11 cool things that happened at Coworker in 2016

Well, that went fast! It’s almost the end of the year already so we took a moment to reflect on some of the exciting moments for Coworker.com in 2016.

We’re really excited to be creating what is quickly growing into being the world’s most trusted coworking community platform, connecting people with coworking spaces & communities around the globe.

2017 is set to be a big year for us (big announcements will be coming in January so stay tuned!). But for now, let’s take a look at some of our favorite milestones from the past 12 months!

Every coworking space in the world is unique with a different vibe and community to their neighbors.

This year we’ve grown to have 3028 amazing coworking spaces across the world featured on Coworker.

This is important to us because the more diversity we have, the more opportunities there are for people to find the perfect match for them.

Some of the communities featured on Coworker include:

• spaces for artists (eg. Con Artist in NYC)
• spaces where you can bring your dog to work (we actually have 243 “dog friendly” coworking spaces on Coworker — use the advanced filters on the Search page to find them all!)
• women-only spaces (eg. Woolf Works in Singapore)
• spaces with 3D printers for all the makers out there (89 spaces to be exact — use the filters to check em out!)
• 103 coworking spaces with co-living accommodation (including Hub Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands)

…and so many more! Whatever type of coworking space & community you’re looking for, and wherever you are in the world, chances are you’ll find it on Coworker.

Every day, lots of people contact coworking spaces via directly via the “Send Message” feature on their Coworker page. This has been gaining momentum over the last few months and we’re now processing almost thousand messages per month.

Some people are looking for long term memberships, others are travelers needing good WiFi for a week or so, others are looking for a cool spot to hire a big meeting room to host an event in (this is surprisingly popular!).

We wanted to help coworking spaces attract more awesome members through their doors, and realized that a simple “Send Message” function just wasn’t enough.

We needed to enable people to book a day and time for a tour to get shown around, and even get hooked up with a free day pass so they could experience the community for themselves before deciding if it’s the right space for them.

If you’re a coworking space admin, you can activate this (for free!) by logging into your account and clicking on the “Marketing” button in your Admin area (you can also set the days & times of availability for these).

If you don’t know the story of why we started Coworker, it’s because the two founders (Sam and Leanne) were in Hong Kong in June 2015 and wasted so much time on Google trying to find the right coworking space. In the end they went with a friends recommendation, but it bugged them that there wasn’t a “Tripadvisor for coworking spaces” out there which would have made their lives so much easier.

So we’re happy to say we’ve been able to publish 5023 unique reviews & recommendations by members of coworking spaces around the world.

We still have a long way to grow, but by giving people a platform to share their opinions we’re making the coworking industry more transparent, more connected and more “human”!

Part of our mission is to help coworking spaces gain exposure and get visibility in the media.

So we were thrilled when two articles were published on Forbes highlighting some of the most popular coworking spaces on Coworker.

Check them out!

Coworking Unconference Asia brings together members of the coworking industry across Asia Pacific. CUAsia attracted over 350 participants from over 30 countries, including coworking space owners, community managers, marketing directors, expansion managers, and so many more!

It was an incredible opportunity to learn from and connect with so many great people who are as equally passionate about coworking as us.

Here’s a video we made from the conference!

We were thrilled when we woke up to see a new addition to our “Pending Spaces” one day — Afghanistan’s first ever coworking space had joined our community!

Daftar, we love you. Keep doing what you do as a hotbed for innovation and the tech & startup community in Kabul.

We have some big plans in store for Coworker, and to help make these things happen faster we raised a seed round led by Jeff Natland, the founder of payments giant Neteller and veteran tech investor (including Ring, Flexport and Earnest).

Six prominent technology entrepreneurs and investors participated in the round, including Rob Kall, serial entrepreneur with a recent exit to RealPage Inc (Nasdaq:RP), and Chinese real estate mogul Chen Chao.

We’re really excited to have their experience and knowledge to tap into as we grow.

So watch this space — we’ve got some big things in motion!

If you cowork in Taipei, you may have seen us last month visiting almost all the coworking spaces in the city to officially welcome them to the Coworker community.

Laptop stickers for their members, “Recommended on Coworker” stickers for their windows, a “Review us on Coworker” card for their front desk, deep conversations and a big hug were all part of the fun.

We’ll be visiting more coworking spaces in person across Asia, the USA, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America in 2017 but if you’re a coworking space owner / team member and want your Welcome Pack sooner, email spaces@coworker.com and we’ll get everything shipped to you in the post. ❤

OH and if you want a Coworker laptop sticker, shoot us an email at community@coworker.com with your postal address and we’ll send you one for free!

In October, we launched the Coworker Lab — a community blog featuring stories, news and tips by the ourselves and others in the coworking community.

So far we’ve published articles like:

• 7 coworking spaces in tropical paradise
• The coworking phenomenon & the overhaul of the work landscape
• How to choose the best coworking space for your startup

We also created our first ever infographic (with coworking & freelancing statistics) and published it here.

If you have an article idea and want us to publish it on Coworker, hit us up at social@coworker.com and let’s make it happen!

Coworking isn’t about the desks and the decor.

It’s about the people.

So we started an initiative on our Facebook page to highlight some of the awesome people who are coworking around the world.

It’s like “Humans of New York” but for the coworking community 😉

Here are some of our favorites:

“I’m a big fan of The Beatles, and Paul McCartney was going to make a tour in my country, Brazil, in 2012. One of the shows was scheduled to be in Florianopolis, capital of the state where I live, and I simply just couldn’t miss that show! Then a local TV network held a contest where the fans should create a video, showing why they deserved to go to show with the special tickets they were offering — right in front of the stage, one of the best places!

With my smartphone, I recorded myself singing “Help!” four times, with different clothes, and mixed they all together in a frame-by-frame video like those “one guy band” we always see in the internet. The result was awesome: my video got on air on the TV, and with the help of my friends and social networks, I got the most votes and was one of the winners. So with the special tickets, I enjoyed the show very close from Sir Paul McCartney! I will never forget that day! (link to the video: https://youtu.be/qYmol5Fv8yU)"

Name: George Raphael Martinelli Menezes

Nationality: Brazilian

Coworking from: Coollabore in Brazil

Current project: CEO of http://www.georgejobs.com.br/

Likes: Google myself. Create spreadsheets and to-do lists for everything. Organize my e-mails and app icons everyday (zero inbox FTW!). Playing Pokémon Go. Playing table games (like Risk and Monopoly).

“I moved a lot growing up. After I graduated from college, I lived in two places at once! I worked 4 days a week in NYC, and 2 days a week in Philly. I did this for over 1 year to make ends meet.”

Name: Marianna Peragallo

Nationality: Brazilian

Coworking from: Con Artist Collective, NYC

Current role and project / company: Visual artist, supplemented by freelance gigs. Right now I’m working on a project called The Remembrance Archive, for which I post one hand-drawn portrait per day in remembrance of lives lost to crimes of hate, fear, and systemic racism in recent years in the US. I’ve made around 115 portraits so far. See it here: @theremembrancearchive.

A list of (maybe weird) things I like: Bikram yoga-my favorite position is Camel Pose. I consider myself a social person but really my favorite part of the day is when I get home, unbutton my pants (very important), and spend time drawing at my desk.

“When I was living in the UK, at one point I was stuck living with this guy who made my life a living hell. A passive aggressive bloke who wouldn’t even share the dishwasher liquid. I’m not a vengeful person by any means, but I needed to do something to ease my pain of living with someone who was making me so miserable.

He was addicted to these bags of granola with nuts, often buying 10 kilos of them every two weeks. He’d have a milk bowl with them every single night, and I made it my personal mission to interfere with what he loved the most. So every for day for 4 months, I went through his granola jar and picked ALL the hazelnuts away, hiding them somewhere else. Why hazelnuts? I know they were his favourite. So for 4 months he never saw a single hazelnut in his bowl, because I think I stole every single one of them. The slowest, nuttiest, payback story of all time.

When I moved out, I tossed them all out to the squirrels at the nearby Greenwich Park. A much, much better use of these hazelnuts, if you ask me.”

Name: Ricardo Magalhães

Nationality: Portuguese

Coworking from: Betahaus, Berlin

Current role/project: Front-end web developer for GatherContent

A list of (maybe weird) things I like: Coffee connoisseur… ok, coffee snob. I don’t own a lot of possessions, but I have 6 different ways of making coffee at home. Photography and typography play a role in my daily life. Using avocados for 791 different recipes. Rock climbing and running, both pretending that the floor is lava.

“I’m a good problem solver most of the time, but I can be really clueless about stuff, especially around the house.

Recently, our air conditioner cord was leaking water for a month or so before I finally asked my husband to look at it. He immediately saw that the cord was lodged underneath some equipment that I had moved on top of the cord, so the weight of this had caused the water to back up. I moved the equipment a few inches and problem solved. Duh!!!

To my family and friends, I’m known for my cooking fiascos for instance, during a large family gathering I made Thanksgiving dinner but left the ham in the roaster and forgot about it until after we were finished with dinner.

Another time I roasted a turkey with all the trimmings only to find the bag of gizzards still intact inside the bird after it was done.

However, there are some things that have happened recently which I think are pretty cool.

This summer I was featured in the Huffington Post in a blog series written by Michael Kennedy about entrepreneurs who are over 50+.

A little over a week ago I was thrilled to receive a letter from Marc Herstand, the Executive Director of NASW-WI, the National Association of Social Workers-WI informing me that a colleague had nominated me for the NASW WI 2016 Distinguished Social Worker Award.

I will be attending the NASW-WI luncheon on October 21st along with the other nominees. I am very proud of my 41 years in social work and this nomination is truly an honor.”

Name: Barbara Hyatte Boustead

Nationality: USA

Coworking from: Matrix CoWorking

Current role and project / company: My current role is Founder of Mary’s Daughter LLC http://marysdaughterllc.com/ where I provide personal money management to seniors and veterans in their home or residence

A list of (maybe weird) things I like: I like my own jokes, mostly because I don’t “get” other people’s jokes much of the time. Mine are really, really bad but I think they’re hilarious and I laugh shamelessly, much to the chagrin of those around me! Love dark chocolate but I will eat anything chocolate if it’s within my reach. Love reading about money topics and talking about money with people including how much they’re saving, budgeting and even spending. Dislike shopping for clothes, shoes, etc so I really like that my sister gives me most of what I wear. I am forever grateful to her. Enjoy traveling but I prefer to spend $$ on experiences rather than things, so my family and friends no longer ask me to bring home souvenirs, sorry everyone! Love office supplies, especially the latest calendars, planners, organizers and school supplies. I don’t buy much but if I do, I enjoy reorganizing my desk to try out the new purchase.

“Three years ago I took my first peek through a telescope and absolutely fell in love with what I saw. Shortly after buying my first telescope, I shipped it to New York City and spent seven months roaming around Manhattan to showcase our galaxy to people on the street.

I believe that going out to observe the heavens at night will soon be as common as going swimming on a hot summer day or going to the movies on a rainy afternoon. Therefore, my personal mission is to promote stargazing around the world and help rooftop locations, hotels and theme parks with planning “plug & play“ observation systems for their customers.”

Name: Max Burger

Nationality: German

Coworking from: SkyLoft, Costa Rica

Current Role: Entrepreneur & Investor

Current Projects:

www.cleverskewer.com
www.lasertag-one.de
www.localeyesapp.com (Open for Pre-Signup now!)
www.astrovent.com

Likes: Promoting the Universe (obviously…), tinkering product prototypes using $1 Chinese retail store products, taking photos of extraordinary trees and sharing them on http://TreeThe.World/, binge listening to audiobooks

“I became a roller derby queen on a lark. My friends and I were at a Comicon and someone handed me a roller derby recruitment flyer.

My immediate reaction was to toss the flyer but my friends said, “Why not?” I hadn’t been on roller skates for many, many years, but the idea of trying something new intrigued me. I showed up to their newbie skater night and I was hooked.

When I passed skills for Albuquerque Roller Derby and was ready to join the team I crowd sourced my derby name. Because I’m a freelance writer, my friends came up with Author of Pain. FYI: I can’t talk any of my friends into joining, but that’s O.K., I’d rather not have to knock any of my friends around.”

Name: Sonja Dewing

Nationality: American

Coworking from: FatPipeABQ in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Current Project: Founder of PlotDuckies.com and co-founder of dovetailworkshop.com

Likes: Socks, new roller skate wheels, great writing, coffee, chocolate and Sci-Fi.

“I love to travel and meet new people. I met my husband on my 20th birthday in Tijuana, Mexico and together, we’ve seen the world. One of my favourite/funniest moments is when my husband and I were scootering around Vietnam and the scooter we had didn’t have much horse power. Mind you, we were both riding it and I was carrying a heavy backpack with our camera gear and we could barley reach 40 KPH with out the engine sounding like it was over doing it. Or perhaps it was screaming at us to slow down or to stop eating so many banh mi’s. So we reached our destination and at our amazement, we laid eyes on the steepest incline at the base of a mountain. Wondering if we could possibly make it up with enough momentum, I was really doubtful if we could muster up the speed to get up the incline that laid in front of us. Determined we could make it, my husband revved that the little engine, and unbeknownst to us, we were preparing for what would ensue to be the most ridiculous 20 minutes of our lives. He literally kicked that scooter in the guts and we were flying towards the mountain. And out of no where, my husband belted out “START BOUNCING”. So here I am, holding onto my husband, bouncing up and down on this little scooter that is literally screeching from the acceleration. I couldn’t believe it, the bouncing was given the little scooter a chance to get up the mountain. And soon as I felt the scooter slow down drastically, to the point where I thought we would start rolling backyards, my husband would lead the charge, “MORE BOUNCING, THIS TIME, IN RYTHYM! 1, 2, 3. THATS IT! KEEP BOUNCING!” Picture this, two adults, on a scooter, literally bouncing in unison to get up a steep mountain. We did this for almost 20 minutes and I never laughed so hard in my life. We got some hysterical looks along the way from locals but its a memory I will never forget.”

Name: Christine Donaldson

Nationality: Canadian

Coworking from: The Bridge Street Collective, New Zealand

Current role and project / company: Studio Manager of The Bridge Street Collective

A list of (maybe weird) things I like: tea cup piglets, raccoons, double hop IPA’s, and any John Wayne movie

(P.S. want to get featured in “Coworkers of the World”? Email social@coworker.com to let us know!)

It’s been a rollercoaster year here at Coworker as we’ve grown so quickly, travelled the world spending time with amazing coworking communities, and had a LOT of fun while working. That’s the way it should be at all companies, right?

Have a great holiday season and HAPPY 2017 everyone… let’s all kick some serious ass in the year ahead.

❤

*This post was originally published on the Coworker Lab