🎉 Coworking celebrations.
🇩🇪 Chancellor of Germany visits local coworking space #
Nikita Roshkow reflects on a recent visit by Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of Germany, to Ahoy!Berlin to acknowledge the vibrant ecosystem they’ve built for entrepreneurs, creatives, and visionaries.
🎂 PLATF9RM turned 7! #
Huge congrats to the whole PLATF9RM team. Also loved what Susanna Chapman shared regarding how this ~~space~~ community personally impacted them.
🏆 Local coworking festival wins tourism award. #
Katja Thiede shares that Coworking Festival Mecklenburg-Vorpommern won this year’s tourism award. The acceptance of the award also came with an important ask for more support (ie cash) to keep developing coworking concepts across the region.
Get future weekly summaries in your inbox.
✊ Coworking impact.
🤫 Firm teases ‘evidence-based premium & sustainable workspaces’ #
Koba is coming out of stealth strong with a tagline of premium flex space ‘without the greenwash’. The firm aims to offer both landlords and businesses who ‘want to take a genuine lead on the planet and people’ with evidence-based sustainable workspaces.
The firm aims to reduce embodied carbon, taking it as seriously as operational carbon, and making reporting reductions simple. This will be done through circularity with regards to furniture and fit outs. They tease some other features like sharing opportunities, and offering total transparency, but I’ll wait for more info before diving into those.
💸 Firm launches Small Business Grant Contest to give back #
Sarah Travers and the Workbar team return with their (annual?) grant contest to help minority founders thrive in Greater Boston. The grand prize is a $5,000 check and 1 year of free coworking, with 2 runner ups each getting 3-months of free coworking memberships.
🇬🇧 Local office broker donating portion of commissions to Shelter #
Dan Silver shared that London Office Search partnered up with Shelter, the homeless charity, to donate a portion of all sales between December and February. The broker aims to raise £5,000 for the charity.
Coworking news & views.
🔝 Ever wondered who’s content gets the most TWIC clicks? #
I’m a firm believer that data, unexplored, leaves so many stories and actionable insights buried.
Since March 2022 I’ve been building a live data set of what links get clicked on (importantly: what, not by who) in TWIC newsletters. The idea was initially to quickly be able to see what kinds of news, views, tech updates, market moves, etc you want more of – without sending you surveys every few months – so that I can focus on curating content and resources that matters to you.
But, when looking at the data, another story also emerged. In this post I explore which industry content creators or brands hosted the content we all clicked on the most, and look at which social media platform seems to have wiped the floor with the others in our industry.
☀️ Could we be seeing more seasonality in where people work? #
Omar Ramirez shares that inspace data is highlighting an increased seasonality in the use of spaces, referring back to Brian Stromquist and Louis Schump from Gensler’s 2022 piece on the whether the future of work may be seasonal.
Personally I’d love to see more data vs anecdotes, but the notion that people are extending travel, staying there longer and possibly working from there is an interesting one to explore.
🙏 How a 4k+ member community focuses on inclusivity #
Lucy McInally shares a piece featuring Aislinn Mahon, Head of Brand at Huckletree, about how the firm focusses on inclusivity while running a network representing 4,000 humans. It all starts with the culture, and founder Gabriela Hersham has set that down firmly since 2014. This led to initiatives like partnering with Certified Proud, their in-house accelerator Alpha for underrepresented founders, and becoming BCorp-certified.
Read on to see how they design work environments for everyone and aim to build destinations not workspaces.
Share This Week's Summary
💻 Coworking technology.
🚀 Former IWG Technology Leaders launch PONT #
After having developed tech products for IWG, Manuel Conti and Simon Dowdell are launching PONT, a platform designed to serve operators, brokers and space customers with real-time availability and instant booking.
Caleb Parker also announced that their firm have made a strategic investment into the AI-driven coworking marketplace startup, noting that it will be the bedrock of Brave Corporation’s exclusive network of endorsed partners on the Brave app when it launches in January to support hybrid working.
Coworking data.
📑 Larger cos & scaleups now make up 54% of global flex members #
"According to Workthere’s latest Flexmark report, larger companies (101+ people) and scale ups (21-100 people) now account for 54% of global flexible office members, compared with 42% of members last year. The flexible office specialist notes that this increase is also reflected in take-up levels with these larger companies accounting for 34% of global take-up in flexible offices, compared to 22% in 2022 and just 13% in 2020."
The firm also reported that office contractual occupancy have remained stable over the last 12 months, with private offices globally sitting at 83% booked up, where shared offices are seeing occupancy levels (by contract) of 70.5%. UK and Asia had higher average occupancy at 85% and 87.5%.
Most in-demand amenities for prospective flex customers? Meeting rooms (28%) and phone booths (24%).
🤖 57% of knowledge workers use gen AI tools monthly #
Daan van Rossum shares the results of the Gen AI at Work report by FlexOS, in which we learn that 40% of knowledge workers use Generative AI at least once per week, with that number growing to 71% for Gen Z and Millennials.
The most popular tool is ChatGPT (with 61% of active users tapping for help) and then Google Bard (27%), Grammarly AI (19%), Microsoft Copilot (18%), Adobe Firefly (12%), and Copy.AI (12%.)
It’s an interesting look at how the world of ‘doing’ work is changing, and begs the question.. how does this surge in new tooling impact you, your business, your team and the way you provide/share space and services?
🇦🇪 A look at coworking growth in the UAE #
This local piece looks at three data sets re: coworking growth in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Firstly, there’s a huge variety of options with affordable spaces and lux options ($40.8k+ p/year to use). Second, a free zone dedicated to digital commerce in Dubai partnered with IWG to launch a Spaces location there. And thirdly, local desk-booking platform Letswork boasts over 55,000 users across the region and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Spain and Portugal.
Coworking market moves.
🇵🇱 Chilliflex signs one of 2023’s largest lease agreements in Krakow #
Local publication shares (in Polish) that Chilliflex have leased nearly 5.7k sqm (~61.3k sqft) from Ghelamco over 2 floors at their KREO office building in Krakow.
💼 Brave Corp taps two senior execs #
Brave Corporation has announced the appointment of Rachel Lupiani and Ian Minor to lead Brave Corporation’s PropCo-OpCo structure
🤠 The Malin expands into Austin, Texas #
Charlie Robinson shares that The Malin are expanding to Austin, Texas. The 12k+ sqft space will offer members access to 10 private offices, 28 dedicated desks, 4 meeting rooms, 13 phone booths, 1 library and a kitchen.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Cat Johnson digs into content creation, content marketing and coworking with Lauren Walker on the Coworking Out Loud podcast.
Martyn Sibley, who has extensive travel experiences as a wheelchair user in over 25 countries, joins the Coworking Values Podcast to talk about how inclusion in businesses can help empower people with disabilities and how it can impact a global market.
📆 Coworking events.
🗽 Proptech + flex space roundtable in NYC #
Dec 15: Caleb Parker and Hector Kolonas (me) are back with another NYC IRL roundtable meetup for 20-or-so technology and coworking space leaders. Join us for a casual discussion about what our businesses could look and feel like in 2024 and beyond.
