🎉 Coworking celebrations.
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✊ Coworking impact.
🙋♀️ Isn’t it time for more diverse panels at flex space events? #
Bernie Mitchell shares a reminder that as conference season starts, diversity and representation are critical requirements for our industry. He even shares a list of diverse founders/speakers/leaders that conference organizers should invite to share, and some other resources for improving representation at industry events.
👉 Read this.
🅱️ Another UK brand becomes a B corp #
Four Front Group (who operate 360 Workplace) have also become B Corp certified.
As discussed in the last newsletter discussion, B Corp certifications are on the rise in the UK and elsewhere.
👉 Read this.
☀️ Space for underserved artists and entrepreneurs opens in Long Beach #
Deena Saunders-Green shares the launch of their new HQ and coworking/events space for underserved artists and entrepreneurs. Green Pines Media, a for-profit benefit corporation that monetizes exceptional art and music for young adults who have “aged-out” of systems like foster care.
👉 Read this.
Coworking news & views.
🇮🇳 4 predictions from large Indian tech-enabled brokerage #
Paras Arora from Qdesq shares 4 predictions for flex space in 2023. In short they are: further expansion of operators, changing demands, rising flex pricing, and the impact of a recession.
👉 Read this.
🏨 Should hotels operate coworking spaces? #
James Dean asks if hotels are should be getting involved with providing space as a service. They note the example of Boundary House in the City of London, and have attracted 15+ comments on the topic.
_Given what I’ve shared over the last 350 days, these 14 summaries definitely highlight a bunch of hoteliers shifting into workspaces as a service. So yes they are, but from what I’ve seen there’s a few operational and tech stack differences to still overcome or workaround._
👉 Read this.
🛩️ Why this remote co leverages coworking spaces regularly. #
Christoph Drebes shares their thoughts about the “growing trend of coworking spaces”.
None of the notes should surprise you, but I share to remind you that happy members are the best drivers of new leads that may not have ever typed “coworking space near me” into their fav search engine before reading their thoughts.
👉 Read this.
✂️ Words you should cut from your copy #
Moritz K shares 9 words or phrases you should delete to improve your copy, to improve its effectiveness. Some great tips in there for your website, social media posts and even customer onboarding/welcome/sales emails.
👉 Read this.
🤗 Mine! Right? Unpicking why people like to own things #
Claire Murphy shares a look into why the adoption of sharing models can prove difficult for individuals who psychologically drive a feeling of safety and identity from ownership.
The article aims to help businesses adapt their relationships with their customers using the insights into these motivations. A great look into phsycological blockers to the growth of shared spaces and resources.
👉 Read this.
💸 Is flex space tax deductible? #
Deskpass shares a post for workspace members to explore if their coworking memberships, home offices or drop-in fees are tax deductible. As stressful as tax time is, providing content like this could be a good sweetener for eligible members.
👉 Read this.
⛔️ A deep look at the British history of exclusive spaces #
Lucy McInally shares why many feel uncomfortable when walking into some rooms, catching trains, popping into a coffee shop or even wandering through a park… by looking into how some spaces were designed to be the opposite of inclusive.
👉 Read this.
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💻 Coworking technology.
😳 Did an aggregator add booking links to your Google Maps listings? #
Jamie Russo and Amy Toman highlight that some operators are seeing unauthorized booking links on their Google Maps listings from platforms (in this case Peerspace).
I don’t usually do deep dives. but this one peed me off a little.
Now, it’s only a matter of time before Google Business Profile listings feature a ‘book space’ button that lets searchers pick dates and book on-demand space (much like you can do via opentable/resy/tock/etc for restaurants), but… there’s two major obstacles.
Operators should be able to opt-in (not opt-out) to allowing these booking links from specific platforms. As SEO/word-of-mouth drives a huge proportion of the best flex space leads, unauthorized booking buttons could eat into profits and long-term sustainability.
These platforms need to be deeply and tightly integrated with the management systems, meeting room, access control, KYC/AML, IT provisioning systems too. Workspace operate very differently from restaurants, and it only takes 1 bad experience to turn a whole business away from flex workspaces, for ever.
👉 Read this.
Coworking data.
🚫 How often 31k employees intend to be office-based #
Tim Oldman from Leesman shares that in Q4 2022, 41% of 31,000 globally distributed employees shared that they intend to be office-based 1-day per week or less. This is also up from 36% in Q1.
Simone Fenton-Jarvis also notes that peoples’ intentions do not always equal from their actual behaviours, and I agree. It’d be interesting to see how the office utilization of these 12,710 globally distributed employees actually changed over the same time period.
👉 Read this.
☑️ Meeting room bookings reach 2019 level for one operator #
Lynsey O’Keefe shares that meeting room hours booked in 2022 (almost) reached their 2019 numbers. A total of 27,091 hours were booked in 2019, whilst 27,064 were booked in 2022. A strong sign for Orega, and meeting room demand.
👉 Read this.
💰 London sees further polarization in flex space pricing #
Cal Lee notes that Workthere’s latest flex data highlighted how “the market in London has become increasingly polarised between the best space and the budget space as customers are increasingly drawn to the best quality space in the market thereby driving prices with it.”
In 2021 the price variance was just £173 (~$208), but in 2022 it’s £352 (~$425).
👉 Read this.
🤓 New index tracks work reqs for 100M employees #
Phil Kirschner shares Scoop’s new FlexIndex launch. In it, they’ve gathered and shared (nuanced) in-office or remote requirements across 25,000 locations by 4,000 firms affecting a workforce of over 100 million employees.
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this to watch how/if requirements change, as they could highlight huge opportunities or risks for operators and the market. For example, even if just 50% of the companies are not fully on-site, where are those millions of employees working from today, tomorrow, Monday or next Friday? Why not from your spaces?
👉 Read this.
Coworking market moves.
🏬 Building a ‘coworking mall’ #
Giovanni Palavicini shares news about Cubework’s purchase of the former 100k sqft Sears property, to launch a ‘coworking mall’.
“Our Cubework Shops is an open air enclosed creative space specifically designed to get your business out of your garage, self-storage facility, or home office. We focus on helping our customers rent the space they need without having to pay for unnecessary unused space,” the company says on its website.
👉 Read this.
⚔️ Franchise owners form alliance to acquire more location #
Coworking Insights reports to that six Venture X and Office Evolution franchise owners have formed an agreement to acquire eight Office Evolution locations in “Denver, including Boulder, Broomfield (Interlocken), Downtown Denver, Golden, DTC Greenwood Village, Lone Tree (Park Meadows), South Hover Longmont and Louisville”.
👉 Read this.
🚀 Operator added 21 new sites across 7 brands over the last year #
Caleb Parker shared that Space-as-a-Service operator, NewFlex, added 5,500 customers in the same timeframe and now has 1.4M sqft under management, and asks whether that makes them the fastest growing operator on management agreements.
👉 Read this.
🇧🇬 A look at betahaus in Sofia’s past, and future #
Ilya Temelkov interviews Alexander Mihailov and Metodi Terziev about a difficult decision they had to make for betahaus to leave their building in Sofia in 2019 following the souring of the relationship with their landlords. Its an interesting read looking into how after 6 years of operating, the firm launched two new locations, shifted their business model and entered a partnership with RE investment firm GTC Bulgaria.
👉 Read this.
🇩🇪 Operator enters strategic partnership to launch two flex workspaces in Germany #
infinitSpace, creator of white-label flexible workspaces, has announced a new strategic partnership with CG Elementum, the German commercial real estate developer with multiple sites across the country.
👉 Read this.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Jamie Hodari chats with Sandra Panara about Industrious view of the future of workplaces on the Let’s Get Real podcast.
Adam Neumann chats with Marc Andreessen and David Ulevitch about Flow and lessons from WeWork. (I’m calling it that Flow communities may offer workspace or access to flex as soon as certain noncompetes expire)
James Rankin chats about the need for industry data with Jamie and Giovanni on the Flex Uncensored podcast.
David Andras discusses their automated coworking model and coffee kiosks with Jamie Russo on the Everything Coworking podcast.