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🎉 Coworking celebrations.
🇨🇾 Coworking space wins bi-communal award for business cooperation
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder and owner of easy family of brands, announced the 10x €10,000 winners of his annual Bi-Communal Awards for Business Cooperation. One of winning pairs was Steven Stavrou & Burak Doluay, the duo behind The Base a coworking space built in the demilitarized zone on the island of Cyprus.
The aim of the awards is to encourage cooperation between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriot businessmen, with the goal of establishing lasting peace on the island. The bi-communal annual awards were introduced in 2009.
👉 Read this.
🧁 Venture X Scott’s Addition turns 3
Thanks for supporting local businesses and remote workers for 3 years !
👉 Read this.
✊ Coworking impact.
🆘 Street-level space’s new Mental Health Awareness Week window displays.
Elliot Gold shares a snap of Work.Life’s newest window displays, sharing a notion I think we can all agree with: “Working alone sucks” followed by the hashtag #IveBeenThere.
He does note that “flexibility is important, but I think many more of us than we’d like to admit need the social aspect of work.” Agreed Elliot!
👉 Read this.
🌱 May Coworking IDEA challenge: SDGs
This month, Raïsa Mirza from the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement challenges us to Take Action Towards the Sustainable Development Goals. If the SDG’s are new to you, it’s a fantastic way to learn more!
👉 Read this.
Coworking news & views.
🛒 Coworking + groceries?
Tesco (the UK’s largest grocer) have announced a partnership with IWG to convert excess space in a supermarket into a 3,8k sqft work hub. The pilot will run on a mezzanine floor inside a store in South London and offer 12 fixed desks, 30 hotdesks and a meeting room.
UK twitter and LinkedIn took humorous pokes at the news, but given that supermarkets often have excess space and are often located near heavily residential areas or along heavy transportation routes. So Mark Dixon‘s statement about people wanting to live and work in their local communities makes more sense of this news. I mean I’m very curious about how it’ll look/feel, but I do think we’ll see more underutilized space shift towards providing affordable workspaces for stickier footfall.
👉 Read this.
📝 Why every workspace operator should write down their ideas.
Taylor Mason shares a quick post highlighting 4 benefits of writing down your ideas, regardless of whether you run a single space, a hundred locations or are selling your concept to landlords or brokers.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 Bringing more affordable workspace (and housing) to Shoreditch.
In one of London’s most popular areas, there was a puzzling amount of unused space surrounding the Shoreditch High Street station. This space (prev. the Bishopsgate Goods Yard site) will be regenerated through The Goodsyard a £900M (~$1.1B) project that was just given the green light by the Mayor’s Office.
The project includes 500 new homes (1/2 of which are deemed ‘affordable’ housing) and according to the report will become one of the largest providers of affordable workspace in London.
👉 Read this.
🇨🇦 Is there a better way for Canada’s gov. to enable coworking & community clubs?
Tessa McLoughlin asks why Canada’s Provincial & Federal Governments are not partnering or supporting experienced operators, but are instead investing taxpayers’ money into building and managing their own coworking spaces.
👉 Read this.
🇪🇸 Could this be the flashiest coworking launch event ever?
Adam Blaskey shares a launch event video. You’d be excused for thinking the red carpet, ceremony and overall feel of the event was for a new movie release or a music awards show. But actually, it’s for the launch of The Music Station, a new coworking space and creative hub by Warner Music Spain and Warner Chappell Music within a former train station in Madrid, Spain.
Interesting to see more and more industries launching shared space and resources for their communities, suppliers, clients, and partners.
👉 Read this.
🤔 What’s more important, great tech or great real estate?
John Preece shares thought experiment for knowledge centric business that highlights that real estate is ‘largely dumb infrastructure in its current form’.
I know that for many workspace operators (and landlords leaning into flex) tech is often an after thought by necessity, but as that changes, it’ll be exciting to see how much “smarter” and hospitable (and inclusive) offices will become.
👉 Read this.
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💻 Coworking technology.
📈 2.2M sync events processed between flex space platforms
Syncaroo share a glimpse into how data-syncing between previously disconnected flex workspace platforms is climbing. Since Sept 2021 over 2M events were processed in total, but given that Aprilsaw some 604k sync events alone, this number is expected to keep growing as more and more operators, platforms, and service providers integrate with the data-syncing infrastructure built for flex spaces.
Increasingly, flex space success could realistically come down to how well operators can move, trust and leverage data across their business apps, services, providers and partners.
👉 Read this.
✅ Global CRE firm launches whitelabelled workplace experience platform.
Cushman & Wakefield launched their own workplace experience platform called CushAPP (powered by spaceOS) to bring access to amenities within buildings, and enables landlords to optimize operational processes, like space and community management.
Why it matters: Landlords are leveraging tech to provide more hospitality to larger tenants and their employees. As the lines get blurrier between flex offices and coworking, providing the best overall experience will be a differentiator.
👉 Read this.
📦 A few ideas on managing deliveries at your coworking space.
Katie Kistler from ButterflyMX shares some insights on andcards‘ blog into 3 of the different package/delivery management systems available coworking spaces, and what to consider when choosing a solution.
👉 Read this.
Coworking data.
📜 800+ coworking locations closed permanently during the pandemic
Ben Wright shares 5 interesting insights around the 800+ locations that were closed permanently since the start of the pandemic, alongside demand data from Upsuite.
In short they are that operators are looking for larger spaces, 1/3 of those that closed were reopened (often by other operators or with single tenants), who took over the most of their competitors’ closed locations, and that there may still be moves being made on the larger of the closed spaces.
👉 Read this.
🇮🇳 Operator in India reports profitability, expecting 33% growth
WeWork India have reported their first profitable quarter in Q1, with Rs. 250 crore in revenue (~$32M) and around 10% in profits at EBITA (I believe that’s not community adjusted).
CEO Karan Virwani predicts a 33% growth with revenue up 4x to Rs. 1,000 crore on the back of strong demand for flexible workspaces, they also attributed increased floor space and upselling of existing customers as strong factors for growth.
Why is this in the newsletter? The Indian coworking market is currently the second (if not first already) biggest in the world. A lot of trends from this market can act as indicators for other geographic markets.
👉 Read this.
Coworking market moves.
💰 US-based operator buys into Europe and APAC markets
Craig Robinson shares the news that Industrious have expanded through acquisitions in both Europe and APAC markets.
The US-based firm acquired Great Room (with locations in Singapore, Bangkok & Hong Kong) and Welkin & Meraki (with locations in Paris, Brussels & the Netherlands).
The linked article also notes that CEO Jamie Hodari said that the firm aims to double its international presence, but was not considering raising further capital, “unless timing is right and capital markets are receptive”.
Interestingly the Bloomberg report also mentions that their revenue run rate is $250M, and that revenues for the last quarter of ’21 were up 37% from the previous quarter, in comparison to WeWork‘s 9% increase over the same period.
👉 Read this.
🛴 Newest Coworking Perk: Electric Scooters?
Unagi – a high-end, e-scooter manufacturer is launching exclusive shared scooter service that will see its slick e-scooters available to rent at hotels, luxury apartments and coworking spaces.
“Unagi on Demand,” as the offering is called, is kicking off at the Hoxton Hotel in Los Angeles, as well as Common Luxury Apartments, Nap York Sleeping Pods and The Yard Coworking in New York City.
“Unagi is a perfect fit with the culture, community, and design focus of our coworking spaces.” said Michelle Segev, senior operations manager at The Yard. “Unagi adds a super convenient transportation amenity to members at the Yard, allowing them to focus on their business rather than the logistics of running errands and getting to meetings around the city”
👉 Read this.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Jamie Russo and Ann Long discuss expanding Burbity Workspaces from 4k sqft of coworking space, to 28k sqft of coworking space + 12k sqft of cowarehousing space through management agreements.
Guy Raz chats with Miguel McKelvey about the WeWork IPO, the Apple TV series and what he’s been working on since leaving the firm after going public.
Ben Wright and Jamie Russo discuss the ‘holy grail for many flexible workspace operators’ – attracting enterprise members.
Douglas Green shares two reasons why building owners are entering into joint ventures with experienced flex workspace operators.
📆 Coworking events.
👋 Discuss this newsletter.
13 May: Discuss this week’s links, the news and the trends they represent with other readers and operators.
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🇺🇸 GCUC North America in Seattle
17-19 May: GCUC will be taking place in Seattle.
👉 Read this.
🤗 Convo: Creating a space of belonging
27 May: How do you foster a culture of belonging in your space? Let’s chat about it.
👉 Read this.