Coworking Values Podcast

“Anyone who tells you to have this little bit of code, do this, is lying. Nobody knows exactly how to optimise towards it.”Hector Kolonas

Tired of running yourself into the ground?

Then stop running alone.

On February 24th, the London Coworking Assembly presents Unreasonable Connection Goes Live!—a one-day working session for the people running London’s most vital neighbourhood spaces and the public sector allies working to help them thrive. It’s a day to share the load, find real solutions, and build a new playbook, together.

That’s Hector Kolonas on AI search strategy.

Not the consultant version. The honest version. The version you get from someone who’s been watching coworking patterns since 2013 — not because he planned it, but because the Cyprus banking crisis wiped out his business overnight.

Banks froze. ATMs stopped. His advertising clients axed his contracts.

What he found himself staring at: empty ad agency offices, Herman Miller chairs gathering dust, and a new class of displaced workers with nowhere to go. So he filled those offices with freelancers. Not as a business plan. As survival.

That’s why he sees fragility where others see trends.

When he talks about the shifts happening in coworking right now, he’s not predicting from a conference stage. He’s pattern-matching against what happens when systems fail. Three shifts are reshaping how people interact with coworking spaces.

Not abstract trends. Real changes happening now.

The first shift

People aren’t choosing a single office anymore.

They’re building an ecosystem of workspaces based on what task they’re trying to complete and what else is happening in their life that day. A coworking space for collaborative work. Home for deep focus. A hotel lobby for client calls.

The question isn’t “Should I join?” It’s “Does this space fit the specific thing I need right now?”

The second shift

Who pays and how billing works is becoming the silent killer.

When employers centralise workspace spending, they gravitate toward spaces that make accounting simple. If your billing creates friction, members stop showing up — not because they don’t love the community, but because finance said no.

This is a power shift disguised as a logistics problem.

The third shift

Discoverability is fragmenting.

Google Maps still matters. But AI search is producing queries so specific that traditional SEO can’t answer them:

“I need a workspace with a podcast studio near Abby’s soccer training on Tuesday afternoons that I can book on a per day basis.”

“I need somewhere quiet to get some deep work done that has great coffee, isn’t too busy on Wednesday mornings and is within five minutes walk of Tottenham Court Road Station.”

That’s what people are typing into OpenAI, Claude, Perplexity, Comet Browser.

If your space can’t be stitched together from Reddit conversations, podcast appearances, and member testimonials, you’re about to become invisible. And invisible doesn’t mean you’re competing with WeWork.

It means you’re competing with someone’s kitchen table.

What else this episode covers

Hector unpacks what “operational AI” actually means.

Not chatbots or content generators, but systems that prompt your team: “This is Bernie’s 200th day pass. He’s coming in tomorrow.” That’s hospitality meeting data. The community manager still decides what to do.

The AI just ensures they know the opportunity exists.

The conversation takes a turn into vibe coding — describing what you want a system to do and having AI build it, without knowing how to code. Bernie asks Hector to explain it “to an eighth grader.”

After a proper answer, Bernie says: “I’m so glad I asked.”

Hector’s warning for operators tempted to chase every AI trend: in the early days of coworking, every space built their own software. Now, many spaces are building their own AI agents and database infrastructure without expert guidance.

They’ll learn the same painful lessons about maintenance, security, and technical debt.

Bernie’s version is blunter: “It’s tempting to solve problems you don’t have yet. You see, I can launch aeroplanes in AI. It’s like you’re a blogger in a three-site coworking company in Birmingham. Stick to what you’re doing.”

By the end, when Hector finishes describing This Week in Coworking — the newsletters, the undercurrents, the games, the leader profiles — Bernie’s response is honest:

“I’m so jealous. Anyway, did I say that out loud?”

If you’ve been wondering whether all the AI talk is hype or something you need to act on, this episode gives you a framework for deciding what matters now versus what to file away for later.

Timeline Highlights

[01:14] Bernie introduces the “second best coworking podcast in the world.” Hector immediately: “How many guests have asked you what the number one podcast is?”

[01:18] “According to all the AI engines, This Week in Coworking is an encyclopaedia for the coworking industry. It’s not how I would have called it, but it’s an interesting way to think about it.”

[02:03] Bernie: “I thought it was earlier than that. I thought it was the economic crash in Cyprus.” Hector: “Yeah, that was in 2013, man.”

[03:07] The ecosystem shift: “This idea that you don’t have to be in a specific physical place to achieve a task, but there are physical spaces that make certain tasks easier to achieve.”

[06:01] The billing reality: “The easier it is to access the space from a billing perspective... is changing how people interact with space. They’re leaning towards the ones that are easier to pay.”

[07:32] The AI prompt that should worry you: “I need somewhere quiet to get some deep work done that has great coffee, isn’t too busy on Wednesday mornings and is within five minutes walk of Tottenham Court Road Station.”

[09:49] The anti-b******t moment: “Anyone who tells you to have this little bit of code, do this, is lying. Nobody knows exactly how to optimise towards it, but good fundamentals is what we are recommending right now.”

[14:01] The hospitality AI enables: “Being told that this is Bernie’s 200th day pass, he’s coming in tomorrow... there is so much you can do with the right hospitality hat on.”

[15:51] Vibe coding explained: “I can tell it, I need this outcome, and I’m not really fussed about how you do it.”

[20:47] Bernie on AI search: “I’ve had the luxury of hanging around Koffi since it all started... that Gemini enterprise thing, it surfaces so much from my Google Drive, which is now 15 years old.”

[24:22] Where to start: “What is the frog you would want to eat first? Or what is the thing that you have to do every day that puts that pain in your stomach? Automate that first.”

[27:02] Bernie’s warning: “It’s tempting to solve problems you don’t have yet. You see, I can launch aeroplanes in AI. It’s like you’re a blogger in a three-site coworking company in Birmingham. Stick to what you’re doing.”

[34:06] After Hector describes everything TWIC has become, Bernie: “I’m so jealous. Anyway, did I say that out loud?”

Why Nobody’s Choosing One Office Anymore

The first shift Hector describes isn’t about hybrid work policies.

It’s about how people mentally map their working lives. Pre-pandemic, most desk workers had one office. Post-pandemic, the narrative became “office versus home.”

But what’s actually emerging is more fluid.

An ecosystem where different spaces serve different purposes depending o...

"It wasn't because they weren't listening – it was because they weren't educated. Once that penny drops, they're super helpful."Ewan Buck

Tired of running yourself into the ground?

Then stop running alone.

On February 24th, the London Coworking Assembly presents Unreasonable Connection Goes Live!—a one-day working session for the people running London’s most vital neighbourhood spaces and the public sector allies working to help them thrive. It’s a day to share the load, find real solutions, and build a new playbook, together.

Ewan Buck has been working on Contingent Works since 2018. The space opened on Bromley High Street in late 2020, weeks before England’s second lockdown.

For the first four years, the council didn’t get it.

Not because they were hostile. Because they’d never seen what a coworking space actually does. They work in dull corporate offices. They don’t know what it looks like when freelancers and micro-businesses find each other, share leads, and build something together.

So Ewan did what Gerald from a Brixton coworking assembly told him worked: he educated them. Slowly. Persistently. For four years.

He dragged councillors into the space. He introduced them to members. He let them see faces light up over laptop screens on a Friday afternoon when central London offices sat empty.

Then the personnel changed. Someone new arrived in the department and asked the obvious question: “Oh, you’ve got a coworking space on the high street? That’s really handy.”

Once the penny dropped, they were super helpful.

Now Contingent Works runs an accelerator programme with Goldsmiths University. Ten scaling companies get monthly mentoring. Regular networking events bring local businesses together. The MP is scheduled to visit in February.

But here’s the part that stopped Bernie mid-conversation:

A member, Jack, wrote to the MP. Without telling Ewan. Without being asked.

“I don’t know why you’re not here. I don’t know why you don’t support this place. It’s absolutely brilliant. I couldn’t work without this place.”

The parliamentary office responded.

That’s what four years of patient, connected, ecosystem-minded work actually produces. Not just a profitable space. A space that people fight for.

Timeline Highlights

[01:34] “I like to be known as a connector, someone who connects people together.”

[02:20] Bromley’s identity: London borough since ‘68, but “the post office couldn’t be bothered to change all the codes.”

[04:23] Why “Contingent Works”: “We wanted to align ourselves with disruptors that embrace the new.”

[05:49] The toilet wall photo and Simon Barker’s response: “I’ve made it from the gutter to the toilet.”

[07:04] How Ewan met his co-founder, Stephen, at the school gates of David Bowie’s old primary school. “We sat in all the chairs, hoping it might be in the same chair.”

[09:56] Discovering Soho Radio: “Someone must have thought this is a great idea. I’m just going to do it.”

[11:34] On London changing: “Cities always change... Maybe people take fewer risks. I don’t know.”

[14:45] Gerald’s lesson from Brixton: “It wasn’t because they weren’t listening – it was because they weren’t educated.”

[14:55] “Once that penny drops, they’re super helpful.”

[16:11] What the council partnership produced: “An accelerator hub with Goldsmith University... a really tight cohort of 10 companies that are all scaling.”

[17:33] “That took four years. More importantly, it took a change of leadership in the council.”

[18:15] “You need a backer. You need an advocate in the council to help you.”

[18:54] The method: “You have to drag them, kicking and screaming, into your space.”

[19:30] GLA team visiting on a Friday: “Oh, this is where all the people from London work.”

[22:24] Jack writes to the MP: “I don’t know why you’re not here... He did that off his own back.”

[25:30] High street reality: “2019 was the worst retail year ever... they’re going ‘Oh, we’re nearly at 2019 levels’ – forgetting that it was terrible”

[26:54] The infrastructure case: “Every single bus going through Bromley stops opposite our building.”

[29:45] What success means: “It only really works if everything around you is successful as well.”

[30:45] “You can’t just live in isolation.”

Identity as Connector

When Bernie asks what Ewan wants to be known for, he doesn’t say “successful business owner” or “coworking operator.” He says: “A connector. Someone who connects people together.”

This isn’t branding. It’s how he moves through the world. He works with the council “quite a lot” because it lets him meet other groups of people. He introduces people “in a positive way.” His value isn’t the desks – it’s the relationships.

Deep Local Roots

Ewan didn’t parachute into Bromley as a developer. He lives there. His kids go to school there. He met his co-founder Stephen at the school gates, where they discovered David Bowie had also been a pupil.

“We sat in all the chairs, hoping it might be in the same chair.”

That’s not a businessman. That’s a neighbour. And neighbours think differently about what a high street needs.

Learning From the Community

The breakthrough insight came from Gerald at a coworking assembly event in Brixton. Ewan went. He listened. Gerald explained that councils aren’t hostile – they’re uneducated. “You have to educate your councillor. They don’t understand. They don’t know what a coworker is.”

Ewan took that lesson and applied it for four years.

This is what coworking assemblies and peer networks are for. Not just moral support – tactical intelligence from people who’ve already made the mistakes.

Physical Presence as Strategy

The method is specific and replicable:

“You have to drag them, kicking and screaming, into your space. They work in an extremely dull corporate environment. It’s a council office. They’re never glamorous. They walk into somewhere like Contingent and go, ‘Oh, right. Wow. These people work here. This is amazing. It’s like a hotel lobby.”

Then, introduce them to members. Let them see what actually happens. Let them feel the energy.

The GLA team walked in on a Friday and said, “Oh, this is where all the people from London work.” That’s the moment understanding shifts.

Finding Your Advocate

Ewan is clear about what made the difference:

“More importantly, it actually took a change of leadership in the council. Not the top leaders, but in that department. It took a change of personnel in that department for someone new to come in and go, ‘Oh, you’ve got coworking space in the high street. That’s really handy.’”

And once you find that person:

“You need a backer. You need an advocate in the council to help you. As long as you can get in there and educate them, it should be a reciprocal relationship. It has proved so, so far.”

The lesson: keep educating. Keep showing up. The right person will eventually arrive.

Creating a Space Members Fight For

Jack didn’t write to the MP because Ewan asked him to. He wrote because the space mattered enough to him that he couldn’t understand why it wasn’t recognised.

“I don’t know why you’re not here. I don’t know why you don’t support this place. It’s absolutely brilliant. I couldn’t work without this place.”

You can’t manufacture that. You can only create conditions where it happens: a space so good, so connected to people’s working lives, that they advocate without being asked.

Ecosystem Thinking

Bernie asks what Ewan hopes for 2026. He doesn’t say “profitability” or “growth.” He says:

“You want things to turn over and be settled... But it only really works if everything around you is s...

“If coffee shops could have innovated a bit, the coworking industry might have never even happened, honestly, because coffee shops have all the ingredients that coworking movement wanted. It just needed an extra layer of intentionality.” — David Walker

Tired of running yourself into the ground?

Then stop running alone.

On February 24th, the London Coworking Assembly presents Unreasonable Connection Goes Live!—a one-day working session for the people running London’s most vital neighbourhood spaces and the public sector allies working to help them thrive. It’s a day to share the load, find real solutions, and build a new playbook, together.

David Walker is back on the podcast, and this time he’s got a provocation that might sting.

That indie coffee shop you love? The one where you spend eight hours nursing a single flat white, running speed tests on their wifi, hunting for the corner seat with the working plug socket?

It could have been a coworking space. Should have been, perhaps.

The ingredients were all there: the energy, the ambient productivity, the regulars who recognise each other but never speak because it’s against social norms. What was missing was a membership model and a barista willing to connect people instead of just pulling shots.

In our first conversation back in August, David talked about the bias towards design over engagement — how spaces get the aesthetics right but miss the human facilitation that makes community actually happen. This episode picks up that thread and runs with it: what does intentional community facilitation look like when you strip away the fancy furniture?

David has been in coworking since 2008, back when Conjunctured was a refurbished house in East Austin with beer in the vending machine. He’s watched the industry grow from grassroots movement to asset class. He’s always working between two worlds — the grassroots ethos in one side of his brain, the future evolution of the industry in the other.

This time, he’s looking backwards and forwards simultaneously.

Backwards: to the coffee shop owners who watched laptop warriors colonise their tables without ever figuring out how to monetise them. Who posted “no wifi” signs and two-hour table limits instead of building the community hub they were accidentally creating.

Forwards: to how AI might be the “permission slip” that lets small operators embrace the complexity of hybrid models.

Bernie’s been thinking about this too. There’s a café in Vigo where he’s got a sticker on his phone to show his commitment. It looks like a coworking space. It functions like a coworking space. But the people in there would never call it that.

There’s something in that gap between what we call things and what they actually are.

The conversation spirals into territory that matters right now — especially for UK operators watching the business rates crisis unfold. If your model isn’t sustainable, you’re vulnerable. And sustainable doesn’t just mean profitable. It means generative. Building something that creates value for everyone in the room, not just extracting rent from them.

What David loved about the original coworking world was precisely this: it was a business with an element of social activism. A sustainable model that enabled community. The Cluetrain Manifesto’s “markets are conversations” made real in a room where people actually talked to each other.

The episode closes where all the best coworking conversations do: with a reminder that talking to AI all day will get you high on your own fumes. This is when we need to be talking to other coworking people in our area. Get together. Maintain that human connection.

This conversation touches something fundamental to why the Coworking Values Podcast exists: the belief that Accessibility, Community, Openness, Collaboration, and Sustainability aren’t nice-to-haves but the actual point.

Uncertain times. Exciting times. A jungle out there.

Timeline Highlights

[00:04] Bernie announces Unreasonable Connection going live on 24th February in London — tickets on sale in January

[01:37] David on bridging two worlds: “always having the ethos of the grassroots mindset in one side of my brain and the future evolution of the industry in the other”

[02:28] The provocation: “if coffee shops could have innovated a bit, the coworking industry might have never even happened”

[04:43] Bernie’s pricing puzzle: “How do I charge? Is it like you can only sit here if you’ve got a membership?”

[06:31] David on the business model wall: “You saw these coffee shops struggle with this new influx of a new type of customer, but they could never figure out how to properly monetize the customer”

[08:05] The disconnect: “the average user of a coffee shop has never been a member at a coworking space”

[11:57] The unlock: “if a barista was at an hour or two out of the day, almost like a light community manager where they tried to introduce people or catalyse conversations”

[13:33] David’s blueprint: “one phone booth, some external monitors, reliable power, a membership fee for free drip coffee, and a barista who cared to connect people — there, you got a new business model”

[17:17] AI as permission slip: “open up Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT and tell it everything about your business and say, How do I get from point A to point B? It’s going to have a plan”

[20:37] Bernie’s shock: “I was shocked at how many people where they used AI was like spell check in a newsletter”

[21:50] The hard truth: “at the end of the day, if it’s not going to create more money in the door, then it’s just a volunteer effort”

[24:17] David on what made coworking special: “it was a business, a quote, unquote business. But it had this element of social activism... we were enabling community through a sustainable business model”

[27:03] The vision: “A business owner or a coworking space owner has the ability to build a microeconomy in their own coworking space”

[29:15] Bernie’s closing wisdom: “this now more than ever is when we should be talking to other coworking space owners and community people in our area”

The Coffee Shop That Almost Was

Walk into any indie coffee shop and you’ll see the ghost of what coworking could have become.

There’s the guy who’s been here since opening, laptop slowly murdering his thighs, running speed tests every hour. There’s the woman who recognises the regulars but hasn’t spoken to any of them because that’s not what you do in a café. There’s the owner watching their tables occupied by people spending a tenner over eight hours, unable to turn them for the lunch rush.

David calls this the coffee shop’s collision with the wifi revolution. He remembers when not every café had wifi, when you had to scout for plug access like a detective. Now the infrastructure exists everywhere, but the business model never evolved to match.

Coffee shops had everything the coworking movement wanted. The energy. The ambient productivity. The sense of being around other humans doing their own thing. What they lacked was intentionality — a membership model, a mechanism for connection, a way to monetise the all-day laptop warriors without resorting to passive-aggressive “no laptops” signs.

Bernie sees this playing out in Vigo right now. His friend’s café has a huge event space upstairs. He keeps trying to convince Josh to put a big table up there, add some monitors, create a coworking area. The blueprint is obvious. But there’s that gap between knowing what could work and actually building it.

The ingredients were all there. The recipe was never written.

The Barista as L...

“If we can make people feel like anything is possible, anything is solvable, together... We can find a way together.” - Karen Tait

Tired of running yourself into the ground?

Then stop running alone.

On February 24th, the London Coworking Assembly presents Unreasonable Connection Goes Live!—a one-day working session for the people running London’s most vital neighbourhood spaces and the public sector allies working to help them thrive. It’s a day to share the load, find real solutions, and build a new playbook, together.

Karen Tait’s electricity bill has tripled in four years.

The reality of running an independent coworking space in 2025 is about to get worse.Karen founded The Residence in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, after years of commuting to London while affordability kept pushing her further out. She went from investment banking to building the kind of space she desperately needed: a place where small business owners could find energy, support, validation, and community—not just desks and Wi-Fi.

She knows both worlds. The City, and the country lane.

Now, a single policy change threatens to undo it all.

The UK’s business rates reclassification—specifically the stripping of Small Business Rates Relief from private offices within coworking spaces—could force operators like Karen into an impossible choice: absorb costs they can’t afford, pass them on to members who don’t deserve the hit, or close.

The same policy that strips relief from Karen’s members gives breaks to distribution warehouses on the edge of town.

This episode is part of our ongoing series on the business rates crisis, following conversations with Jane Sartin from FlexSA and Roland Stanley from Dragon Coworking.

What makes Karen’s perspective essential is what she reveals about the hidden economic engine that coworking creates.

The Residence doesn’t just provide workspace.

It provides infrastructure for 150 members who would otherwise be scattered across home offices and coffee shops. It sources everything locally—coffee beans from Saffron Walden, cleaning services, IT support, catering—all within Hertfordshire.

Every pound spent circulates through the local economy rather than vanishing into Amazon’s supply chain.

Bernie cites research from an Islington Council social value impact report: for every £1 spent with a local business, that pound circulates through the local economy four times.

When money goes to national chains, it disappears.

Bernie asks about the hidden costs of running physical space—and Karen doesn’t flinch. She’s started being more vocal about the actual running costs.

It’s eye-watering, she says.

This is a very lean business, incredibly lean.

Every price rise, every vacancy, every increase in employment costs is a strain. And now this whole threat to how rates will be applied to the building... it really could be the final blow.

The episode isn’t all grim.

Karen shares how she’s fighting back—meeting with her local MP Josh, working with Jane at FlexSA, and refusing to accept that everyone else will deal with it.

If you run an independent coworking space in the UK, this episode is essential listening.

If you use one, it’s time to understand what’s at stake.

Timeline Highlights

[00:00] Bernie sets the scene: “The value it has to the local area is way beyond desks and WiFi.”

[01:42] Karen’s origin story: “The Residence” was born out of my own selfish needs of needing a place to work.”

[02:27] The energy you can’t bottle: “A level playing field for small business owners, a place where startup dreams can happen together.”

[04:01] Location context: “We’re actually on a farm development, a little bit tucked away down a country lane, but in the middle of our housing estate.”

[06:26] Why face-to-face support matters: “Connecting with all the businesses that are in your community who perhaps can cross-pollinate.”

[08:03] The Amazon boycott: “We will not use Amazon. We will work with people in our community to supply everything that we need.”

[08:03] Cross-pollination in action: “Lighting engineers working with interior designers, small business owners working with the VAs in our space, estate agents working with the local videographer.”

[09:41] The £200 challenge: “If every single person who lived in Bishop Stortford spent £200 on their local high street, their local high street could survive.”

[11:23] The reality of rates: “Whilst building valuations are going up, the rates multiplier is coming down, which means a higher bill, bottom line.”

[12:58] The electricity shock: “My electricity bill over the four years here at Bishop Stortford has tripled in price”

[13:49] The breaking point: “It’s just being penalising the system, penalising the very people that are the backbone of this country.”

[15:39] The truth: “This is not a highly profitable business. This is a very lean business, incredibly lean.”

[17:33] Taking action: “That’s talking to our local MP, engaging with Jane at Flexer... sometimes you just have to”

[22:48] The stakes: “The Residence” as a whole has 150 members. If The Residence closes, that’s going to be 150 people that suddenly have no space.”

[25:29] The beating heart: “We gave up a lot of space at the residence for a beating heart, the big kitchen area.”

[29:28] The closing philosophy: “If we can make people feel like anything is possible, anything is solvable, together... We can find a way together.”

Karen Built The Residence Because Nothing Like It Existed

Karen describes something that sounds almost utopian until you realise it’s just thoughtful design.

Dropping children off at school. Parking outside. Going for lunch in the café. Doing a workout. All woven seamlessly around a workspace.

The Residence sits on a farm development in Bishop’s Stortford—a market town of about 40,000 people, tucked down a country lane but surrounded by a café, gym, beauticians, and other businesses.

It’s intentional infrastructure for the way modern life actually works.

This “five-minute life cycle” isn’t about luxury.

It’s about making entrepreneurship accessible to people who can’t afford to disappear on a three-hour daily commute to London.

Karen lived that commute herself. She moved from the Docklands to Epping to Bishop’s Stortford as affordability kept pushing her further out—but she was still commuting back every day.

The space she built isn’t theoretical.

It’s the answer to a problem she lived.

The Residence Banned Amazon Two Years Ago

A couple of years ago, Karen made a decision that sounds radical but shouldn’t be.

The Residence would not use Amazon.

Everything they need—food, cleaning supplies, coffee, IT support, engineering, health and safety—comes from businesses within Hertfordshire.

When you spend with local suppliers, that money stays in circulation. When you pay with national or international chains, it leaves the community immediately.

Karen’s approach is intentional. She’d love to document what it physically looks like in terms of cash, because she thinks that, without realising it, you’re having an impact on the local community by spending your money.

But you have to be intentional about that.

The cross-pollination happens daily.

Lighting engineers working with interior designers. Small business owners are working with the VAs in the space. Estate agents are working with the local videographer.

When your members’ businesses grow, they need more services. When local businesses thrive, they need workspace. The interdependence is structural.

Business Rates Are Complicated — Here’s What Actually Matters

The business ra...

“I’m currently aware of two operators on the smaller size that have been handed £400,000 backdated bills... being hit with backdated business rates bills would clearly be business destroying.” - Jane Sartin

Tired of running yourself into the ground?

Then stop running alone.

On February 24th, the London Coworking Assembly presents Unreasonable Connection Goes Live!—a one-day working session for the people running London’s most vital neighbourhood spaces and the public sector allies working to help them thrive. It’s a day to share the load, find real solutions, and build a new playbook, together.

This isn’t a warning about something that might happen.

It’s already happening. Two operators have received six-figure backdated bills. The letters arrived without warning. The amounts are payable now.

Jane Sartin is the Executive Director of the Flexible Space Association. She’s spent this year in rooms with ministers, civil servants, and treasury officials trying to stop a policy change that could wipe out independent workspace operators across the country.

The fight has been going on longer than you know.

In 2023, the same issue emerged. FlexSA resolved it quietly behind the scenes — most of the industry never even knew. Then it came back in spring 2024. This time, ministers kept batting Jane back to the VOA. “It’s a technical matter for the agency,” they said. “Not a political decision for government.”

So Jane went public.

Here’s what’s working: the minister has acknowledged the pressure. “I am aware of this,” he’s told people. “I know. I’ve had a number of letters.”

The letters are landing. The campaign is having an effect.

But the power of Jane’s ministerial meeting next week depends entirely on how many more letters arrive before she walks into that room. One email gets ignored. Fifty emails from operators in the same constituency? That’s a political problem that demands a response.

This episode tells you exactly what’s happening and what to do about it.

Timeline Highlights

[00:02] “Your workspace is under attack. Might be a little bit dramatic for this, but...”

[01:26] “We exist to represent the industry. We operate as a membership body, but we play a wider role than that.”

[02:57] “What they are doing is stopping the individual assessment of serviced offices and assessing the whole building or floor... as a single hereditament.”

[04:20] “Talking publicly about potentially businesses based in serviced offices no longer being eligible for reliefs... could clearly spook customers.”

[05:41] “We realised we were going to have to start bringing their attention to it by making more public noise about it.”

[06:12] “I’m currently aware of two operators on the smaller size that have been handed £400,000 backdated bills.”

[07:41] “It’s horribly complicated. I’ve learned a lot, even just this year, but by no means am I an expert.”

[09:03] “FlexSA currently has commissioned some economic value research, which is being finalised at the moment.”

[11:14] “If people haven’t already, I would definitely encourage them to write to their MP.”

[12:43] “I’m a big believer in trying to keep things succinct... ideally, you don’t really want to be going to more than a page of A4.”

[14:19] “He said, I am aware of this. I know. I’ve had a number of letters on this.”

[18:41] “Being able to say this isn’t just a theoretical thing that might happen, it’s something that’s already happening. It’s really important.”

[19:33] “I’m absolutely aware of operators that have had expansion plans but have put those on hold... the current uncertainty is putting them off.”

[23:10] “Don’t feel like that’s a deadline because as much as I’d love to think that one meeting is going to fix it, realistically, I suspect it’s not.”

They Tried This Before — It’s Back

This is the second time FlexSA has fought this exact battle.

In 2023, the same issue emerged. Jane worked to resolve it quietly, behind the scenes. It worked. The problem went away. Most of the industry never even knew how close they’d come.

Then it came back in spring 2024.

This time, quiet diplomacy hit a wall. Jane spent months in meetings, making the case privately. The response from ministers? “This is a matter for the VOA.” The message was clear: we’re not getting involved.

That’s how systems protect themselves.

The agency makes the decision. The politicians refuse responsibility. The operators are left holding bills they can’t pay. After months of being batted back, Jane made the call to go public.

It carries risk — talking openly about members potentially losing their rates relief could spook customers.

But staying quiet wasn’t working.

What the VOA Is Actually Doing

The Valuation Office Agency assesses properties for business rates.

Historically, individual offices within a serviced workspace have been assessed separately. Small businesses occupying those offices can claim Small Business Rates Relief — often paying nothing.

The VOA now wants to assess entire floors or buildings as single units.

One assessment. One massive bill. Landing entirely on the operator. This strips relief from the small businesses inside the space. It removes the operator’s ability to claim empty rates relief on unoccupied units.

The backdating element makes this existential.

The VOA can apply these changes back to April 2023. An operator who thought their rates situation was settled could receive a letter tomorrow demanding two years of payments they never budgeted for.

Jane knows of operators who’ve already received bills of around £400,000.

For a small independent workspace, that’s not a problem to be solved.

That’s “business destroying” — her words.

Why Operators Have Been Reluctant to Speak Up

Bernie asks the question many people are thinking: why haven’t we heard more about this?

Jane’s answer is bracingly honest.

Talking publicly about your members potentially losing their rates relief could drive customers to competitors. In a market where trust and stability matter, admitting vulnerability feels dangerous.

There’s also the hope factor.

When the issue was resolved quietly in 2023, many operators assumed the same approach would work again. Why make noise when diplomacy might deliver?

But diplomacy has limits.

When ministers refuse to engage, when the VOA keeps insisting this is just technical implementation rather than policy choice, the only remaining option is political pressure.

That pressure only works if MPs hear from the people in their constituencies who are affected.

What Actually Works When Writing to Your MP

FlexSA has created a toolkit to help operators contact their MPs.

But Jane is clear about what separates an email that gets filed from one that gets action.

Keep it local.

MPs care about their constituency. The number of businesses you support, the number of people who work from your space, the local economic contribution — that’s what cuts through.

Keep it short.

One page of A4, maximum. “If they have to turn the page, you’ve lost them.”

Don’t copy-paste.

FlexSA provides template letters, but using them word-for-word backfires. When an MP receives twenty identical emails, they stop reading.

Make a specific ask.

Invite them to visit your space. Ask them to write to the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury. Request that they submit written parliamentary questions.

Here’s the proof it works.

The minister has already told people he’s aware of the issue because of the letters he’s received. More letters increase the pressure.

Why Suppliers Should Get Involved Too

The ...

Episode Summary

“If these people have their own little standalone office somewhere, if they literally picked their office up and went to put it on the street outside, they would qualify for small business rates relief. But just because they’ve had the audacity to come and get an office in a coworking space, they’re going to lose that benefit.” - Roland Stanley

Unreasonable Connection Going Live! London, February 2026.

🎟️ Tickets go on sale in January 2026.

The entire day is co-created by the coworking community builders on the co-creation waitlist.

Roland Stanley is angry. Not performatively angry. Not LinkedIn-post angry. Actually angry.

The founder of Dragon Coworking in Rochester, Kent, has spent eight years building something real in a part of England that doesn’t make the tourism brochures.

He trained as a chef at Canterbury College, grafted in kitchens across France and London, then came home to help his dad run the St. George Hotel “for two weeks” — and stayed 20 odd years.

When a spare function room sat empty and eating business rates, someone mentioned coworking. Roland went up to London, saw what was possible, and asked a question that still drives him: Why can’t this work in Medway?

Dragon Coworking was born in 2017. The name came from a friend’s suggestion — St. George Hotel, St. George and the Dragon. It stuck.

What also stuck was Roland’s hospitality instinct: make people feel welcome, build relationships before asking for anything, treat your members like they’re part of something rather than just paying the bills.

But now that something is under threat. Then the Valuation Office Agency sent a letter.

The VOA has begun reclassifying coworking spaces in a way that strips Small Business Rate Relief from the micro-businesses inside them. Roland calls it an “extinction-level event” — and he’s not being dramatic.

In this episode, Bernie and Roland dig into what’s actually happening with the VOA reclassification, why the government is using an ATM legal precedent to justify treating freelancers like cash machines, and what the coworking industry needs to do right now to fight back.

Roland has already secured a meeting with his local MP, Lauren Edwards. Jane Sartin from FlexSA has a meeting with the relevant Minister in the diary. But they need numbers. They need noise. They need you.

If you run an independent coworking space, work from one, or supply software to them: this episode is your call to action.

Timeline Highlights

[00:00] Bernie’s urgent intro: “This is possibly the best opportunity I’ve seen for the whole UK coworking industry to unite.”

[02:06] Roland on what he wants to be known for: “Helping make people’s lives better. In a small way, that’s what I’d like to be known for.”

[02:17] Bernie’s warmth: “I think you’re doing okay. Whenever I mention your name, most people react quite positively.”

[02:53] The origin story: a spare function room at his dad’s hotel that was “eating business rates and just empty all the time.”

[03:54] Why it’s called Dragon: “St. George Hotel, so St. George and the Dragon. That’s where it originally came from.”

[04:16] Roland’s kitchen credentials: Canterbury College, City & Guilds, France for six months, then the London Clinic

[08:33] The authenticity principle: “Run a business that’s a reflection of who you are. Don’t try to run a false business.”

[11:07] How Dragon builds local perks without apps and gimmicks: “We’ll start liking their posts, get to know each other first, then go down and visit them.”

[12:04] The local economy philosophy: “We don’t want a discount. Perhaps just a bit of added value, like a free garlic bread at the local pizza place.”

[14:21] The “indie gang” of coworking operators: Teresa, Ewan, Karen, and John meeting up to share what’s working

[15:30] The one rule: “We’ve got a bit of an informal rule that we’re not allowed to talk about mugs in the sink.”

[18:12] Roland breaks down the VOA threat: offices that would qualify for relief on the street lose it “just because they’ve had the audacity” to join a coworking space

[19:02] The ATM precedent: “They’re trying to treat our members like ATMs.”

[19:47] Roland names it: “Extinction level event.”

[24:46] The immediate action: “Literally, Jane has done a wonderful toolkit about what to do.”

[25:20] Bernie’s challenge to software companies: “Perhaps all the software companies that we all spend lots of money with could help us out by shouting about it as well.”

Thematic Breakdown

The Chef Who Built a Kitchen for Freelancers

Roland Stanley came to coworking through the pass.

City & Guilds training at Canterbury College. Six months working in kitchens in France. A stint at the London Clinic. Eight years total in professional kitchens before he “managed to escape.” Hospitality isn’t a metaphor for Roland. It’s muscle memory. The instinct to make someone feel welcome, to exceed expectations without being asked, to read a room and respond.

When he describes how Dragon builds relationships with local businesses for their perks programme, you can hear the kitchen logic.

No cold outreach. No transactional asks. “We’ll start liking their posts, get to know each other first, then go down and visit them... quite often they’ll come to us and say, can we do something for you?”

That’s just how you treat people when you’ve spent years reading a dining room.

The Name You Remember

Bernie opens the episode, declaring Dragon Coworking “the best name for a coworking space ever in the world.” He’s not wrong.

The origin is accidental. Roland was going to call it “River Coworking” because it overlooked the River Medway. A friend pointed out the obvious: you’re inside the St. George Hotel. St. George and the Dragon. Done.

In a sector full of forgettable compounds — [Location] Works, [Something] Hub, The [Noun] — Dragon Coworking sticks. The name came from a friend’s offhand suggestion. That’s the story. And eight years later, it’s still the thing people remember.

The Indie Gang: What Real Peer Support Looks Like

One of the most valuable sections of this episode has nothing to do with business rates.

Roland describes how a small group of independent coworking operators — Teresa from Collaborate, Ewan, Karen from The Residence, and John from Freedom Works — started meeting up regularly.

No mastermind fees. No ten-grand-a-month coaching programme. Just dinner, conversation, and one rule: “We’re not allowed to talk about mugs in the sink.”

They share what’s working. They troubleshoot problems together. They’ve had “real lightbulb moments.” And crucially, they meet in person a couple of times a year while maintaining a WhatsApp group in between.

Reach out to the spaces in your area. Have a coffee. You’ll learn more than any course can teach you.

The Extinction-Level Event

Now to the reason Bernie opened this episode with unusual urgency.

The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) has begun reclassifying coworking and serviced office spaces. Under the old model, individual offices within a space could be separately rated — meaning the small businesses inside them could claim Small Business Rate Relief (SBRR).

Under the new approach, the VOA treats the entire space as a single “hereditament,” making the operator liable for the building’s entire rates and removing SBRR fro...

“I just want to be able to do a little bit of work and be near enough my kids to continue feeding or to be able to help out and know what’s going on with them.”

Unreasonable Connection Going Live! London, February 2026.

🎟️ Tickets go on sale in January 2026.

The entire day is co-created by the coworking community builders on the co-creation waitlist.

Forty thousand (ish) coworking spaces exist worldwide.

One hundred and twenty of them offer childcare.

Georgia Norton spent 2025 tracking them down. She interviewed founders from Sydney to Washington State, Berlin, and Athens. She pored over floor plans, took virtual tours, and visited spaces in person across the US.

She found the operational models, yes.

But she also found the graveyard—roughly forty more that tried and couldn’t make it work.

Georgia worked with Playhood in Crouch End, North London. A micro-nursery integrated with a coworking space.

Children aged 18 months to five years old learned and played while their parents worked nearby. Karen Partcher, the founder, had renovated a Victorian terrace house to create a 34-square-metre studio in the garden.

Eight children maximum. One neighbourhood. Deep roots.

Her research, published on 17 December 2025 through the US think tank New America, reveals something uncomfortable.

The glossy, high-end childcare-coworking experiments all folded. The Wing. The Jane Club. Second Home. Even Impact Hub couldn’t sustain it.

The settings that survived weren’t private-equity-backed family clubs in central business districts. They were neighbourhood-scale operations run by mums who refused to choose between career and proximity to their children.

Every founder Georgia interviewed was a mother.

Every one of them had reached a point where the existing system—commute to work, outsource childcare to a distant silo, pretend you don’t have kids during business hours—stopped making sense.

Bernie brings his own memory to this. When his son was born, the only coworking space with childcare he could find in London was Shazia Mustafa’s Third Door. Getting from Ilford to Putney with a pushchair felt like a bridge too far.

The geography of exclusion. The exhaustion of separation.

Timeline Highlights

[00:04] Bernie frames the episode: “She’s tracked down 100 coworking spaces around the world that have some form of childcare and coworking offering.”

[01:21] Georgia on what she’s known for: “Saying, ‘But what if?’ and ‘Have you met so and so?’”

[02:28] The New America report announcement: “December 17th, this think tank called New America is publishing my report.”

[05:00] The numbers that matter: “120 operational right now... I stumbled across the graveyard, if you will, of about another 40 settings that had experimented with the model and not found it sustainable.”

[08:42] Georgia on the core problem: “When you have a kid, your relationship to your work will change. There’s no way to insulate your worlds, to keep them separate forever.”

[11:17] The research finding that stopped Bernie: “Interestingly, in the research, all of the founders were mums.”

[13:50] The design philosophy: “You can’t give everything to everyone all the time.”

[18:38] Georgia’s conviction: “I wholeheartedly think that colocating care with spaces to develop our workforce and to explore our careers and to defend remote working are transformative at the neighbourhood level.”

[21:05] The graveyard of corporate attempts: “Places like The Wing and the Jane Club and big employer initiatives, they quietly folded away this option.”

[24:02] Pandemic communities that thrived: “During the pandemic, we thrived as a little micro-community. We set up community dynamics that sustain us now.”

[27:05] The design revelation: “That boundary wasn’t like a strong doorway that no one was allowed across. It was this really permeable threshold.”

[29:38] Children's understanding work: “They would tap, tap on a fake laptop because they knew... these kids know what their parents do for a living.”

[34:17] The barrier nobody talks about: “The whole Ofsted context is really intimidating... We’ve made it really hard to try and design the type of settings we want for our kids.”

[35:56] The research gap: “There’s just no research being done on this model.”

[40:08] Where to find Georgia’s work: “At our website, playhood.club”

The Graveyard Nobody Talks About

Georgia found roughly forty childcare-coworking spaces that had closed.

Not struggling. Closed.

The pattern was unmistakable. The high-end experiments folded. The Wing tried it. Jane Club tried it. Second Home tried it.

Big-employer initiatives from Yahoo to Patagonia to Goldman Sachs in the 1990s sought to bolt childcare into corporate workspaces.

They all quietly removed the option.

Different reasons—cost centres, zoning regulations, the sheer difficulty of bridging two different regulatory frameworks—but the same outcome. The spaces that survived weren’t in central business districts. They weren’t funded by private equity. They weren’t trying to serve everyone.

Bernie put it bluntly during the conversation: childcare and coworking for the one per cent.

The big shiny spaces in the centre of town, where housing a child costs the price of a small car every month. Georgia’s research confirms they’re not sustainable.

What works is neighbourhood-scale integration. True integration, not bolt-on amenities.

Spaces where childcare workers use the coworking facilities to get their teaching licences or start side businesses. Where parents’ careers become part of the children’s learning—a doctor parent visits to talk about their work, a civil engineer grandad explains what they do.

The Permeable Threshold

The design insight that changed how Georgia understands these spaces: the boundary between work and childcare doesn’t need to be a hard wall.

At Playhood, Karen Partcher renovated a Victorian terrace house. It looks like every other house on the street. But in the garden, she created a 34-square-metre studio. Purpose-built at a child scale.

The threshold wasn’t a door that stayed closed.

It was permeable. Parents visible. Children aware. Staff flow between spaces.

Georgia found this pattern in settings across the world. The assumption that children must be hidden for serious work to happen got blown out of the water when she actually visited and interviewed founders.

Children in these spaces grow up knowing what their parents do for a living.

They see work happening. They tap on fake laptops because they understand the rhythm. Georgia finds this sociologically fascinating—what happens to a generation’s relationship with work when they grow up understanding you can defend the right to work on your own terms, in your own neighbourhood?

The parents change, too.

Georgia mentioned an unpublished post she wrote: an apology to schools. Because families who experience this level of integration come to expect collaboration with everyone who cares for their children.

Traditional school feels jarring after that.

The Pandemic Catalyst

The pandemic tore down the wall between work and care for millions of families.

Children walked in on Zoom calls. The discourse focused frustratingly on working from home as a blanket term, as though everyone could stay in their houses.

Georgia points to something different.

The pandemic catalysed a new wave of founders—predominantly women—who discovered how difficult it was to work and care in the same room and decided they didn’t want to compromise anymore.

These weren’t people building amenity lists for membership tiers.

They were mothers who ha...

“To me, rearranging the room is a metaphor for rearranging how you and I find each other.” - Peter Block.

Unreasonable Connection Going Live! London, February 2026.

🎟️ Tickets go on sale in January 2026.

The entire day is co-created by the coworking community builders on the co-creation waitlist.

Peter Block doesn’t give keynotes anymore. Not really.

He asks people to move the chairs.

That’s the work. Move them out of rows. Put them in circles. Watch the room change.

Peter is the author of Community: The Structure of Belonging—a book that’s shaped how thousands of coworking operators think about what they’re actually building. He’s spent decades working with corporations and Cincinnati neighbourhoods, slowly dismantling our addiction to the market economy and replacing it with something older: the creative economy.

Not “creative” as in artsy. Creative, as in we make things together.

In this conversation, Bernie digs into what that actually means for anyone running a coworking space. Because Peter doesn’t see your space as real estate. He sees it as a “convening possibility”—a place where strangers might discover they’re not alone, not crazy, and that there’s nothing wrong with them.

The market economy wants you to be a consumer. Buy the membership. Use the wifi. Complain when expectations aren’t met.

The creative economy wants you to be a citizen. Create the culture. Connect the strangers. Build something you can’t purchase.

Bernie brings his usual questions about what this means practically—how do you actually invite people to something they care about? What’s the difference between entertainment and experience? Why does sitting in circles change everything?

Peter’s answer cuts to the bone: “Your coworking spaces, the way you do them, are designed for liberation, not for productivity. Do I want you to be productive? Yes, but that’s the easy part. The hard part is to create culture and space for liberation.”

If you’ve read Community and wondered how to apply it, this is your next step.

If you’ve never read it, consider this your invitation.

Timeline Highlights

[00:04] Bernie sets up why Peter Block matters: “A lot of people in coworking have referenced Community, the Structure of Belonging.”

[02:31] Peter on what he’d like to be known for: “Loving uncertainty, gratitude, being kind from time to time.”

[03:59] The question that unlocks everything: “How do they get into the neighbourhood?”

[05:36] Why Black Friday tells us everything wrong with the market economy: “It was named Black because that’s when the retail stores start to make money.”

[06:44] Bernie tells the Contingent Works story—punks, David Bowie’s school, the Blitz Club, and a carpet shop in Bromley

[10:09] “The connector is what creates genuine wealth, an authentic wealth.”

[10:09] “You’re designing an experience where they become agents, they become connectors instead of leaders.”

[12:55] Bernie asks about colonial thinking, and Peter traces it to the 1600s Enclosure

[14:40] The health data that should change everything: “If you live in a coworking context, you’re going to live two years longer.”

[16:14] The missionary quote that captures colonialism: “When I opened my eyes, I was holding the Bible, and they owned the land.”

[22:05] ACTionism discussion: “Anxiety means that I’m alive. And my aliveness is created by our capacity to create something.”

[34:42] The developer meeting where Peter changed everything by askin,g “What is the crossroads you’re at?”

[36:09] Common good protocols vs royal protocols: “They’re up front. They’re on a platform. They have microphones.”

[37:42] “You find it everywhere if you’re looking for it”—pocket neighbourhoods, churches, coworking spaces

[42:04] The liberation line: “Your coworking spaces are designed for liberation, not for productivity.”

The Market Economy’s Hidden Colonialism

Peter traces our current isolation back to a specific moment: Enclosure in the 1600s.

Common land where people could support themselves was fenced in because sheep were more profitable. We’ve never recovered.

What started as a physical enclosure became psychological. The market economy doesn’t just want your money—it wants your identity. It turns you into a consumer, an audience member, a demographic to be sold to. Gen X, Gen D, Gen R. We label each generation according to what we can extract from them.

Coworking, with that small “co” at the front, offers something different. An invitation to produce together rather than consume alone.

But only if the people running these spaces understand what they’re actually doing.

Why Connectors Create Wealth (And Consumers Destroy It)

Peter distinguishes between wealth (scale, upward mobility, accumulation) and genuine wealth (health, safety, connection, purpose).

The market economy measures well-being by what can be monetised. Gross domestic product loves isolation—every transaction it can insert between neighbours is a win.

Coworking spaces, at their best, create genuine wealth. They’re places where a local graphic designer meets a local bakery owner, bypassing extraction entirely.

Bernie gets this instinctively from his newsletter work. He’s been writing about the difference between the market economy and creative economy for years. Peter gives him the language to understand why it matters.

The alternative isn’t anti-economic. It’s a different economy.

The Geometry of Democracy

Peter believes that how you arrange furniture is a political act.

Sit in rows facing a stage? You’re recreating a monarchy. The person at the podium holds power. Everyone else waits to be entertained, instructed, or sold to.

Sit in circles facing each other? Power gets distributed. You’re accountable to the person whose knees you can touch. You can’t hide behind your phone.

He tells the story of a developer meeting. Eighty angry neighbours showed up ready to fight. Instead of letting them line up at microphones to yell at the suits, Peter broke them into small groups. He asked: “What is the crossroads you’re at in this neighbourhood? When did you first start caring about this place?”

By the end of the hour, they weren’t angry anymore. They felt connected. The developers said, “Thank you for coming. I got it.”

Same people. Same building. Different geometry. Different outcome.

Safety as Connection, Not Police

Peter is blunt about the American obsession with safety: it’s a product being marketed.

The narrative is simple: the world is dangerous, you are vulnerable, buy this alarm system, vote for this tough-on-crime politician.

He flips this entirely. A safe neighbourhood isn’t one with more police cars. It’s one where neighbours know each other’s names.

He organises gatherings where, instead of asking “How can the police protect us?”, he asks a terrifying question: “What is my contribution to the lack of safety in this neighbourhood?”

This forces people to confront their own withdrawal. Their judgment of the “other.” Their refusal to engage.

For coworking operators, this reframes everything. Your space isn’t safe because of the keycard system. It’s safe because people know each other’s first names.

From Anxiety to Action

Bernie brings up ACTionism—the documentary he’s been encouraging coworking spaces to screen. What caught Peter’s eye was the phrase “We went from anxiety to action.”

Peter unpacks this beautifully. Anxiety means you’re alive. It’s not a problem to be medicated away. It’s a signal that you care about something and don’t know what to do about it.

The market economy wants you to co...

“That’s the only thing that I would like to be known for, not for designing coworking spaces, just that I was able to show up each day to do the work that inspires me the most.” - Dean Connell.

Unreasonable Connection Going Live! London, February 2026.

🎟️ Tickets go on sale in January 2026.

The entire day is co-created by the coworking community builders on the co-creation waitlist.

You know that exhausted feeling when another LinkedIn post promises to reveal “the future of work”?

Dean Connell spent seven years building WeWork spaces across the globe.

He’s designed over two million square feet of workspace.

He’s seen the industry from the inside of the machine.

And he’s done predicting the future.

Dean is the founder of I-AM.D.C., a workplace strategy, FF&E, and interior design consultancy specialising in workspace design and sustainable furniture sourcing. But before all that, he was employee number seventy-something at WeWork, one of seven designers tasked with scaling a Brooklyn aesthetic across continents.

What makes Dean different from the conference circuit commentators is simple: he’s actually built the things he talks about.

Not frameworks borrowed from McKinsey reports. Not insights repurposed from other people’s data. The proof lives in the spaces he’s made, the furniture he’s designed, the mistakes he’s learned from.

In this conversation, Bernie and Dean trace coworking’s evolution through three distinct eras.

There’s Bernard de Coven’s original vision from 1999—coworking as a method of working, equals gathered around a shared project.

Then there’s the 2005 version most of us know—work as the abstract centre, operators competing on price, location, and aesthetics. Beautiful design became table stakes. Everyone got good at desks and fast WiFi.

But Dean’s proposal for what comes next is a fundamental recentring.

Coworking 3.0 isn’t about work at all. It’s about the “hook”—a specific experience that unifies the community.

Veterinarians. Musicians. Parents need childcare. Food obsessives. Wellness practitioners.

The centrepiece shifts from “we have desks” to “this is who we are and why we gather.”

If you’ve been watching younger generations crave in-person experiences whilst the definition of “work” dissolves into digital abstraction, this framework makes sudden sense.

Dean isn’t selling certainty. He’s walking the path and documenting the journey.

For operators tired of chasing trends and ready to create something with genuine gravitational pull, this conversation offers a different way forward.

Timeline Highlights

[00:01] Bernie’s intro: “Today I’m talking with the best coworking space designer in Lewisham ever.”

[01:14] Bernie on the Unreasonable Connetion event: “150 seats because that’s Dunbar’s magic number for community”

[01:55] Dean’s philosophy distilled: “I would like to be known for doing the work... just that I was able to show up each day.”

[03:27] The LinkedIn exhaustion: “Performing in order to engage people to sell your services, for me, is exhausting.”

[04:38] The content trap exposed: “A lot of the content... is created from frameworks or they’re created from data... They’re taking that information, repurposing it.”

[06:46] The proof principle: “I’ve done the work, I have the proof, and so therefore it gives me the confidence to continually talk.”

[11:55] The design maturity problem: “Beautiful design is table stakes... you end up a little bit with beautiful design slop.”

[14:41] The uncomfortable truth: “There is no framework for creating something new... you just have to walk the walk.”

[20:31] Coworking 1.0 explained: “His idea of coworking was people working together as equals... congregate around the table in a non-hierarchical way.”

[22:49] Coworking 2.0 reality: “Most operators today are competing on price, location, and the quality of space.”

[25:51] The 3.0 proposal: “The centrepiece needs to shift to this concept of what I call a hook.”

[26:38] Beyond desks and WiFi: “It’s something beyond we have desks and super fast WiFi... It’s a new centre of gravity.”

[28:34] Programming for purpose: “You can programme the space... to accommodate different hooks.”

[29:24] Where to find Dean: “I am Dean Connell. You can find that on Substack... It’s called Work in Progress.”

The Exhaustion Economy: Why Future-of-Work Content Is Broken

Dean names something every operator feels but rarely articulates: the content industrial complex around “the future of work” has become performative theatre.

He’s been meditating on this. Actually doing the work of thinking it through rather than spinning plates for algorithm engagement.

The pattern he identifies is damning.

Most future-of-work content creators build from borrowed materials—McKinsey frameworks, conference insights, and other people’s data repurposed into LinkedIn carousels.

They’re aggregating rather than originating. There’s nothing wrong with synthesis, but when the entire ecosystem runs on recycled thinking, exhaustion becomes inevitable.

Dean’s exit strategy is radical simplicity: stop predicting, start creating.

Rather than telling people what the future holds, show them what today’s actions can generate. The future materialises through the act of doing the work, not through speculation about what might come.

For independent operators drowning in thought leadership that never seems to apply to their actual Tuesday morning problems, this reframe is liberating.

You don’t need to know where coworking is heading. You need to know what you’re building today and why it matters to the humans who show up.

The Proof Problem: Consultants vs. Builders

Dean draws a sharp line between those who advise on workspace and those who’ve actually delivered it.

His own credibility comes from a specific vantage point: he worked in-house.

Not as an outside consultant dropping recommendations and disappearing, but as someone embedded in the business delivering the product to end users. Strategy, design, user experience—he held the whole stack. The feedback loops were immediate and unforgiving.

This 360-degree view changes everything you understand about work.

When you’re accountable for outcomes rather than presentations, theory becomes expensive. What survives is what actually functions.

The workspace design industry has matured to a point where landlords are waking up to their ecosystems—retail, residential, commercial, all woven together. They’re hiring traditional consulting firms to develop these products.

The result, Dean argues, is beautiful design slop. Polished surfaces with no product evolution underneath.

The inherent product isn’t really evolved, he says. It’s just prettier.

For operators making decisions about their spaces, this is a helpful filter. Is this advice coming from someone who had to live with the consequences of their recommendations? Or someone who delivered a deck and moved on?

Coworking 1.0: Bernard de Coven and the Original Vision

Dean traces coworking back to its etymological roots, and the history matters more than most operators realise.

Bernard de Coven, an American game designer, coined the phrase in 1999.

His vision had nothing to do with shared desks, hot-desking, or any of the real estate language that would later colonise the term.

De Coven imagined people working together as equals. A project or task at the centre. Ten people congregating around a table in a non-hierarchical way to solve a particular problem. Breaking down corporate structures. Everyone is equal in his eyes.

This is the crucial insight: coworking, in its original...

“There’s definitely the trust aspect... People would come because they’re like, ‘Well, Williamz says that someone’s going to be here.’” - Williamz Omope

Unreasonable Connection Going Live! London, February 2026.

🎟️ Tickets go on sale in January 2026.

The entire day is co-created by the coworking community builders on the co-creation waitlist.

“There’s definitely the trust aspect... People would come because they’re like, ‘Well, Williamz says that someone’s going to be here.’”

In September, Williamz Omope told us about the radical principle behind his Job Clubs: no eligibility criteria. Just show up and get help.

That episode introduced the philosophy. This one shows what happens when you take it further.

Williamz has been running Community Connect events — a three-zone model that sequences people through a “look good, feel good” zone (haircuts, nails, styling, professional headshots), a health zone (blood pressure, diabetes screening, NHS talking therapists), and an employment zone (CV support, life coaching, business advice).

The sequence matters. You get groomed. You get photographed looking your best. And because you’re already there, already feeling human again, you let someone take your blood pressure.

The NHS practitioners who attended reported something they’d never experienced: engagement all day. Not one person. Not the usual empty room. They were, in their words, “literally overwhelmed.”

The mechanism is trust. Williamz has spent months building relationships through the Job Club. When he says “come to this event, these health workers are good people,” the community believes him. They show up. They engage with services they’d normally avoid.

For any coworking operator who wants their space to genuinely matter to the neighbourhood — not just serve the laptop class who already know what coworking is — this is the blueprint.

It starts with a job club. It builds trust. And then that trust becomes infrastructure you can deploy for outcomes far beyond employment.

London youth unemployment sits at 15.3%. In Newham, it’s 8.7%.

The Job Clubs are busier than ever. At Space4, they had to stop advertising after two weeks. Fifteen people showing up when they expected three.

This is what civic infrastructure actually looks like.

Timeline Highlights

[00:04] Bernie sets the stakes: “In London, youth unemployment is at 15.3%... In Newham, East London, it is 8.7%, which is way above the national average”

[01:51] Williamz on what he’s known for: “I am known for being a social entrepreneur... we specialise in employability support, access to health messages, digital inclusion”

[02:36] The disruptive philosophy: “We want to go against the grain. That’s how we want to be disruptive”

[04:58] The Community Connect innovation: “We added three zones... a look good, feel good zone, a health zone, and an employment and business zone”

[05:28] The golden sequence: “You’d get your haircut done, get your nails done, and then you go get your headshot done for LinkedIn... Everything’s free, everything’s accessible”

[06:25] The mental health breakthrough: “A talking therapist from the NHS... she spoke about the taboos and the cultural misunderstandings, and she really broke things down”

[08:57] The anti-performative principle: “Anything that we do is not performative... It’s giving real pathways and routeways to overcome such barriers”

[10:39] Why trust is the infrastructure: “There’s definitely the trust aspect... People would come because they’re like, ‘Well, Williamz says that someone’s going to be here’”

[11:53] The proof point: “We were busy all day. Normally... we see one person, if that, but we were literally overwhelmed”

[21:07] The demand they didn’t expect: “The first couple of weeks was so busy that we had to stop advertising... we were getting 15 people per session”

[25:01] The unlimited support promise: “This is a safe space for you to come back to. You don’t have a number of sessions... You can come here as much as you want”

[28:07] Redefining success: “Them coming to the Job Club, that’s a huge journey because they’ve made that conscious decision to come”

[32:05] Peer-to-peer magic: “When are you coming next week? 10 o’clock? Okay, I’m going to get there for 10:30. I’ll wait for you. I’ll keep a computer next to...”

Trust Is Infrastructure You Can Build

The September episode established the “no eligibility criteria” philosophy. This episode reveals what you can DO with the trust that philosophy creates.

NHS outreach workers know the problem intimately. They set up stalls at community events. They wait. One person shows up. Sometimes none. The communities who most need health services are the ones least likely to engage with them.

Williamz solved this by accident — or rather, by relationship.

When health practitioners attend Community Connect, they’re not cold-calling a suspicious community. They’re being introduced by someone the community already trusts. Williamz has spent months showing up every Friday, helping with CVs, teaching digital skills, treating people with dignity.

That trust transfers.

The NHS talking therapist who attended spoke about mental health taboos and cultural misunderstandings.

As a Black man with Nigerian heritage, Williamz understands the cultural tendency to avoid doctors, to “ride it out.” By hosting these conversations in a space where people already feel safe, resistance drops.

For coworking operators: this is the long game. You can’t manufacture trust overnight. But every consistent, dignity-first interaction builds it. And once you have it, you can deploy it for outcomes far beyond your original remit.

The Three Zones: A Model You Can Steal

Community Connect isn’t complicated. It’s just sequenced intelligently.

Zone One: Look Good, Feel Good. A barber. A nail technician. A stylist offering budget fashion advice. A photographer taking LinkedIn headshots. The haircut comes first — you get groomed, then photographed looking your best.

Zone Two: Health. Blood pressure checks. Diabetes screening. An NHS talking therapist. These services are placed AFTER the feel-good zone, when people’s guards are down.

Zone Three: Employment and Business. IP advisers. Life coaches. A CV specialist. Local businesses recruiting.

The genius is the sequencing. Nobody walks through the door thinking “I need my blood pressure checked.” They walk through thinking “free haircut.” By the time they reach the health zone, they’re already comfortable, already engaged, already trusting.

Bernie notices what’s happening underneath: people finding what they need rather than being told what to do. Agency instead of top-down life management.

The Space4 Story: Organic Growth Done Right

Williamz didn’t know what a coworking space was when he first walked into Space4 for something unrelated.

A conversation with Natasha, one of the founders, evolved into partnership. She explained Space4’s social value model — a cooperative workspace funded by Outlandish, designed to reinvest surplus into community.

Williamz arrived with a proposition: “Let’s just start a job club.”

There was apprehension. “Are people going to turn up?”

Within two weeks, they had to stop advertising. Word of mouth outran their capacity. Fifteen people per session when they’d expected two or three.

Bernie’s known Space4 for a decade. It’s had hard times, mostly circumstances beyond its control.

But it keeps putting itself together. Founders and Coders run programmes there. The community lunch happens every Wednesday. It’s woven into Finsbury Park in ...