Hey everyone! Once again, thank you very much to everyone who contributed to the call today. For those of you who could not attend, below a brief recap of our conversation.

Who attended today?

Really glad that we had such a global session!

• Tomokazu Morisawa, Founder of The DECK came all the way from Osaka,
• Rebecca Anschütz, Program Manager at Maschinenraum in Berlin
• Méghan Crt, Community Manager at la vaca coworking in Barcelona
• Sumit Nagar, Senior Community Manager at Spring House Coworking in Delhi,
• Catarina Vilaça de Sousa, Community Manager at Factory Braga in Braga,
• Teelke Meyer, Community Manager at betahaus Hamburg

What did we discuss? After introducing each other (with Tomokazu Morisawa doing a virtual tour around The DECK to show us their makerspace and how they are 3D-printing reusable facemasks and shields) we all shared our current status (aka, is our space closed, open, in reopening mode) and then started discussing 2 BIG topics:

• Virtual Coworking, where everyone shared what they are currently doing with their communities online, be it events, or, like Tomo, exploring platforms such as Remo to create virtual coworking spaces. Tomo actually did a live “demo” of Remo and did a tour of the tool, showed us how they are using it and even interviewed one coworker from Singapore who share a bit of her story. Sumit shared that at Springhouse they are currently running online events such as webinars using Teams from Microsoft. Catarina Vilaça de Sousa told us about how they celebrated Factory Braga 9th’s birthday all digitally with their community. Rebecca told us about how she is currently working on an event strategy that includes virtual options to answer the current needs of her community/clients.

I am currently working on an article on the topic of virtual coworking, summarizing what it is exactly, why it matters for coworking spaces and how one can setup a virtual space, think about ways of monetizing it, with cool tools and tricks to make it happen. It will be posted on Coworkies blog next week for you to read :)

Some of the big questions we started discussing and can dive deeper in upcoming sessions on the topic:

• Is virtual coworking worth it? In the sense, will people still look at digital workspaces once the situation becomes better?
• Is there a way to connect the digital community we build to the physical space?
• How can one engage virtually as much as in a physical space?
• Post COVID-19, how should we get prepared, what will it look like?

The second part of our chat was very much about post COVID-19 and how coworking spaces can get ready for it. Méghan Crt told us for instance that in Spain, certain coworking spaces are starting to re-open, taking sanitary measures to ensure that the space is clean and safe. On my side, I shared a bit of my discussion of yesterday with an office furniture company who was telling me about the new layout currently rising out of COVID-19 called “the 6 feet office”. Emerging out of US, it means that companies are right now reshaping their workspaces to allow at least 2 meters distance between each desks. She also told me about new materials they are currently developing for office chairs, allowing it to be disinfected and cleaned without damaging the cloth / material. She will share with some interesting articles on the topic. If you guys want to read it, let me know, I will happily share it. One thing we all agreed on is that we all know that things won’t get back to normal just like that. It will take a lot of time for people to go back to their coworking space and the big pending question is “what about events?”. Events being such a big part of coworking spaces, it is really natural to think about the way they will evolve and trying to understand the future expectations of clients.

I have noted that events is a big big question mark on everyone’s mind so I suggested to talk about it in another upcoming session. I will try my best to look for interesting examples of running events partially online and offline. If you guys have any input on the topic, do not hesitate to bring it up to the group!

“Key takeaways” here are:

• What sanitary measures will we need to take once we reopen?
• Will there be a need for our spaces to evolve interior-design wise (for those who have smaller spaces for instance)
• How can we guarantee safety to our members when we receive visitors, packages, event participants all day? What can we do to adapt?

An interesting article I read yesterday can start giving us hint on what the upcoming months might look like at least in Europe. It talks about the post COVID-19 strategy Germany has announced and I believe many European countries will follow the lead: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/world/europe/coronavirus-germany-merkel.html We ended up our session answering the question “What do you need help with right now”? It seems like

• Understanding the role coworking will have in the workplace market post COVID-19 is important.
• Events, the big “fish” in the room. Rebecca actually came up with an interesting model while brainstorming together where coworking spaces can support companies in setting up their own events online (and sell it as a service), maybe that’s something worth exploring all together in a future convo?
• The role of community managers post COVID-19 considering that spaces now look at virtual community building but then, once spaces re-open there will also be the physical space to manage.

That’s a lot of information already 🙈, do not hesitate to add anything I might have forgotten and/or ask any questions. Thanks again to everyone who contributed and see you next week! PS: for everyone in need of relaxation, emptying your head, here is a sound that might help :)

https://soundcloud.com/lyl_radio/sonsdecura-130320-w-fernando-seixlack-aka-innsyter