[Manager] My coworking journal: interviewing Antje König, Community and Communications Manager at Blogfabrik
I have reached the last week of my six week coworking internship during which I explore different coworking spaces and interview the people there. As one of my final interviews, I visited Blogfabrik, a coworking space that supports content creators by allowing them to pay with their content rather than money.
Before the interview, Antje König, Community and Communications Manager, gave me and a group of students a tour of the space. Like most other coworking spaces that I have seen, Blogfabrik is sparkling clean with elegant, simplistic decorations. Various artistic creations such as paintings, photographs and magazine covers spatter the white walls. I immediately felt an affinity for the space because though there were open work areas, there were also several segmented, more private areas. This was the most extensive tour I have experienced so far as Antje also offered an informational session at the start. She informed us that some Blogfabrik content creators not only release digital content, but print as well, which was a misconception I had held.
One of the coworkers at the space also contributed to the tour, gushing about how having such a big community is helpful because when you’re freelancing, you need people from different areas, and the exchange of ideas bolsters productivity. After the tour, I sat down with Antje and asked her a few questions.
What is the biggest challenge of running a coworking space that differs from the normal coworking model?
At normal coworking spaces, people are just working in the same room. We want to be a community here. We have around 100 people in our whole network, though as for people physically working here it’s hard to say, maybe thirty to forty now. The biggest challenge is making sure everyone knows each other, everyone feels comfortable, and that they are collaborating on their own projects and also collaborating with us. The special thing is that we’re not a traditional coworking space but we offer a community.
What would you say is the emerging balance between written and digital content in the modern world?
It’s getting more important to have video and image content, but people are still interested in reading and information is dependent on the written word, both online and in print. There is not just one way for the future. Many people here know that going back to publishing in print means you can give someone something. People are interested in touching it and having a look, you don’t worry about how much battery you have on your phone, and people are going back to reading books. I wouldn’t say it’s only a trend, you have to think about different ways of publishing, especially regarding customer needs and what fits whom.
What role does producing art play in the modern world?
We have different artists, and for example, Schall & Schnabel & Lucas Gutierrez some organized a really nice exhibition called “I Need a Break from Shining” which was about the everyday phenomenon of narcissism. They had this idea and published it with a video installation and took a totally different perspective. [You can view this project here and here.]
If you could come up with one mission statement for Blogfabrik, what would it be?
We want to be a space that is open for everyone. On the one side, the people who are working here applied and we try to have a good selection of people here, but for events and exchanges we want to be open, and be open for younger people. One mission statement could be to create a sort of academy so people can learn what digital content is about, work with different content creators, and find out what ways of publishing are possible and what kinds of projects there are. It’s also in the name, we’re using the space to be a “fabrik”- a space where ideas and content are produced.
Thank you, Antje, for taking time out of your schedule to chat with me today, and for sharing me your beautiful space!
I came away from my interview and tour with another coworking space visit under my belt and an increased appreciation for all the different iterations coworking can take. If you enjoyed this interview, you can read about the start of my coworking experiment:
I am exploring coworking from my own perspective as a 20-year-old American college student who only learned what coworking is about a month ago. My project is a part of Coworkies, an online platform that connects people between coworking spaces globally (www.coworkies.com ).
