Bernie
A 17-Year-Old in a McKenzie Hoodie Just Destroyed the Entire Coworking Industry With One Question.
LinkedIn Show Notes #37 from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen. 🎙️ Listen to these stories and hundreds of others on the Coworking Values Podcast. In 2019, a 17-year-old in a McKenzie hoodie at Mainyard Studios in Hackney shouted at me from the back of a workshop: "What the fuck is coworking? Why don't you just call it work?" He was right. The trans inclusion consultant in London, the Armenian revolutionary in Yerevan, and the cooperative director in Finsbury Park all stopped playing
It's Not the Brand Partnerships. So What Actually Keeps Your Members Coming Back?
LinkedIn Show Notes #33 from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen. 🎙️ Listen to these stories and hundreds of others on the Coworking Values Podcast. Refugees. Social capital. Citizens. Three answers to the same question—people stay when they're citizens, not consumers. At yesterday's Unreasonable Connection , we asked: "What keeps your members coming back when they could work from home for free?" Most answers were real, human, and straightforward. No one said the flying trapeze, ice ba
Social Capital Isn't a Byproduct. It's THE Product.
LinkedIn Show Notes #31 from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen. 🎙️ Listen to these stories and hundreds of others on the Coworking Values Podcast. What three crisis stories from Armenia, Gaza, and London reveal about the invisible currency that keeps independent coworking spaces alive when everything else collapses. Sara Anjargolian 's coworking space in Yerevan had glass walls. Deliberate. Radical. In post-Soviet Armenia, where secrecy was a matter of survival, transparency was an ac
The Future of Coworking is a Career, Not a Gig
LinkedIn Show Notes #30 from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen. While you were running your space, we've been talking to the future—three FLOC leaders, one message: it's time to choose careers over gigs. I was once sitting at a table for lunch with a group of Coworking Space leaders, and a woman almost had to apologise as she presented her idea of creating an event where women who work in the Coworking industry in the UK could connect and support each other. A man at that table told her t
Three Women Cracked the Retention Code (While Everyone Else Chases New Members)
LinkedIn Show Notes #29 from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen. While you were running your space, we've been mining the podcast archive—three different conversations, one revelation about retention. When £15 Became £35 Jules Robertson remembers when you could get a day pass in London for £15. Not that long ago, really. Now she's watching the same spaces charge a minimum of £35, and some places in Notting Hill are asking £350 per person per month. "I think you really have to pick your
How Three Community Builders Are Keeping People Home
LinkedIn Show Notes #28 Hey folks, it's Bernie here. I took the summer off from this Coworking Values Podcast companion to rethink how to do this. There is always more nourishment in a podcast episode than the twenty or so minutes you listen to; in all our show notes, you'll find links to projects, people, events, and connections. People from around the world risk their time and reputation to record an episode with either Emily Breder or me, and posting, sharing and forgetting always see
What happens when you stop counting community and start building it?
Link in the Show Notes #20 - (The £2.5 Million Question) 🎙️Link in the Show Notes: Turning our Coworking Values Podcast conversations into practical wisdom for coworking operators. This week: What Space4 and Founders & Coders in Finsbury Park and a neurodiversity expert from Berlin taught us about the measurement trap. You know that spreadsheet. The one where you track "social value" for the council. Jobs created: £14.43 per hour of support. Skills developed: £242.67 per week of training
The Pay Gap: AI Isn't Just Tech. It's Our Best Damn Chance.
🎙️ Link in the Shownotes #18 - Ai Is Already Here, Shaping Our Work. Ever feel like you’re shouting into the void? We talk about community, about loneliness, about making spaces affordable. We dissect purpose-driven work versus just clocking in. All vital. All real. But there’s this one thing, this massive, unseen force, that often goes unsaid, even when it’s staring us down. It’s artificial intelligence. And it's not a Ray Bradbury sci-fi fantasy. It’s here. Now. Quietly, and sometimes
What Emotional Safety Really Looks Like in a Coworking Space
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and European Coworking Day. So I've been writing nonstop about where mental health and coworking meet, with stories from Coworking Values Podcast guests and my direct experience of mental health and coworking. Below are four reads from this week: * Coworking saved my mind. But it can't save everyone. * The Loneliest People Walk Past Our Doors * Coworking doesn't save everyone. But it saves some of us. * You Can't Heal in the System That Made You
Human-Centered Coworking Design: What Safe Design Really Feels Like
Yesterday I was on the edge of my seat to podcast with Paula A. Madrid . We’d spoken on the phone before. Missed each other at the Workspace Design Show London in February. So when we finally hit record, I was all in. Paula is a Colombian-born New Yorker who built an extraordinary career—first as a clinical and forensic psychologist, and now as the founder of Blue Panda Office Spaces . She’s not trying to be trendy. She’s trying to make you feel something real. “I aim to make places