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✊ Coworking impact.
🇺🇦 A year on, how coworking has evolved in Ukraine #
The Ukrainian Coworking Association shares how local coworking spaces have evolved and helped their local communities since the first days of the invasion.
👉 Read this.
⚽️ Local operator raises money through football tournament #
William Stokes shares that Co-Space hosted a football cup and raised almost £2,000 for the Stevenage FC Foundation to help their local community realize their potential.
I truly believe that coworking spaces (and their alliances) plus sport can have a huge impact on members, local communities and for combined philanthropic efforts.
👉 Read this.
📓 What is the IDEA Handbook all About? #
Coworking is built on five key values: community, openness, sustainability, collaboration and accessibility. For our community to make sure we are guided by these values and informed by them in our decisions, we need to ensure that all of our members know exactly what these values entail and how to go about implementing them.
The IDEA Handbook has been a work in progress for several years and been guided by many people experienced in coworking as well as folks with lived experience to ensure that this book helps operators make their community Inclusive, Diverse, Equitable, and Accessible.
👉 Read this.
Coworking news & views.
⏱️ 2-min crash course on rhetorical devices #
Harry Dry shares a bunch of great examples of 8 rhetorical devices (or techniques used to win an audience to your side) that you could use for your content, ads, emails, tours or more.
👉 Read this.
🎬 From an Academy Award to coworking #
A Q&A with Oli Barry about switching from TV to coworking, and the history of Village Workspaces (the second oldest space in LA).
👉 Read this.
🎲 Tabletop game co shares why coworking worked for them #
Jamey Stegmaier shares how the team at Stonemaier Games went from working from home offices for over a decade to trying out a coworking space, and how that went.
Another lovely example of happy newcomers to the movement sharing their experience with their community, thanks SG!
👉 Read this.
😢 Local makerspace faces doubling of rent #
Thilo Utke shares news that xHain is facing the doubling of their rent or possible eviction.
With office buildings coming under more and more financial stress, and therefor changing hands, this could highlight a growing risk for some coworking space operators.
👉 Read this.
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💻 Coworking technology.
🔮 5 tech trends shaping coworking #
Salto shares 5 emerging trends shaping coworking technology. In short, they are smart-tech convenience, seamless experiences, enterprise-grade security, the importance of tech integrations, and data leverage.
👉 Read this.
💳 Booking platform passes £1M revenue mark #
Harry Wilson-Hallberg shares that FlowSpace have passed the milestone of generating £1M in revenue. I assume this means that a significant part of that went to operators receiving bookings through their platform.
👉 Read this.
💰 One-stop-shop platform for managing remote workers raises $12M #
Gable have raised $12M in their Series A (following a $3.25M Seed) for their platform that lets employees search for and book spots at available workspaces in 26 countries.
As mentioned in previous newsletters, the interfaces through which millions of new flex space users will find and book your spaces are still being imagined and built, keep an eye on this area of the market, and how you’re integrating them with your operations and tech stacks.
👉 Read this.
Coworking data.
💰 70% of Vision Fund portfolio co’s expect to be hybrid this year #
Each quarter the SoftBank Vision Fund surveys leaders across their portfolio across a range of topics. This time we saw that, with regards to expected work modality in 2023, 70% were leaning towards Hybrid, 11% Fully remote and only 19% Fully in office. Interestingly 58% noted that Hybrid made CEO’s jobs harder.
👉 Read this.
🇨🇦 Flex space demand, rates and occupancy all up in Toronto #
The Instant Group share that flex space demand in Toronto is up 27% in 2022 over 2021. Broken down further requests for 1-2 desks was up 21%, 3-9 desks up 51%, 9-25 desks up 2% and 25+ desks up 47%. Following this demand, rates have gone up 8% YoY (year-on-year).
👉 Read this.
🚫 1.4B sqft of office stock could be competitively obsolete by 2030 #
Bisnow shares a summary of Cushman & Wakefield’s report on the future state of office buildings in the US. They note that by 2030, as much as 25% of all U.S. offices (~1.4B sqft) is “growing increasingly undesirable and will need to be reimagined and made relevant for the future,” the report found. It called these buildings “functionally obsolete.”
I’d expect to see some clever moves from coworking and flex space operators here.
👉 Read this.
🧮 Some stats into the PON #
Caroline Hecht and the Preferred Office Network share a summary of the results of their recent network-wide survey across 217 brands with 800+ locations.
Although the actual report is behind a soft email-gate, the post does share some stats like the average size being 15,178 sqft, 70% of operators being involved in local philanthropic efforts, 31% are women or minority owned/operated, and that 64% have implemented sustainability products or processes.
👉 Read this.
☕️ The price of Starbucks by country #
Visual Capitalist shares a fascinating graphic showing the price of a Starbucks Tall Latte in every country.
The data peaked my interest in two ways, firstly – does the price variation correspond to those of say a hot desk, and that brings me to the second – it’s probably about time we had some kind of standardized unit to compare pricing across buildings, brands, regions, countries, etc.
👉 Read this.
💂♀️ 18% of London cos are shifting to coworking & flex offices #
Bloomberg reports that a quarter of London businesses are shrinking their office footprints, giving up traditional long leases and a further 18% are opting for coworking and flexible office spaces. The report follows a survey of 500 London workers by Bloomberg Intelligence.
👉 Read this.
Coworking market moves.🎙 Coworking conversations.
Cat Johnson chats with creative entrepreneur Ev Chapman on the Coworking Out Loud podcast about how coworking space operators can prioritize content and how brands that aren’t creating content will get left behind.
Chris Davies shares about the importance of space, good bones, digital detox, the logic behind expansion, and investing in your team with Liz Elam on the GCUC podcast.
Katie Vaughan chats with Jamie Russo and Giovanni Palavicini about Enterprise Coworking, career transitions, brand building, F&B offerings and being like Cheers on the Flex Uncensored podcast.