Final reminder to share your lead-gen stats.
A quick reminder that Friday, Sept 30 is the last day to submit your stats on where your best-converting leads are coming from.
So far I’m already seeing big shifts from the data shared by operators in the US, Netherlands, and Canada. Can’t wait to dig in and discuss the findings with you all.
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✊ Coworking impact.
🇬🇧 New affordable workspace tender opportunity #
Islington Council have announced a new affordable workspace tender opportunity for approx. 390 sqm of new affordable workspace within the Regents Wharf development.
The formal tender for the 10-year lease at peppercorn rent is expected to officially launch in early 2023, but they’d like to start informal dialogue with any interested operators looking to partner with them to deliver the local economic and social impact they’re looking for.
👉 Read this.
💚 How a sustainable coworking space impacts and inspires a whole region in Germany #
Coworking spaces are eco-friendly by default. Various people work in one space and share the utilities. However, we can still make it more sustainable. Alicia Feig and her mother Karin are an actual power couple – and now the owners of one of Cowirken the first rural sustainable coworking spaces in South Germany!
Simone from Pappus asked a range of questions like applying the concept of sustainability in terms of workplace amenities and design, attracting and retaining members, and if sustainability be considered a global trend.
👉 Read this.
Coworking news & views.
🇦🇹 How two coworking brands chose cooperation over competition #
Lucia Schramm-Kainede shares the backstory of how COWORK OÖ and CoWorkLand partnered up to launch their first regional office in Austria.
ICMY: CoWorkLand eG is a self-organization of coworking space operators in rural areas and supports space founders with a shared infrastructure, qualification and advisory services. Educational work, conducting well-founded studies and political lobbying is also done.
👉 Read this.
👷♀️ Nichification: new coworking hub for women in construction #
9news shares a feature with Jessica Acosta who founded Edifice 2120, a coworking space designed to help women in construction run their businesses.
👉 Read this.
🤫 10 tips for dealing with noise in open plan workspaces #
andcards shares another guest post sharing 10 tips for dealing with noise. Tips include rearranging tables, culture changes, designated quiet spaces, headphones, partitions, carpets, fabric furniture, pods and plants.
👉 Read this.
💆 5 key takeaways for starting a successful niche coworking space #
Explore how Deborah Schoenblum and Rachael Berezin improved the lives of their clients and the greater community with their niche coworking space for therapists and other mental health practitioners called Brooklyn Hourly Offices.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 What’s next for WeWork and their members in the UK? #
Helena Young interviewed a few industry insiders about what could be next for WeWork (and the wider coworking industry). Whilst the CRE and coworking market watches what will happen to the firms 777 leases amounting to over $13B in obligations.
Will Kinnear from HEWN notes the brand changed the perception of flex space, even as the sector watched them do deals that didn’t stack up – most notably due to being able to raise capital fairly “easily”. Jacob Fisher from Runway East noted how the flex market is very unfriendly to companies who scale too quickly, and that they’ve seen clients jump over to them for more certainty.
👉 Read this.
🏋️♂️ Workspace in Brussels launches whole campaign on wellness #
Manhattan Brussels shared their new video promoting how their members can stay active and energized.
The video features their cycling amenities, fitness classes and gym infrastructure instead of just their workspace. I don’t actually think they share anything about their workspace in the video.
👉 Read this.
Share This Week's Summary
💻 Coworking technology.
🤓 A “short” summary on the tech panel I led last week #
I tried to write a short summary of the highlights of my discussion with Miro, Sofia, Ginger, and Brian at the GWA conference last week.
I failed at keeping it short, but hey, that’s what you get when you have an inspiring conversation with some of the best product-leaders across the flex space operating stack.
👉 Read this.
🔐 Firm introduces tiny access control system #
Jonas Arvidsson shares Parakey’s new ‘fits anywhere’ access control unit. The device size is just 46×46 millimeters. The devices can also be used to modernize any existing and traditional access systems on the market by simply reusing the infrastructure already in place.
👉 Read this.
🇪🇸 New booking platform aims to double size by end of year. #
Rafael Castilla and Oriol Torremadé share the thoughts behind Tribuapp, their progress so far (~2k desks available for booking) and what their goals are for the rest of the year.
Booking platforms will continue to be launched as corporate budgets tighten, rents increase, and barriers to creating a platform drop in both cost and complexity.
👉 Read this.
📱 Corp booking platform adds 1-button rebooking widgets #
Michael Cockburn shares that Desana now offer 2 sets of interesting iOS widgets designed to help individuals and teams keep track of their upcoming bookings and rebook meeting rooms or desk space from easy-to-access buttons.
Keep watching this space as platforms try to make finding, booking and rebooking space easier in order to help build habits around leveraging flex workspaces.
👉 Read this.
📲 Booking app makes rebooking easier #
The team at Flexday have improved the flow for individuals and teams to find, favorite and rebook coworking and meeting room space.
Another way for great operators to build brand loyalty through a third party booking platform or aggregator.
👉 Read this.
🇳🇿 NZ booking platform celebrates 12,000th listing #
Matt Knight shares that SharedSpace.co.nz is celebrating their 12,000th listed space.
👉 Read this.
📐 GenAI planning and visualization platform lands $10M #
Daniel Correa shares that JLL Spark is one of the strategic investors in qbiq’s $10M seed funding round. The firm uses generative AI to create customized layout alternatives and 3D visual tours to take space planning from weeks to minutes.
Expect to see more GenAI shifts into and adjacent to coworking, helping you and your clients quickly plan, adapt and refit offices, spaces and suites.
👉 Read this.
📲 The connection between tech + tenant experience #
Jacob Bates pens a piece (is that still a saying now that everyone types?) in Forbes about the connection between ‘tenant experience’ and technology. Noting a recent informal poll of why people come into the office, the no. 1 response was ‘experience’, followed closely was ‘technology’. Physical space? A distant third.
It’s a good piece, from a seasoned leader in the office/flex sector, and def includes some notes regarding technology that your businesses could explore or at least use as inspiration for your own spaces and communities. The future of tenant apps? Integrated and experiential tech.
👉 Read this.
Coworking data.
👏 Recent study confirms power of weak ties #
Steve King shares that LinkedIn’s recent study has confirmed the power of weak ties (ie casual acquaintances) and reminds us that coworking spaces increase the weak tie networks of their members, which in turn leads to more business opportunities.
👉 Read this.
💶 In Europe, flex supply slows but corporate demand grew in H1 #
Billy Hodges shared CBRE UK’s European Flex Office Market Update for the first half of 2023. It looks at slower operator take-up (as we’ve seen in other reports), how corporates are actually leveraging more flex space than they predicted they would last year, and that there’s also ‘significant room to grow’. The report also highlights how flex space operators and businesses are outperforming traditional leasing with regards to sustainability agendas.
👉 Read this.
🇩🇪 Flex space demand up 10x year-on-year in Germany #
REFIRE shares a summary of various market reports. A CBRE report notes that the “number of office tenants looking to lease more than half of their space flexibly has increased tenfold since last year”.
The piece also highlights new players or expansions from firms like Vonovia, Orangery and Primestar. Cushman & Wakefield notes that flex space accounts for just 1.1% of the total office stock in the Top 7 cities in Germany. Savills, however, predicts that the flex office segment will play an increasingly important role in European office markets, growing its share of the European office market to around 20% within ten years.
👉 Read this.
💚 How coworking helps employers solve employees wellbeing challenges #
Mindspace shared their Employee Wellbeing Insights 2023 report. Their survey of 2000 employed office workers across 7 countries uncovered a mental health crisis, and highlighted what employers can do about it.
The top way to improve employee wellbeing? 35% says flexible work options. Other ways coworking brands could help? Healthy eating options, offsites and on-site gyms.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 UK office outlook looks choppy #
Lee Wilkinson shares the PwC UK piece that looks at the state of the UK office market, whilst not strictly coworking-related data, it’s definitely data worth keeping in mind.
Key takeaways are that building costs are up 41% from 2020, 33M sqft of office space has an EPC rating of D or below, 9% of UK spaces have a EPC rating of F or G and not suitable for leasing.
👉 Read this.
🎓 Near-campus coworking #
Researchers at CoworkingCafe set out to determine where in the U.S. coworking is most accessible near a university campus. By analyzing the number of coworking spaces within a two-mile radius of the top 100 universities in the country, they found that 80% of them had at least 1 coworking space within 2 miles of the campus (with the median average being 3).
New York University boasts the highest number of coworking spaces around its campus – 220 – both nationally and in the Middle Atlantic area, George Washington University takes the 2nd spot nationally with 74 spaces, while the University of Illinois at Chicago rounds out the top 3 nationally with 66 coworking spaces.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 Was the 2021 spike just a blip? If so, what’s next? #
The Instant Group shared their most recent UK flex market report. The data is similar to what Instant CMO shared recently on stage at GWA last week, noting that the spike we all saw in 2021 may have just been a blip, but that demand is stabilizing.
Catalyst notes that “the report sets out the challenges and the opportunities in our sector, but what stands out noticeably is the opportunity in areas outside of London where demand outstrips supply: in towns and cities such as Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham and Bristol.”
👉 Read this.
Coworking market moves.
🏬 Coworking hubs coming to apartment communities #
Evan Fain shares Industrious’ first-of-its-kind partnership with AvalonBay Communities to bring inspiring workplaces into neighborhoods, closer to home. The pilot ‘Second Space’ locations are 1400 sqft and 2400 sqft and service a cumulative 800+ apartment units in South California. Members also enjoy access to other locations across the network.
Jamie Hodari shares a trend we’ve all been seeing in that the “evolution of work is showing that most workers don’t want to commute daily to office spaces, but don’t want to work from home every day either”.
👉 Read this.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Giovanni Palavicini and Jamie Russo chatted with Shlomo Silber about Bond Collective’s origins, brand positioning, expansion plans and… erm 500 deadlifts!?
Caleb Parker and Liz Elam recorded their chat about what they’re both seeing in the industry. That conversation is released as Ep1 of WorkBold Podcasts’ 8th season.
Ali Parnan chats with Christoph Fahle about how betahaus builds community on The Coworking Intern video series.
Hollie Sanglier chats with Emilie Lashmar and Jessica Samson about how to create community within spaces on The Spaces That Shape Us podcast.
Megan Brown, Cid Rhomberg, Giovanni Palavacini share the highlight reel of this year’s GWA Flex Forward Conference and announces next year’s conference venue and the Immersive location for May 2023 on the Flex Uncensored podcast.
Heather Harris digs into how Intelligent Office is reigniting their growth with Gio and Jamie on the Flex Uncensored podcast.
Jamie Russo digs into the rise and fall of WeWork, their historical focus on unit economics, and how independent operators to create and grow profitable businesses.
📆 Coworking events.
🎯 Convo: Attract Perfect-Fit Members to Your Community #
Sept 29: How do you attract perfect-fit members to your community? Let’s chat about it.
👉 Read this.
🇨🇦 Coworking Canada heads to Calgary & Banff #
October 10-15: The 9th annual Coworking Canada Unconference heads to Calgary, October 10th-12th, with a leadership retreat in Banff, October 12th-15th, 2023. It’s a coworking community favorite! Scholarship tickets available.
Use the code “TWIC2023′ for $50.00 OFF any ticket.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 “Many Rivers To Cross” October London Coworking Assembly Breakfast Show #
October 4th: We’ve all heard about & talked about inclusion, diversity, accessibility and equity.
But how do we take these words from being tick boxes to a lived reality in our coworking spaces? Join us as we explore what this means to our panellists and their thoughts on where it has gone right and where it has gone wrong. And, even more importantly, what are the practical everyday steps we can all take to improve things?
👉 Read this.
🇵🇹 Coworking Nativo in Porto, Portugal #
An event about the people. Not an event about the event.
Dates: 7-8 October
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 GCUC UK (and exclusive TWIC prize) #
November 2-3: GCUC returns to the UK, and we have put together an exclusive prize exclusive for TWIC subscribers. Use TWIC10 to get your discount and to get entered into the draw for an exclusive Power Hour session with Hector Kolonas and Emilie Lashmar. (More details in the link)
👉 Read this.