/if they’ll land up partnering with more booking interfaces and/or workspace operators as they scale.
π Read this.
π¦ New York gets new cowarehousing operator #
Seth Rosenblum introduces their newest project, Launchbox Flexible Warehouse Suites, that provides individuals warehouse and work suites between 150 and 1k sqft plus access to shared spaces and amenities.
Cowarehousing is def a growing trend both in North America, but also in ecommerce hotspots across Europe.
π Read this.
πΊπΈ Landlord-partnership-driven LocalWorks announces 3 new locations #
Barry Greenfield shares that LocalWorks have kicked off 2024 with multiple new locations, including: Louisville KY, Rockville MD (their 2nd there), downtown Chicago, and Fairfax VA (their 3rd there). They also hint at more locations can be expected to be announced this month.
π Read this.
π Coworking conversations.
Emily Watkins from The Instant Group shares her top 3 predictions (ecosystems in corporate real estate, the need for larger meeting rooms, and continuous improvement in user experience) and how landlords are entering the flex space market with Gio and Jamie on the Flex Uncensored podcast.
π§ Listen to this.
