Welcome back to Coworking Values Podcast folks! For this episode, we’ll be presenting the recently concluded EFWEEK panel of our sponsor: Cobot!
The talk is about “Banking on Freelance: Adapting Coworking Infrastructure to Support Freelance Workers”. Cobot sits down with Maria Calafatis — co-founder of The Cube Athens, Yann Heurtaux – Co-auditor of Coworking Switzerland’s accounts, Caterina Maiolini — London mayor of Startup Home, UK ambassador and head ambassador of Co-Liv, and Marc Navarro — Coworking and organization consultant and the content director of the Coworking Spain conference.
They are going to discuss the freelancers, coworking, and coliving have contributed immeasurably to flexible work—more essential than ever in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The event happened last October 21, 2020 at 6 PM CEST.
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powered by SounderEFWEEK: COBOT PANEL – “BANKING ON FREELANCE” PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Zeljko Crnjaković
This episode is brought to you by Cobot, our leading management software for coworking spaces, office hubs and flexible workspaces around the world. You know, one of the best things about Cobot is that it is produced by people who manage a coworking space and know the ins and outs of the main problems and issues, bugging coworking managers. So, if you want more time for your co-workers and community, check out Cobot at cobot.me and take your coworking management to the next level.
Maddie
So, with that, I’m very proud to introduce our panellists and I’m going to ask you to also give it a little wave so that we can identify you. Marc Navarro. Marc is a coworking and organization consultant and the Content Director of the Coworking Space Conference. He is also Chief Curator at Coworking Academy at CU Asia and an advisor at the Langham Coworking Summit. Mark created the first coworking with social returns based in Ajax and was Director of the first Topicals coworking in Barcelona. He collaborates with us here at Cobot and is frequently featured in both English and Spanish.
Marc Navarro
Thank you so much for having me.
Maddie
Caterina Maiolini. Cate is the London Mayor of Start-up Home Social Enterprise Co-living. She is also the UK Ambassador and head of ambassadors for Co-live, the largest non-profit association of co-living professionals. She has a background in fashion and finance and of course real estate. She’s a podcaster educator, community facilitator, and we’re really excited that she’ll be sharing her deep knowledge of the co-living sector with us today. Jan Hektor. Jan is a freelancer by necessity since 2010. Jan discovered coworking at Betacowork in 2012 in Brussels and attended and contributed to his best Coworking Europe Conference the following year in Barcelona. He’s currently the Co-auditor of Coworking Switzerland’s accounts, and a proud member of coast to coast by a dot work and powerhouse in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he hacks and makes sustainable mobility happen at scale more quickly with others. And Maria Calafatis. Maria is the Co-founder of the Cube Athens workspace. The Cube has been operating since 2013 and is Athen’s largest coworking community and hosting most of Athen’s technology events, hackathons, and training events. She is a member of the Start-up Weekend Global facilitation team and has been involved with the Start-up Weekend since 2009. Having facilitated over 20 events through the platform, her first business was founded at a start-up weekend too. Thank you all for joining us. I’m incredibly excited to get going. So, I’m going to start by throwing out the first point, which is that freelance occupancy has changed and how coworking spaces responded to that. Marc, would you like to be first ?
Marc Navarro
Well, it is a difficult question, because for sure there are different spaces on different markets. But generally, what we saw is that freelancers are the most flexible kind of clients you may have, because they can take their own decisions. What we saw is that in some markets, and especially with those spaces, which their spaces can’t, or didn’t want to be flexible with their members, they have huge cancellations of their memberships. I said they couldn’t, or they didn’t want to because some managers can’t afford to give big discounts or have policies like that for their members, and others just didn’t want to. At the end, the freelancers who are trying to save money, and on the other hand, they have to take care of their children, if they have. Because other schools were closed in most countries. Someone has to be at home taking care of children and in some cases, if the couple is a third-party employee and a freelancer, sadly, sometimes the freelancer takes more burden because it’s more flexible, depending on the attitude of the company of her partner. That’s a good summary on the situation.
Maddie
And then Maria, when we spoke, the situation was also quite different in Greece, you want to speak about that?
Maria Calafatis
Hi, everybody, and hello from Greece. Coworking has definitely changed a lot in Athens in Greece, and we’ve got a huge community of freelancers, and digital nomads who are coming by. A lot of them are trying to avoid the cold, and at the same time, the restrictions with COVID back home, those things are quite tough in places like the UK, Germany, and the US. But one thing that we have seen, and it’s something that we discussed the other day is the situation has also brought back a lot of the Greeks. A lot of what we call the brain drain, who initially had come to Athens for a summer break. And because of the situation and allowing people to work remote, a lot of the Greeks have now decided to continue working from their home base, which makes a lot of sense. And at the same time, Greece is an attractive place, and the weather is still good, still warm, where digital nomads and freelancers want to come by and visit. And there’s a lot to do and see not only in the mainland, but also on the Greek islands.
Maddie
Yes, it’s interesting to see how in different contexts, it’s the kind of regular members have changed. But also, there have been new members coming in, which is really interesting and important to see. And so, I wanted to ask how have the needs of freelancers been more acutely exposed or accommodated as a result of these shifts?
Maria Calafatis
Is that for me, Maddie? We, being one of the cofounders of the Cube, and everyone who’s involved with coworking knows this, that the community of freelancers, and digital nomads is a community that exists and has been existing for quite some time now. It’s still very new for Greece. The co-living, which Kate will tell us more about too, is something that is completely new to Greece, it’s something that we’re also seeing a rise. But on the other hand, crises bring opportunities. And it’s crises like these that also give everybody the opportunity to see and to embrace change, and a new kind of activity. And I’m really looking forward for the outcome. As Marc also mentioned, the freelancers and the digital nomads in general are more adaptable, and they’re more adjustable because you’re already in that kind of mentality and mood, while people were forced to work from home, because we had the lockdown. We weren’t working remotely. We were working from home; we were working from a lockdown. There’s a huge difference to compare the one with the other.
Maddie
Yeah, this is an important distinction. Thank you for making that. And I saw, Jan you had something.
Jan Hektor
Yeah, maybe to connect with what Marc was saying at the beginning. Maybe some of you are familiar with the disc mag study each year. Capstone is a gathering this and organizing this for the whole community. You can find it online if you want comprehensive information. But you can have a snapshot every time every year in November. The demographics changed a lot for the past five years, at least in Switzerland, I’m not sure if it’s applicable to other countries, but here we see more remote workers, some of them who didn’t really choose neither to work remotely from the company, or even the space they are allowed to be working from. So, that’s very different from freelancers choosing their communities, the people they want to join or not. It changed a lot about how operators responded to needs. Because here we see those remote workers, corporate remote workers becoming the majority of the co-workers actually.
Maddie
Yes. I think that there’s also a point to be made for distinguishing although the terms that we use to refer to people who make use of these phases, so independent workers, freelancers, remote workers, and I wonder if anyone could say something about how if there’s a trend, to move towards one. We were speaking about the concerns and if people who identify with these different categories have different needs?
Marc Navarro
These people have really, really different needs. And especially, for example, I’m talking before the pandemic, and after the pandemic, all profiles made much more use of private spaces, like phone calls, or meeting rooms, because the amount of physical contact is reduced. So, everybody is on the phone, on Skype, zoom, or whatever. Regarding the different kinds of needs is what Jan was flagging, that a lot of people just don’t choose the space, so they have much less engagement with the community in the space because they just don’t care. And if there’s something which is aligned to base on what they like, they do it, but it’s like, by accident, because they will just be there. On the other hand, you have amazing employees that work for third parties, and I really moved on and it’s even better, because they are not freelancing. So, they can use time without losing income.
So, if they have a good relationship with the company and they can participate in that. Usually, the company employees make much more use of meeting rooms. You need to have good facilities, because they want a space that represents them, these again with co-work chains, because people start visiting. So, maybe a space that was not at the beginning before the pandemic. A suitable space because it does not match the, for example, the exterior part of the building is not nice, and it was not acceptable. But the internal facilities are really good. Now, that space may work. So, I mean, there are different details. The freelancers for sure, are looking for a community for a space, which are people that are similar to them. So, they can share, they can learn, they can thrive at the end. And company employees, it’s more about the perks. Companies are much more worried about security, all this kind of stuff. So, it’s two different worlds.
Maddie
So, I’m very curious to understand how visions for the coworking business models going forward will change. But I wanted to get a perspective from Cate into how occupancy has changed in co-living sector.
Caterina Maiolini
I think about how coworking has changed from my humble opinion, of course, is that for me, what I used to see is that I used to see coworking back in the days and youth coworking just as a space where I could work from and that is it. So, literally just an office, a big space where I could go there and work from whilst it slowly, slowly became a place where I also work from. It is a place where I find my community, a place where I find the great energy, a space that I like, and everything else. So, what Marc said is very relevant in within co-living, as well, where, because everybody had to work from home. So, you had to find yourself some space where you could also be by yourself and not just in your room. Like for example, in our start-up, we have five different breakout areas. Three of them are kitchens, and they are quite large. So, we put some tables in so people can also work from there, run their working days from there, but having some privacy if they need to just by shutting the door and we put something written meeting in progress.
We also have a rooftop if anyone has been to one of my events before, you might have seen me dialling in from my rooftop. What I think will change in co-living but also in coworking is that the more we go forward, the more it will be even more community focus. It will be much more focused on well-being with more breakout areas, areas where you can be on your own, where you can just get some space and clear your head. We’ve seen more requests in regard to co-living and spaces where you live and work together on lightings, different type of lightings. Colour that surrounds you. A lot of implementation on IoT of Internet of things. People want to see less corporate environment but more personal touch, especially if they have to spend three or four months in a place and not be able to move.
They really want to feel like it’s their home. It’s cosier, if that makes sense, instead of more like old school corporate. And yeah, that’s what I see a lot with regard to my guys in co-living and to my members. The location is also very important, as in how far the co-living space from the coworking space is and vice versa. So, obviously we are a co-living operator, we don’t have a coworking space within our building as such, we’ve got a nice big living room where you can work from. Most of the rooms are set up with a nice desk and an office chair where you can work from so you can run your calls, you can do whatever you need to, as I mentioned before, few different breakout spaces. But also, we live in an area in London, for anyone that knows London quite well. And there’s quite a few coworking spaces around. So, what we decided to do was actually to collaborate with coworking spaces and Bernie who is on the call as well. He runs the London Coworking Assembly. I strongly believe in the collaboration between the two sectors, which eventually will merge into one instead of one place having everything. So, it’s nice for people who are in coworking to actually step out and walk to their co-living and vice versa. So, people who are in equilibrium to step out and walk or cycle or anything to their coworking to bring together different type of communities as well.
Maddie
Thank you so much for shedding light on how you expect co-living to change. And I’m wondering in terms of coworking spaces based on what you’ve understood over the last eight months, the needs, and the changing profiles of people in your spaces. How do you think that coworking spaces are going to readjust the vision that they had for the future business vision, so to speak? How does it look different now than it looked in the beginning of the year?
Maria Calafatis
I think that’s a question for you, co-workers. More than me.
Jan Hektor
You asked earlier about the business model. One of the main questions here locally, let’s say in Lausanne, we have between members, activists, operators. The demographics that need coworking the most, that is the loneliest at the moment, are the freelancers who can’t at the moment afford a coworking space or a desk. So, one of the main challenges, apart from the COVID situation in Switzerland which is aggravating quite quickly. But apart from the open to the public space problem, people need to gather and get some human link, and they can’t afford the commercial part of it anymore. So, one of the biggest challenges is to keep opening moments, even small moments. Bernie is the founder of the Right Club initiative. And we do that too. And yesterday, I reconnected with a freelancer who couldn’t afford coworking anymore. He came to the Right Club and he could co-work for two hours. It’s not even a business model. It’s more. It’s difficult for anyone. It won’t change your revenue in the end. But is it worth doing a bit more effort? Yes, it is. Because freelancers totally need that. So, if you can open a window for those people in need. Yes, please do it. It changes their lives.
Maddie
I remember when we spoke you also mentioned in private businesses quite possible to facilitate a subsidy model. And I wonder if you would describe that a little bit.
Jan Hektor
Oh, yes. One of the most vibrant communities we have in the coworking movement in Lausanne is Powerhouse, run by the Power Coders movement. So, you can find them online. They do a code bootcamp learning to code software for refugees. And they needed a house to do that, so they opened the Powerhouse. And actually, you can buy a desk, a meeting room or anything for you. And you can buy something for someone else. You pay for two rooms, two desks. You may choose one you might offer one. And the second one, it’s the community hosts that give it to someone needing it if they need them. Come across the door and ask for it. Some of them are available and you can co-work for free.
Marc Navarro
I think that in the mid-long term, it will be better for working spaces because the future is uncertain, right? It’s like we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know how bumpy the road will be. So, we will get there. The problem is that if you are asked to sign a five-year contract, you can’t sign that. You don’t know where you will be in five weeks. Coworking will thrive in this kind of environment. So, the companies and some people that know coworking really well, because they are my friends, and I’m always talking about coworking. They were like, no, coworking is not for us. And both of them approached me at the beginning of this crisis asking about coworking. A lot of people come closer to you asking, Hey, maybe this works, I’m rebuilding my company, we will work in a different way. So, coworking will become something which is now appealing and revealing to us for sure that it has a good side and a bad side. Because if things go really well, we will have to be very flexible. And this is what happened in the beginning of the crisis. On the other hand, some companies are going to implement a strategy that they are saying it’s a hub and spoke policy with a smart headquarters. And, like satellite, I don’t know if you say that in English, satellite location.
So, there are smaller offices. And for me, it’s quite silly to start creating a lot of offices around. So, it’s much easier to just have an agreement with different coworking spaces. So, your workforce, it’s closer, it’s working closer to their homes, so commuting is reduced. And potentially, you can get rid of all the transportation. Allowing the people who really need for transportation, use it and keeping your employees safer. What was a good location before COVID it means something different that what’s a good location now? So, we are seeing in some regions where for example, transportation is not as good as in Europe, in which the coworking spaces which are thriving are the ones which are not in the city centres in the really fancy areas, but in the outskirts closer to the homes of company police. Because then it’s really easy to set a group of people working there, because on the other hand, companies have to restructure the way they work. Because it’s not that you can set your accountancy department in a coworking space or another. It depends on where people live. I think that in the mid long-term it will be better. And we will see much more people from companies going independently not as a pack, to work in a coworking space. Because they will be looking for spaces closer to their homes.
Maddie
And on the question of mid to long term, Maria, when we spoke, you mentioned that there have been policy adjustments to encourage entrepreneurial training in schools. And I wonder if you have some thoughts about what this could mean for the future of the coworking industry on a regional level in the short and in the medium and long term?
Maria Calafatis
If I could just jump in here, after Marc’s remark. I mean, one thing we also realized, as far as the coworking, and the start-ups on the full-time members and the full-time start-ups in the space, talking about Athens now on the Cube, we saw a huge gap since COVID. And I’m sure that a lot of people saw this too. We had a lot of teams that packed up ended up working from home. And it was tough times, budget was a problem. But on the other hand, again, as Marc mentioned, it’s not only the community of freelancers and digital nomads, but also the community of individuals, because there are a lot of people working out there, for big companies, for big projects, for big VCs who’ve now been told, you need to work remotely, you need to work from home. Let’s not forget that we’re all human beings, and we all have the necessity to belong. And we need this everyday engagement. And people do seek these kinds of communities. Virtual is very cool, but you don’t always get the whole experience and the whole atmosphere as you do if it would be a physical space. The restriction in Athens now is we’re not allowed to host an event for more than nine people. So, what we are doing for the coworking community is once a week, we announce at networking and beers at the Cube right after work. It’s very under the radar. We’re protecting and going by the measurements but at the same time, we’re providing a community and a network of the community that comes in. It’s a very kind of last minute and surprise, we’ll say it in the morning or lunchtime. When we say it’s a busy day in the space and say, don’t forget about seven o’clock we are shutting down the internet, join us for beers on the veranda.
This also brings great opportunity for collaborations for networking and just for people to meet and mingle between them. Because again, I think Marc mentioned that when you are a freelancer, it’s very difficult. And also, digital nomad, the fact you are always on the move, and you’re always on the go. It’s also very important that when you stop somewhere, Cate mentioned that you want to connect, you want to meet the locals, you want to know what’s happening, you want to know where you’re going to end up next. Going back very quickly to your question, we have had a couple of some great initiatives locally, from the Greek government where everything has very quickly shifted to a digital side of things. And we all know that Greece is a country with a lot of bureaucracy, and a lot of borders to set up the business to get started, get off the ground, things are getting easier. But baby steps. This is not a problem with only Greece faces. But it’s a common problem that we see globally. Some countries, some governments easier than others. But again, I do believe, and I do see that after COVID, there will be a lot of innovation, a lot of creativity, let’s not forget that most of the creativity and innovation usually comes outside of times of crisis. I’m sure that everybody on this call, whether you’re connected to the coworking or the co-living community, the fact that we get to meet so many cool people and cool projects, and we get to cross paths, and meet and learn and take and give, is an amazing experience on its own. But I’d like to hear everybody else’s open opinion here too.
Maddie
Thank you. Is someone itching to respond? Cate?
Caterina Maiolini
I mean, what can I say? Do you want me to start to talk about the Italian bureaucracy? I’m happy. If we have 10 hours, I can just go through that. Marc, you’re laughing. I don’t think in Spain, you’re much better.
Marc Navarro
No, I was laughing because I think it’s a problem more or less everywhere. But yeah, we are the worst.
Caterina Maiolini
The three of us can cry together. What really strikes me there, Maria, were two things that you said, one is belonging, which I think is something that we will see coming up more and more. As I was mentioning before, I think people are going to look into more niche into their co-living spaces, but also in today’s coworking spaces. There are a lot of tech, which I think maybe we can chat about as well if we want to, that will help with that. A lot of the platforms where now you can book spaces to be coworking and co-living spaces as well. Also let you see who is actually in the space right now. I think people will steer from just being like, I just want to be in London, I want to be living with that sort of community and I want to be working with that sort of community. And then they will decide if they also like the area or not.
But I think also because there will be even more and more people starting to travel and leave the digital nomad life or freelancer or remote worker, however you want to define it. This will happen more and more. I have a lot of my friends that used to be working, what you were saying before, of the fact that the difference between freelancer who has been doing this life before and people that have been forced to work remotely. I can see in this month; a lot of people have really switched. They first said I hate working from home and I don’t want to be close to my house anymore. Starting to join different types of community house swapping, co-living places, looking at what sorts of coworking they could find in the place where they wanted to go and explore more things. I think we are going to see a massive shift of that. But the belonging is something where people will still want to really focus on a coworking, on a co-living, in any environment belonging is such a good thing. And on a side note, I absolutely loved the idea of switching off the internet, Maria for events. Brilliant, really brilliant.
Maddie
We got a question in the chat which I’d like to bring up and also referred back to Jan’s point. I know that you are speaking from an economic standpoint of the capacities that freelancers have to gain access to these communities and to participate in coworking spaces, and I wonder if we could speak about inclusion in broader terms.
Jan Hektor
Belonging and premium are really interesting terms, actually. I’m pretty proud because the two spaces I’m a member of, as a white male, one is co-owned by a black woman in Lausanne. And the other ones, as I said, they are the home of the refugees wanting to get better by learning to code. Sometimes it’s also just the first step to have a first network of people wanting to add value. Software Developers or not ,actually some of them learn to code, some of them just discover their first connections. First people they meet. To be honest, for me the premium part of coworking or communities more globally, is access. You’re either in or out. You’re a member. It is a private club, or not. Being a member that is premium, being allowed in. It’s not about having access to the space 24/7. It is not about having the fanciest private office in the building or in the space. Are you a member? Do you belong? Do you have the key? Or do you have the trust of the other people and business? Otherwise, it shouldn’t be the most expensive part of the membership. It should be the first tier. But that’s the premium part. It’s not only about do you work from this space? Or do you belong? And can you interact with the others? Because again, those needing it most are those who either lost their view or didn’t have one at the beginning of the last crisis? So, include people. Make the premium tier the first tier like being able to belong.
Maddie
Cate, you look like you want to add something.
Caterina Maiolini
Yes, because I just read on the chats, the comment that Jeanine made. And for non-disclosure, I would like to say I love Jeanine very much, so I think she has raised really good points. If you haven’t read it yet, she just said I’m worried about belonging becoming the next culture, fate, and excludes to exclude. I’d like to say from equilibrium point of view, I understand what you mean, Jeanine. But I also think that it’s very important for people to really feel like they belong in a space, which doesn’t mean everybody around them needs to be exactly the same, or other people cannot join in. But I see the example of Start-up Home where we tend to have people who are entrepreneurs, freelancers, and start-ups, because that’s the sort of mentality. What that means is that on a Saturday night, instead of sitting down watching maybe a movie and having some beers, we might be all upstairs in the communal area working, coding, speaking to each other masterminding what we want to do. I am very happy to welcome anybody. Not everybody who is in Start-up Home right now is an entrepreneur or a freelancer. What is a freelancer? Because everybody has to work from home, but on a different level. But some people are very interested in joining this sort of environment and they fit in very well and they want to be with us. And I’m very happy to open that to everybody. But I also think that it’s very nice to feel like you belong in here because you can always bounce ideas with other people. There is someone in your industry, you feel like people around you get you. I think that this is the sort of thing that we will see happening in a lot of coworking spaces as well. When I was participating in some of the London Coworking Assembly, when we were doing the physical meetups, I remember that there were a couple of spaces, for example, one in London is called The Hallway. And is a coworking space which is in east London and is a very artistic crafty area. So, they actually opened up a working space with a non-music studio, a creative suite. You will have that sort of vibe going around you and you could be someone who likes to code, and you are developing a software, but you feel like you want to belong in that sort of space. I hope that answers you. I don’t know what you guys think about that.
Maddie
And hopefully we hear more from Jeanine in the chat. And I’m going to go to another question from the chat. How can coworking sustainably become even more accessible to freelancers? Many of whom may not be able to afford premium spaces, or would have never chosen freelancing as a career where it not for the crisis? Jan, do you have a response to that?
Jan Hektor
If I had cracked that already, I would be happy to share. There are several ways that works better than others. In my experience, corporate remote workers are maybe in a position to sponsor some freelance discounts. That should be a discussion with your sphere and operator with your customers. Do you want to be the company that just consumed? What is the availability of space in a community? Or do you want to be seen as the people sponsoring access to others because at some point, those finances will last for their revenue, they might be your next co-founders. You have a personal private deep interest to let them in, and to help finance the business sustainably. Talk to your local authorities. Bother your mayors. Bother the elected officials. Bother them every week. Talk about that access to entrepreneurship, that’s fancy on a political program. What are those people actually doing to make that happen?
Maddie
And when we had a call previously, you spoke a little bit about your experience of approaching councils or collaborating with others who had done it, especially to secure working space from underutilized structures. Could you share a bit more about that experience? Because from here, I think it would be interesting to say, we’ve looked at the possibility in private ownership models to subsidize. And I think that this is a nice Segway into thinking about how policy could change the role that policymakers could play and how coworking and co-living spaces can activate those conversations. If you could share a bit more about your experience? You spoke about approaching councils to get access to underutilized space?
Jan Hektor
Sorry about that. The thing is, okay, people need spaces together, and work from and do way more things than just work. I mean, most of the time, co-workers, coworking operators, freelancers that dispatch into the space and an affordable one. They are aligned with people doing music, people doing when it’s possible, events. You need to talk to your city. Consider as a group of people, not just you, oh, I would love to have some free rent to open a coworking space. Most of the time there are several festival events, associations, they need a space for two months, a year. Gather your community needing a space before getting a space. And once you’re a big enough group needing that, go to the power in place that can help you or might help you. Because that’s their mission. I mean, you’re in the city you’re contributing. They are there to help you if you have a solid case and your group is big enough.
Maddie
And to going back to Maria, I wanted to ask in terms of changing policy to encourage entrepreneurship from a young age in Greece, it means a future generation of entrepreneurs. And I think that frequently they work individually. So, they are part of the individual worker freelancer. The culture of work is quite similar to that. And do you see any ways in which policy in Greece is going to pinpoint coworking as an infrastructure for that? Do you see anything developing in that direction?
Maria Calafatis
Okay, so the Greek government I think we discussed this in our call the other day. The Greek government has now announced that entrepreneurship is a topic that will be taught into local Greek schools, which is a big step forward. I really believe and I guess everybody on the school and everybody in general would agree, the younger they start, the younger we start, the better it is. I mean, we as The Cube, and both myself and my partner Stravos, we are partners, both in the business and in life. And our two kids, I mean, we see the kind of education that they go through and the system in Greece. Their mentality is you get what you pay for. And I think that’s a very wrong way to go about it and you shouldn’t. You do get talent in state school too. And you should give the opportunity for young entrepreneurs, or we did a lot with the refugee crisis. Again, we saw a lot of talent there. Entrepreneurship education, innovation is a program that should be open and available, open source for everyone. And the younger, the better. Now, at The Cube, we do run a lot of programs and summer camps, and throughout Christmas and Easter, all this before COVID, where we’re running weekly programs on entrepreneurship, on coding and so on. There is a lot of interest in the community and in the parents. We’ve actually done hackathons, many hackathons for kids, for teenagers and up. The best ages are usually eight and up, when they have an idea of what school is like, they’re focused enough to sit in a chair and start learning team building activities, and can focus on their creativity is just amazing, especially if you leave them and you guide them, but at the same time you let them express themselves. The outcome is vavoom. We need to impose and act more into those kinds of initiatives. And I’m sure that in all communities as Jan said, if you can’t attract the municipalities immediately, start attracting a local community. Start attracting a school. Start attracting a group of parents. It’s about building a community around that. And usually, it’s more difficult to attract the government or the schools from day one. But start with something smaller the same way we do with the business and work our way up. And we’ll get there for sure.
Maddie
I just want to share something in my own experience. So, we started a very small coworking space in Johannesburg. And when we struggled to contact adults who were looking for places to work, it was their children who were already coming and curious about the fact that we had bicycles or that we were making lunches and they were the ones who brought their parents. So, they are a very big part of the community that we absolutely should not neglect to encourage them to stay involved and to be involved. Yeah, they’re essential, actually. And, Marc, I wonder if you could share some perspectives on how policy is changing if it is in Spain, and from your perspective to encourage all that, you know, what co working spaces are doing with that, for that if they have been made mention of?
Marc Navarro 3:14
We are really bad in working together. We have a struggle with group sharing. But talking with the government is difficult sometimes. I worked for them a while time ago. So, I know what we think. And they have a different mindset than the people who are working for the government and the politician structure. Indeed, as you mentioned in the introduction, I created synergetic. Let’s say they are really attached to cutting the integration bond. They love making new buildings, new facilities, this kind of thing. And they are sometimes struggling with working with private parties. They have a lot of regulations, trying to block that because that can lead to abuse. But those regulations made to avoid the views makes it have difficulties for innovating and working with this. Six years ago, there was an association in Spain that tried to work with the government. And it was very difficult for us because again, coworking is a very fractal world. You have dozens of spaces with completely different needs. Smaller ones, big ones, in the cities in the fields. Everybody has their own needs. Everybody is just focused on what’s most important for them. And it was difficult. I know, this is not very inspiring, but that is my experience. What I felt is that we have been really bad at working together, which is so wrong, because we try to empower our members to work together. At the end, the spaces that work together mainly with the people which you can trust. As a co-work team, we’re not working on that. There’s another association, but it’s more related with business centres, which is more it’s working on policy and this kind of stuff. But with a different perspective, it’s more like a real estate perspective, that at some point, it can be good for co-work spaces. Usually, the scope and the worries of these spaces are much different than the coworking industry, especially in the abandoned coworking spaces.
Maddie
Cate, I’m curious about how co-living factors into approaches to policy or the possibility to approach local councillors. It’s definitely more. Yeah, please go ahead.
Caterina Maiolini
I can notice what is happening everywhere around the world, I can tell you easily and especially in UK, because I’ve been here for a long time. I can tell you that in the UK if I see you in England, especially more than UK, England, until maybe last year, everybody was very wary of policing, of what it was all about, etc. And in the past five, six months, a lot of the local authorities and counselling around the countries have been supporting co-living. Just recently, there’s been three fantastic schemes alone, they’ve been approved. One was approved just a few days ago. And that’s 200 rooms in southwest London. And that was approved through planning permission in collaboration with the council. The same thing happened for one of the co-living schemes in Birmingham, which was actually supported by the whole Birmingham Council, we’re going to have a collective opening. Another one, which is about 310 rooms, again, in an area of London. And there’s another one in Manchester, which was saved through the planning and was really supported by the local authorities for about 45 storey building with roughly about 2000 units. So, we are talking about a massive development. I’m obviously part of Co-live as well, which is a global Association. But I’m also looking to expand on a more local association.
I definitely find that I’m an industry buddy that really works very hard for what is happening locally. And not just globally, because what happens in UK is different than Spain, is different than Greece, is different than Italy, is different than anywhere else, just really locally to really understand rules and regulation and needs of people that could be freelancer, remote worker, entrepreneurs, people that are forced to work from home. And that really fights in a social way for making us heard. It’s very important. And it works in both ways. I mean, I collaborate a lot with the Coworking Assembly. I think they’re doing a fantastic job. I know they had some meeting with the GLA as well, which is the London authority and you know, they’re tackling these sorts of problems moving forward. It was set up as a social enterprise also because of that reason because we understood the importance of as much as possible, keeping the price for co-living in this case, because we do co-living as affordable as possible so that everybody can afford this sort of experience. There are a lot of people that would love to maybe stay in a co-living place, like some of the ones they are building right now which is super cool, very trendy and everything, but the price is about 20% of both market price, if not more because of everything that they offer you, and not everybody is able to afford that. And it’s the same thing with the coworking. There are so many coworking places which are super fancy, and they come in with a very high price tag that then push people away. And I think this is also why we’ve seen the in surging of certain coworking spaces, which are not really coworking spaces, but which then become more affordable, and then people are able to do that.
Maddie
To come back to something that Jan and I spoke about previously, there’s always this concern that if you create attractive places for people to work, especially when they haven’t previously had access to that, by virtue of it being an attractive place, it runs the risk of becoming an object of gentrification or falling into circles similar to that. And I wonder if your discussions with Council and because of the high stakes of inclusion, how are those conversations managed?
Jan Hektor
I’m usually invited to another panel, Magaly and Colin. Sure, they have a lot to say, Bernie did a podcast with them, you can find the link somewhere on the chat. The gentrification bit to be honest, I don’t have a solution. The lowest common denominator we can have with real estate agents is if you have a coworking community, the neighbourhood price will go up by two figures in five to 10 years. That they understand. The social link, the city fabric, it’s a bit harder. One thing I wanted to say about how it can go or how you shouldn’t maybe do it, something that doesn’t work and is toxic for your local community. Don’t accept subsidized salaries for your community or, for instance. Why? They will arrive way later. You will maybe try to secure a job for someone, and you won’t be able to pay them because the public money would arrive one year later, maybe in Belgium, for instance, some communities and spaces almost closed down because of that, they were too trustful, or thought it would arrive earlier. That could be an issue. The best way to subsidize a coworking space of public servants who work from there, be there once a week or every day of the week working at the conduct of the people and just pay your membership. That’s the best way to subsidize.
Marc Navarro
And there are some spaces in Spain that have that experience, having a public servant working in the space. But on the other hand, for example, it was not widely known, but the Barcelona City Council for example, years ago, they subsidize a coworking space. So, they helped members to pay for the membership, which was cool. You have to meet certain conditions. But if you do, you can ask for a certain amount of money, which is which is cool. I wrote an article many, many years ago, which is not translated to English, which was Scoring in hybrid. The thing I liked, what I came up with was doing something like that, is why they have to build public corrugated spaces, if they can instead subsidize the members, not the spaces so you don’t lose your freedom. Because we know that coworking accelerates a project, it works, it makes entrepreneurs succeed earlier, so they can pay taxes earlier, pay more taxes, everything goes rather much faster. It was so nice, but the problem is that at least here they are so attached to cutting that operation land. It’s difficult for them to apply a system like this. But I think that works. The problem also with public subsidies on this kind of stuff, is that sometimes it is not known by the users. I came across it because someone told me that that was something which existed. And I was like no way. I had never heard about that. And then I start searching in the Barcelona City Council website, and I found it. Sometimes there are ways of getting help as entrepreneurs, but you are not aware of them. And that’s a shame because that money is lost. And maybe they are like, Oh, this is not working. So, we are not going to do it next year. I know people that work in policy that emphasize that it’s really important for public authorities to inform the citizen about the tools they have available to weld themselves.
Maddie
Maria, just to get back to you.
Maria Calafatis
Thank you, Maddie. So yeah, I would say that both Jan and Marc might made very good points. We haven’t yet seen a lot from the Greek government when it comes to subsidies and supporting entrepreneurship and coworking. I mean, our space is privately owned. And we started the first coworking space seven years ago. And after that, it became a bit of a hype. And 10 of them popped up until the government decided to compete with all 10 of them. And instead of being there to support the community who knew what they were dealing with, and how they were dealing, and they were close to community, and they competed. And that caused a lot of the private spaces to close and build a bit of friction between the government and the policymakers. And between the spaces that were run by public initiatives. I agree with you there, Marc, it’s very important that the message is put through well. It’s also very important when we learn how to collaborate. And when we can use the resources coming from the government to support as we mentioned before, with the policymakers, with the government with these kinds of influences, on the legal side of things to make the whole process a lot easier. At the same time, it’s very important to allow the local representatives and the local coworking communities to embrace and to support the entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurship community, and the start-ups, the innovators, because they’re the ones who know better. It’s good to allow each one to do their work in the field that they know better. But at the same time to come together and connect this way, we will both move forward a lot faster, and a lot easier. And that would be my point there.
Maddie
Thank you so much for that. Does anyone have anything they want to add on any last thoughts? I’m a little bit sad, we’re reaching the end of our hour together.
Maria Calafatis
I would say something here very quickly, as far as freelancers are concerned, and yes, we see this too. Sometimes freelancers don’t have the budget or people are struggling on how to even pay a membership. I mean, one thing that we do at The Cube. I mean, we all know this, again, being the coworking community, it’s about the win collaborations you get to build between projects, and between people. And sometimes they are a lot better than then a paid membership. We’ve had people come to us saying, I’m a student, I’m living in Athens. These are my skills, I’m studying, I don’t have a budget at the moment to pay for a membership, but I can offer XYZ. Can we find the middle way here? And we did. It’s also again. It’s about finding ways of how you can collaborate, and very cool projects come out of that. And, and again, in the coworking and in the start-up community, we know the struggles, we know that it’s a roller coaster, but we also know that every day we wake up, we don’t know who we’re going to meet, what kind of people and projects? And the more flexible and the more viable we are, and the more open-minded we are and thinking outside the box, we will allow more innovation and more projects and more cool things to come our way. One rule we have at The Cube, we will say we never say no, we say yes. But if we don’t agree fully from the beginning, we say yes but. Come to us with a proposal and we’ll definitely meet halfway. And this solves a lot of challenges and a lot of difficulties and both parties end up happy at the end. So, it’s definitely worth it.
Caterina Maiolini
It’s a beautiful approach. It’s something very similar to what we do at Start-up Home as well. It’s very difficult that we say no. We started a long time ago to kind of like disrupt a little bit what the landlords did in London, as in the classical way of having to prove what do you do? What do you not do? Sometimes people just want to travel from one place to another. They have enough money, they are entrepreneurs. They can’t prove how much their income every month is and that sort of thing. I think the more we’re going to go forward, the more the “yes, but” will have to be the attitude that everybody will need to have. Coworking, co-living, even working spaces or anything else. So yeah, I really like that.
Maria Calafatis
And, of course, keep the space active and the community coming. People come to the coworking and co-living not because of the space or not because of how sexy the space is. They come for the people. They’re going to come and meet for the community and for the community managers there. And I think Jan wanted to add there. And whenever anyone comes through this space for the first time, we show them the kitchen, we’d say so there’s the coffee and there’s always cold beer in the fridge and they are like, how does the bill work? Where do we buy? We are like, we always top up with beer. It’s open to the community. And I make sure that whenever we’re having an event or networking, everybody tops up with like six beers. And there was always a top up with beers in the fridge. So that’s also a very cool tool that beer.
Maddie
Thanks so much. That’s great. Is there anything that anyone wants to contribute? Before we wrap up? I just want to say, excuse me, thank you so much to mark Cates, Maria, and Jan. It’s been so great. Thank you so much for making the time to join us. And thank you to everybody who joined and other questions. I am really looking forward to sharing more information with you after the talk and seeing what we have, we can continue working with the content.
Caterina Maiolini
Can I say one thing? Just thank you very much for having me. I’m really happy. Thanks for listening to the co-living side of stuff. And you know, for really understanding that both industries are merging. Thank you to your team, it’s amazing. Their organization was fantastic. Well done to all of you guys. And if anyone wants to listen to more of my voice tomorrow, that is the Co-living Coworking Conference, and I will be having chats as well in there in a panel with two other amazing people. So yeah, I hope to see you there as well. Register.
Maddie
Thank you so much. It’s really been great. And with that, I’m going to say goodbye and wish you all a great evening. And I hope that you enjoy the rest of the conference. And thank you so much also to Bernie and all the folks at EF Week who supported us and also enabled me to host us.
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