Week 24, 2022

John Preece from Hub Australia summarizes Dror Poleg‘s recent article called ‘Airbnb and the Abstraction of Location’.

Both the summary and the article are good reads that highlight how Airbnb changed how people booked trips by focussing on types of experiences first (before dates/locations/price) and Spotify changed how music was discovered through types or activities (as oppose to genres).

Makes us think how would, or could, workers pick workspaces other than proximity, price and amenities. From what I’m seeing with the aggregators and booking platforms in development, a lot of amazing teams are already experimenting with new ways of workspace discovery.

Peter Miscovich from JLL prognosticates on the future of offices and workspaces. It’s an interesting read about their new book, and what they’re seeing with regards to office leases, but this caught my eye:

"And this is where flex-work, coworking, workplace as a service, shorter-term leasing comes in. We are seeing some clients look to ownership for the longer term, in parallel with longer-term leasing. But then we’re seeing a lot of variability in terms of flexible leasing, shorter-term leasing, coworking, satellite offices. I think building owners, landlords and developers will have a very diverse landscape in the future."

Freddie Fforde from Patch shares a retort to a recent article that made the case that physical retail was "permanently scarred" by the shift to WFH.

The point is made that yes, high streets (aka main streets) are changing around the world, but this couldbe a net-positive, as local economies shift from rows of the same shops and brands to something more neighborly, inclusive and supportive.

For a long time we’ve been watching as brands bring coworking spaces and other remote working hubs into the center of towns, villages and suburbs. With this stickier footfall, it could create a whole new kind of hyperlocal economy within these areas.

"Launched in December 2021 by the Università Ca’ Foscari and the Fondazione di Venezia – a nonprofit group that protects Venice’s cultural heritage – Venywhere encourages location-independent workers to base themselves in the Italian city."

Apart from a paid soft-landing service (sourcing SIM cards, setting up bank accounts, helping with visas, understanding local tax, public transport assistance, local recommendations and even viewing short-term apartments) the platform also offers members access to coworking spaces in contemporary art districts, 18th-century museums and a former Renaissance convent.

This also follows Italy introducing 1-year digital nomad visas for non-EU nationals. Great to see cities and their local organizations getting creative to help attract more remote workers.

Jacob Bates, from JLL Flex, shares how the evolution of the workplace has moved competition between providers to put focus on the people first.

It’s an interesting take on how "v2.0" of Property Management is focussed on experience, engagement, wellness and new bundled services for the people using workspaces.

andcards shares a guest post around leveraging paid ads (PPC in particular) to drive demand towards your coworking space. They share 7 tips from A/B testing, competitor analysis and customer research.

Please keep in mind that PPC campaigns can get very expensive very quickly if they’re not run with strict budgets and conversion tracking in place.

Barbara Sprenger from Deskworks shared her 3 key takeaways from the recent coworking even in Seattle as coworking grows in lots of directions.

They are that there’s a lot of room for different types of operators and business models; there’s a shift in power required between aggregators and space operators; and the conference program and attendees were wonderful.

Madlen Freudenberg shares why they believe that "The future of work is coworking. Coworking is the future of work."

In short, coworking fulfills two basic human needs, is a driver of local development and fits nicely into the other megatrends of new work and connectivity.