My coworking journal week 2: Down the Coworking Rabbit Hole
As week two of my coworking experiment draws to a close, I have a few thoughts to share. First, to review, my name is Emma Fenstermaker and I am a 20-year-old American student currently studying abroad in Berlin. For the next six weeks here, I will be studying different coworking spaces and keeping a blog about my experiences and impressions. This project falls under the umbrella of Coworkies, an online platform that connects people between coworking spaces globally (www.coworkies.com ).
During my first week, I spent my time researching what exactly coworking is as I came into this project with little-to-no background knowledge. I familiarized myself with the concept of coworking and its benefits until I felt confident in moving on to more in-depth exploration.
This week, I uprooted the small routine that I had built form myself at Rainmaking Loft and moved to Impact Hub, a coworking space that houses start-ups and entrepreneurs focused specifically on social and environmental issues. I was in love with the space as soon as I saw it. A wall-length window allows sunlight to pour into the main room. Colorfully accented tables, couches, and plants fill the space, and everyone seemed to be walking around with a smile on their face. After meeting several residents of Impact Hub, I set up shop at a table facing a pleasant outdoor view and got to work.
My main focus these past few days has been digging into the coworking scenes of Berlin. I was interested in comparing it to other European cities, so I looked into Madrid and Lisbon as well. Berlin and Madrid both host over 100 spaces, and I read about a spectrum that encompassed tech-focused spaces to exclusively artistic endeavors to coworking spaces specifically for lawyers (Unifortia), engineers (CowOrKing Vaca o Rey), and more. Basically, you could match any profession in the known universe to at least one coworking space in Madrid or Berlin alone. I paid particular attention when researching Berlin coworking spaces because I was seeking out two or three places to explore in the coming weeks. After combing through an extensive list, there were a few that caught my special attention.
While most all of the spaces I looked at seem innovative and exciting, I was particularly interested in Social Impact Lab, Blogfabrik, and Sankt Oberholz.
As I was looking through the spaces, I was keeping a special eye out for any that related to social justice issues or creative writing, the two things that most interest me. Social Impact Lab intrigued me because, as the name implies, the projects there seek to make a positive social impact on the world. I enjoyed reading about the different projects going on there, especially the Anderland Systems project and the Viola project. The Anderland Systems project aims to mitigate the effects of climate change for those who are most affected. You can read more about their work here.
I feel passionately about environmental issues and combatting climate change, and would love to learn more about the project and see them in action. The Viola project is developing a biography app designed to help people with dementia retain information about their lives, which you can read more about here. Every single project that I read about on their site seemed incredibly creative and addressed issues in ways that I never would have thought of.
I was drawn to Blogfabrik because of my affinity for the creative arts and writing. They are a coworking space that hosts digital content creators such as bloggers, instagrammers, photographers. They seem to have a bright, welcoming atmosphere, and I am particularly interested in their model of payment: members paying for use of the space with their creations instead of money. I have never heard of anything like this before, and it seems to me that conducting a business this way would both alleviate financial stressors for the creators and motivate them to produce consistently high-quality content.
As for St. Oberholz, they are a more generalized coworking space, but I was captive by their website, and the phrasing they used such as “we see ourselves as priests of the power of possible.” The space seems beautiful, and their publishing house where they “give niche topics a space to flourish” captured me as I am considering a future career in publishing. All three coworking spaces seem to be fascinating, innovating spaces, and I hope that I have the opportunity to explore them soon.
In addition to my research, I also attended the weekly breakfast held at Betahaus, another major Berlin coworking space. The breakfasts are held on Thursdays, and members and guests have the opportunity to relax and enjoy their food before a few different groups give short presentations.
This week, the first presentation was centered on an improv program aimed at helping struggling teens. The second proposed a new form of flexible car rentals; a project called Ubeeqo. The third discussed artisan chocolates (Le Petit Carré de Chocolat) made with the highest quality ingredients.
After each presentation, the floor was open to questions, and people offered their own commentary and takes on each product or service. I was fascinated by the exchange of ideas and the way that everyone bounced off of each other and interacted in order to make their ideas better. There was a brief conflict following the chocolate presentation over the definition of fair trade and what one can do to ensure food products are coming from a good source, but I think the conversation was mostly in the spirit of well-intentioned debate.
Though I was not at Betahaus long, I still formed a good impression about yet another space that fosters innovation and creativity through community engagement, collaboration, and a beautiful work setting, and I hope that I can return in a week or two for a more comprehensive tour.
This week, I enjoyed just being in the Impact Hub atmosphere and interacting with the people there. I participated in the member lunch on Wednesday, and as I did not have an ingredient to contribute, I helped with the cooking process.
Being a part of such a cheerful, vibrant community was a lot of fun, as everyone had something interesting to contribute and everyone seemed to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Someone even told me laughingly that I was working too hard and needed to take more breaks “to chat,” something that I never thought I would hear in an office environment. Overall, I am happy with my relocation to Impact Hub this week, and I look forward to using it as a jumping off point in the coming weeks as I venture out to explore more coworking spaces and increase my knowledge and understanding.
You can read about my first week here:
The Coworkies team has traveled to 110 coworking spaces across 12 cities and interviewed coworking space owners and teams, collecting stories along the way. They forge connections between coworking spaces and open doors to a more global coworking community.
