Connecting beyond our walls

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On November 11 and 12, 2015, Lenneke van Rossum and I represented Seats2meet.com at the Coworking Europe conference in Milan. A little wrap up of those days and why it is so important to connect beyond the walls of a cowork space.

 

‘We like coworking more than pizza…’

A magnificent playground for the Coworking Europe conference: the place where they used to make the decor pieces for Teatro alla Scala in Milan. An industrial, rough and unpolished venue. And when the first slide says ‘We like coworking more than pizza, and we love pizza.’, you know you are in Italy. With close to 40 cowork spaces, Milan is definitely a bubbly city. Offering a software tool now that connects people based on serendipity, S2M had the role of facilitator all of a sudden.

 

‘I like to be connected with other people’

The first morning filled with keynotes included an interesting summary of the Global Coworking Survey 2015-2016 by DeskMag. ‘I like to be connected with other people’ was the reason for 73% of the people to work from a cowork center. A shared second place (67%) was for people who either said ‘I like the coworking movement’ or ‘I like to improve the work life of other people’. Maybe that last one got lost in translation; I am not sure how to interpret it. What is clear though, is that the ‘connection’ is the absolute winner and that people like to be part of this movement in which we redefine how we work and create different values with each other. It proves how extremely important the coworking movement is. It offers people a transitional environment plus the opportunity to help crafting this next digital world.

 

Connecting outside of our own walls

So we all spoke about networking and the importance of really getting connected to each other in this new digital era. At the same time, most spoke people spoke about their spaces, their members, their events. In a panel of four people, representing the 4 largest European coworking brands, Lenneke emphasized the real role of the coworking movement: connecting and empowering professionals on their way to a new world. She also explained the importance of connecting outside of our own walls to unlock complete regions. This way we will be able to create a healthy ecosystem all together, one that we can all benefit from. It clearly made people think; many wanted to have more information after the panel session.

 

Making serendipity sexy

Our mission at S2M is just that: connecting and empowering professionals by facilitating serendipity. Serendipity means having an unexpected, yet relevant encounter. You don’t expect it, but suddenly you find someone that is able to help you on your mission as a professional. The more professionals connect to the S2M platform, the larger and stronger the networks will become. The larger and stronger the networks will become, the more of those serendipitous encounters we can facilitate. More teams can be formed, more collaborations can start and professionals can reinforce each other to create the next economy, together. So join us in making serendipity sexy. Let’s connect all over the globe and do not let any walls or anything else limit us. Let’s reinforce each other and grow together.