Coworking Values Podcast

Episode Summary

“It became the first seed of building the Hub Newry... a lived example of building a business with minimal capacities in terms of time, energy, childcare, and that emotional bandwidth that comes with it.”

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.

Picture this: 2009.

The world economy has just collapsed.

You’ve left the high-pressure banking towers of London for a portacabin in Newry, Northern Ireland.

A toddler screaming in the background.

Your house isn’t built.

Your business is barely breathing.

You’re completely isolated in a border town that’s still processing thirty years of conflict.

This is where Suzanne Murdock built The Hub Newry—not from a business plan, but from desperate necessity.

Thirteen years later, she’s running one of Northern Ireland’s most successful coworking networks.

More importantly, she’s become the person operators turn to when they’re drowning.

When they’re holding everyone else’s problems, whilst their own systems fall apart.

This conversation cuts through the productivity theatre that plagues small business advice.

Suzanne doesn’t care about your morning routine or your notion templates.

She cares about understanding your actual energy.

Your real constraints.

Designing structures that work with your life instead of against it.

Bernie shares his recent ADHD diagnosis—a revelation that explained why conventional productivity advice never stuck.

Suzanne responds with the coaching insight that changes everything: “The problem isn’t the problem.”

Your speaking anxiety isn’t about public speaking.

Your overwhelm isn’t about time management.

Your burnout isn’t about working too hard.

For community managers drowning in everyone else’s needs, this episode is a lifeline.

For operators trying to scale whilst maintaining their sanity, it’s a roadmap.

For anyone who’s ever felt like productivity systems were designed for someone else’s brain, it’s validation.

Timeline Highlights

[00:05] Bernie announces two critical 2026 dates: Unreasonable Connection in London (end of February) and European Coworking Day (May)

[01:57] Suzanne’s origin story: fleeing London banking burnout for Northern Ireland isolation

[03:26] The portacabin moment that sparked The Hub Newry: “minimal capacities in terms of time, energy, childcare”

[06:16] Two years of explaining coworking to a market that didn’t understand it yet: “We spent a good two years trying to navigate that and script it”

[07:39] Bernie on the underrated value of structure: “It’s an underrated resource of having this structure in your work day when you’re running your own thing”

[08:39] Why coworking matters for new entrepreneurs: “There are so many unknowns out there. When other people surround you... It’s so helpful and rich.”

[13:59] The productivity trap: “It’s just assumed as entrepreneurs or small business owners that you can work 24 hours a day... it doesn’t work like that in real life”

[16:45] Bernie’s ADHD revelation: “Saying, Read David Allen, get things done, and it will all work, has never... You can’t just pull something out of a hat.”

[17:38] Suzanne on understanding yourself first: “Until you understand those elements, I think it’s very hard to get those structural things right”

[20:30] The importance of champions: “It really keeps coming back to really knowing yourself and having champions around you.”

[22:40] The coaching revelation: “A lot of people don’t know what their problem is... Listening is a huge part of it.”

[27:28] Community manager burnout: “That pot can sometimes feel very empty... we need champions around us... It can be quite a lonely place.”

[29:53] Setting boundaries with members: “They need to understand that they have to reach out sometimes as well... it goes two ways”

The Accidental Operator

Suzanne never intended to run a coworking space.

She intended to survive.

After leaving the financial sector in London in 2009, she found herself in a portacabin on a construction site.

Trying to run a business whilst raising a toddler.

In a town where she knew nobody.

The isolation was crushing.

Not just emotionally—economically.

Without a support network, without casual conversations, without the energy that comes from being around other people working on their own things, productivity was impossible.

The Hub Newry started because Suzanne and Patrick needed an office that wasn’t a freezing portacabin.

They renovated the first floor of an old pub.

Made it too big for just them.

Started letting desks to other isolated freelancers.

They didn’t know the term “coworking.”

They were solving a cash flow problem and a loneliness problem simultaneously.

This accidental beginning shapes everything about how The Hub operates today.

It wasn’t built on venture capital or growth targets.

It was built on the lived experience of what happens when you try to make something meaningful whilst juggling real-life constraints that business advice pretends don’t exist.

The Problem Isn’t the Problem

The most powerful insight in this conversation comes when Bernie admits his struggle with productivity systems.

Suzanne responds with coaching wisdom: “A lot of people don’t know what their problem is.”

Your speaking anxiety isn’t about speaking skills.

It’s about finding a format that gives you energy rather than drains it.

Suzanne discovered this when she started her podcast—terrified of public speaking but energised by one-to-one conversation.

Your time management problems aren’t about time.

They’re about understanding when your energy is highest.

Designing your day around that reality instead of fighting it.

Your team communication issues aren’t about communication.

They’re about setting boundaries that protect your capacity to hold space for everyone else.

This is why conventional productivity advice fails.

It treats symptoms, not root causes.

It assumes everyone’s brain works the same way.

Bernie’s ADHD diagnosis explained why Getting Things Done never stuck—his brain doesn’t work that way.

Zone of Genius Meets Real Life

Suzanne references Gay Hendricks’ concept of “zone of genius”—the intersection of what energises you and what you’re uniquely good at.

But she grounds it in reality.

Your zone of genius doesn’t matter if you don’t understand your actual constraints.

If you’ve got childcare responsibilities, health challenges, or financial pressures, your ideal day needs to work with those realities.

Not despite them.

The breakthrough comes when you stop trying to fit your life into productivity systems designed for someone else.

Start designing systems that fit your actual life.

This means understanding your energy patterns.

Your limiting factors.

Your support network before you build your schedule.

It means asking different questions:

Not “How can I be more productive?”

But “What structure supports my energy instead of depleting it?”

Community Managers in the Lonely Middle

The conversation exposes ...

“I’m not going to hide my tears right now. So often, people sit behind keyboards and write these comments, and they don’t see the impact of their words. And today I want you to see the impact.” - Tash Koster-Thomas.

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.

Tash Koster-Thomas was delivering a paid webinar on LGBTQ+ allyship when the anonymous racist comments started scrolling across the screen.

Two hundred people watched as she broke down live on camera, choosing vulnerability over politeness, truth over comfort.

This wasn’t just a difficult moment. It was a perfect distillation of what Trans Awareness Week actually means in 2025 Britain—and why every coworking space owner needs to understand what’s happening right now.

Bernie sits down with Tash, equity and inclusion consultant and co-founder of Breaking the Distance, to unpack the brutal reality of the Supreme Court ruling that just made trans people legally vulnerable in British workplaces and public spaces.

You’ll hear how the law now allows employers to ask about someone’s “gender status.”

How the state’s own equality watchdog has redefined trans people’s right to exist as merely a “preference.”

And crucially, what coworking operators can do to create a genuine sanctuary when the government won’t.

This isn’t academic theory. This is survival economics in real time.

If you’ve ever wondered how to signal safety without performativity, or how to support marginalised communities when the law actively works against them, this conversation will show you exactly where to start.

The personal cost of this work is real. The political stakes couldn’t be higher.

And the practical steps forward are more straightforward than you might think.

Timeline Highlights

[00:04] Bernie’s announcement: Co-creating the London Coworking Assembly for February 2026—”you will design the curriculum or the agenda together”

[02:11] Tash’s mission statement: “Being a good human, actually. That’s what I’d like to be known for.”

[03:21] Trans Awareness Week scope: “It is global, but probably more prominent in the UK”

[04:16] The Supreme Court ruling explained: “Sex refers to being assigned female at birth, and are biological women. And therefore, if you’re a trans woman, you are not a biological woman.”

[06:45] The legal contradiction: “Just because you’re protected in this instance here, it still means you can be highly discriminated against.”

[07:48] The impact on coworking spaces: “We want to be a trans inclusive space and we welcome all, but now we feel like this ruling is a contradiction of that.”

[09:02] The intersex reality: “1.7% of our global population are intersex and fit into neither one of those binary categories”

[10:24] Fear as the weapon: “What happens is it creates fear more than anything”

[11:53] Clear signals matter: “If I see a space that says we are inclusive and it includes all women, trans and non-binary folk. That to me signals safe space.”

[13:57] The exclusion principle: “A safe space can’t always be a space that everybody comes to, because then by default, it stops being a safe space.”

[17:06] The moment of truth: “I’m not going to hide my tears right now. I want you to see the impact of these words.”

[19:24] Bernie’s visceral reaction: “I couldn’t believe you held it together.”

[21:04] The spotlight problem: “Trans community is facing the most amount of hate that it’s been facing all year because now it’s a spotlight”

[23:30] Allyship as consistency: “Allyship isn’t a thing that you can do as a performative thing. It has to be a consistent effort that you put in day in, day out.”

[24:32] Practical bathroom policy: “Put something up that says, We recognise that ideally we would be using gender-neutral toilets... you have the freedom to use whatever bathroom feels right for you.”

The Supreme Court Ruling Nobody Talks About

In April 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act means biological sex only—not gender identity.

Most people missed this. Most coworking operators definitely missed this.

But Tash explains the brutal implications with surgical precision: trans people can now be legally questioned about their “gender status” at work and excluded from toilets matching their lived identity.

The state’s own equality watchdog calls this loss of dignity a mere “preference for things to be a certain way.”

This isn’t legal theory. It’s economic precarity by design. When you can’t safely use a workplace toilet, you can’t safely earn a living.

For coworking spaces, this creates an urgent choice: follow the government’s new permission to discriminate, or become a sanctuary that provides the rights the state just stripped away.

Why Safe Spaces Can’t Include Everyone

Tash cuts through the liberal fantasy that inclusion means “everyone welcome always.”

“A safe space can’t always be a space that everybody comes to, because then by default, it stops being a safe space for the core demographic that you’re trying to defend and support.”

She draws the parallel with racism: if you’re creating a space for the global majority people to process discrimination, you can’t also welcome people who deny racism exists. Their presence destroys the safety you’re trying to create.

The same logic applies to gender-critical voices in trans-inclusive spaces. Not because those voices are evil, but because safety requires boundaries.

For coworking operators worried about appearing exclusive, Tash offers clarity: know who you’re serving. If you try to serve everyone, you serve no one safely.

The Viral Comments That Exposed Everything

The story that stays with you: Tash delivering a virtual LGBTQ+ session to 200 people when anonymous participants started posting racist comments in the chat.

The organisers, thinking they were being helpful, put the comments on screen for everyone to see.

Tash broke down live on camera. But instead of hiding her tears, she looked directly into the lens: “So often people sit behind keyboards and write these comments, and they don’t see the impact of their words. And today I want you to see the impact.”

That moment of vulnerability became the most powerful teaching tool imaginable. The CEO immediately stepped in. The entire organisation had to confront what they’d been harbouring. Allies reached out privately.

But here’s what haunts her: this only mattered because it was public. How many trans people face this abuse daily without witnesses? Without support? Without organisational learning?

The Economics of Absorbing Hate

Tash reveals the hidden cost structure of diversity work: companies pay her to process their toxicity.

She gets a fee for the webinar. But the real price—the emotional devastation, the tears, the psychological impact—gets absorbed by her personally. The company externalises its cultural problems onto the consultant it hires to fix them.

This is the diversity industry’s dirty secret. The very people most equipped to diagnose the problem are also the most vulnerable to its damage.

For coworking operators, this raises uncomfortable questions about how you handle incidents. Do you expect marginalised members to educate aggressive members? Do you put the burden of explaining discrimination on those experiencing it?

Or do you do the work yourself?

Practical Allyship That Actually Matters

Tash’s advice cuts through performative gestures to focus on sustainable support:

Learn the legal context. If you don’t understand the Supreme Court ruling and its im...

Episode Summary

“Do you know who your coworking space’s biggest competitor is? It’s the Home Office, working from home.” - Lucy McInally

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.

Lucy McInally, founder of The Inclusive Coworker and coworking industry writer, drops a truth bomb that stops Bernie mid-conversation. After two years in a beloved coworking community that closed down, she’s been working from home ever since—despite being one of the industry’s most thoughtful voices on inclusive community building.

This isn’t a story about laziness or preference. It’s about the hidden friction that kills coworking adoption: the 50-minute commute that used to be 25 minutes, the Spanish conversation anxiety that paralyses Bernie from entering perfectly good spaces in Vigo, the seasonal darkness that makes walking across Blackheath feel unsafe for Lucy.

Bernie admits his own contradictions—knowing 15 coworking spaces in his new Spanish city but unable to pluck up the courage to walk into any of them.

Lucy shares the practical magic of Clockwise Edinburgh: free yoga in the morning after her trial day, whiskey tasting on Friday evenings, and invitations that converted her from a curious visitor to a committed member.

The conversation unearths something deeper than marketing tactics: the micro-barriers that prevent connection, the difference between discount-led positioning and value-based invitation, and why showing lifestyle trumps showing desks every time.

This is for anyone who’s wondered why perfectly good coworking spaces struggle to fill their rooms, and why the biggest threat to your community might not be competition—it’s comfort.

Timeline Highlights

[01:15] Lucy’s revelation: “The biggest rival with your coworking space isn’t another coworking space. It’s your home.”

[03:13] Lucy’s confession: “I was part of a coworking space for two years... it closed down... I haven’t joined another coworking community.”

[05:00] Bernie’s Spanish anxiety: “The realistic blocker is, I’m so apprehensive about speaking Spanish to anyone that I don’t know.”

[05:50] Lucy’s commute reality: “What was 25 25-minute commute initially for me, then turned into 50 minutes... I don’t have the capacity to commute in and back again.”

[08:46] Bernie’s Vigo challenge: “It’s more of a membership place than a drop-in place... It’s hard to buy a day pass.”

[09:38] Lucy on trial days: “A lot of spaces here offer that free trial day... it is a really good way to test out if a space is right or not”

[11:54] The Clockwise magic moment: “Tomorrow we’re doing a yoga class in the morning... and we’re doing a whiskey tasting on Friday evening”

[12:58] Lucy’s safety barrier: “To get there, the most direct way is to walk across the heath... I don’t feel like that’s the safest way to commute.”

[13:13] Bernie’s coffee ultimatum: “If I go to a place that looks amazing and they’ve got this mediocre coffee machine... I don’t want to go there.”

[14:38] Bernie’s pricing frustration: “Their main flyer was 50% off... devaluing their product... then in the small print it read ‘for your first month’ I was ripped off before I even took the offer.”

[15:30] Lucy on value positioning: “You don’t need to say 50% off, because if you give me all the benefits... then I’ll pay full price”

[16:44] Lifestyle over space: “They don’t just show, here’s the space... They show, this is where we go for drinks... some of the local restaurants”

The Hidden Geography of Working From Home

Lucy’s confession hits like cold water: the coworking advocate who can’t bring herself to join another space. This isn’t hypocrisy—it’s human truth. The space she loved closed, her commute doubled, and suddenly the sofa became the easier choice.

Bernie’s Spanish paralysis adds another layer. He knows coworking spaces, runs coworking events, literally wrote about coworking citizenship—but anxiety about speaking Spanish keeps him from walking into perfectly good spaces opposite his apartment. The expertise doesn’t translate to courage.

These aren’t edge cases. They’re the hidden geography of remote work: the 20 micro-decisions that tip someone towards isolation over community. The slightly-too-long journey. The slightly-too-awkward interaction. The slightly-too-much effort.

Working from home isn’t just about convenience—it’s about avoiding the emotional labour of belonging somewhere new.

Why Location Anxiety Is a Real Community Killer

Lucy’s Blackheath revelation is faced by women everywhere: the most direct route to a promising coworking space requires walking across heathland in seasonal darkness. For women especially, safety calculations happen automatically, unconsciously filtering out options that men might never consider.

This geography of anxiety shapes community access in ways that marketing rarely addresses. It’s not about the space itself—it’s about the journey to get there, the time of day, the lighting, the route home.

Bernie’s Vigo situation adds another dimension: language anxiety creating invisible barriers. The professional confidence that works in London evaporates when faced with Spanish conversations. Suddenly, every interaction feels like an exam.

The spaces that win understand that accessibility isn’t just about ramps and doorways—it’s about emotional safety, practical safety, and the hundred tiny comfort calculations that happen before someone leaves their house.

The Discount Trap That Devalues Everything

Bernie’s visceral reaction to “50% off your first month” captures something essential about positioning. The space he loves—genuinely loves—cheapened itself with Black Friday language that made him feel manipulated before he’d even walked through the door.

Lucy’s counter-insight is brilliant: if you communicate the real value of community, connection, and belonging, people will pay full price. The discount suggests you don’t believe in your own worth.

This isn’t about being expensive for expensive’s sake. It’s about leading with what matters: the yoga class that happens the morning after your trial day, the whiskey tasting on Friday evening, the invitation to become part of something larger than workspace rental.

The spaces that thrive understand they’re not selling desk time—they’re selling the antidote to isolation. That has value. Price it accordingly.

When Cool Becomes Exclusion

Bernie’s story about feeling excluded by “two incredibly good-looking guys with MacBook Pros drinking cappuccinos” reveals how aspiration can become alienation. Those photos weren’t meant to exclude—they were meant to attract. But they sent a clear message about who belonged.

Lucy pushes back with nuance: there’s a difference between having a clear niche (tech bros for tech bros) and accidentally signalling exclusion through lazy representation.

The all-male panel phenomenon isn’t usually intentional—it’s what happens when you book from your immediate network without thinking about whose voices are missing.

The most successful coworking marketing shows real people in real moments, not aspirational lifestyle shots that feel like permission structures. Projects in Brighton nail this: they don’t just show the space, but also highlight where members go for drinks, local restaurants, and the lifestyle that comes with joining this community.

It’s lifestyle marketing done right: ...

Episode Summary

“We are in a time of a meta-crisis... when everything around us is falling apart, what’s going to remain is each other. I believe that in those times, community is immunity.” - Xavier Damman.

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.

Xavier Damman spent a decade in Silicon Valley building companies, making exits, and playing the venture capital game to perfection.

But when he returned to Brussels six years ago, he brought something unexpected back with him: the conviction that the economic system that made him rich was leading us all to extinction.

In this episode, Bernie sits down with the co-founder of Storify and Open Collective—and now the founder of Commons Hub Brussels—to explore how a former tech entrepreneur is experimenting with dual currencies, peer-led governance, and radical transparency to rebuild community economics from the ground up.

You’ll hear how COVID killed traditional five-day-a-week coworking and why themed community days are filling the gap.

How Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning research on commons management became the blueprint for a new kind of space.

And why Xavier believes the future of coworking isn’t about design and amenities—it’s about becoming laboratories for economic systems that value care as much as performance.

This conversation cuts through the startup rhetoric to examine what it actually takes to build alternative economic infrastructure.

Not because it’s trendy. Because survival might depend on it.

If you’ve ever wondered whether there’s a way out of the extractive economy without abandoning community and connection entirely, this episode charts one possible path forward.

Timeline Highlights

[02:26] Xavier’s origin story: from Belgian engineer to Silicon Valley success to Brussels commons builder

[04:56] The meta-crisis awakening: when everything around us is falling apart, community becomes immunity

[06:26] Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize research and why commons management beats privatisation

[09:02] “Coworking is dead”: how COVID broke the five-day office model and what’s replacing it

[10:30] Crypto Wednesdays, AI Mondays, and the rise of themed coworking days

[11:45] Why magic happens at the intersection of different communities

[13:50] Trust-building through doing: the priceless value of shared projects

[16:18] Coworking as the new churches: rebuilding social fabric in a GDP-obsessed world

[17:07] How we destroyed relationships to turn them into transactions

[21:36] The Commons Hub token: introducing a dual-currency system that values care alongside cash

[22:59] How some members pay more euros, others contribute more time—and why both matter

[24:39] Why the current economic system is clearly leading us to extinction

[28:53] Money is just a proxy: reducing dependency through community exchange

Thematic Breakdown

The Silicon Valley Return: When Success Becomes a Crisis

Xavier’s journey from Belgian engineer to Silicon Valley exit and back to Brussels as a commons builder reveals a profound truth about our economic moment. Success within the system—the acquisition, the financial freedom, the validation—became the resource that allowed him to step outside and ask harder questions.

His story isn’t anti-technology or anti-entrepreneurship. It’s about using the tools of capitalism to fund experiments in post-capitalism. The irony is deliberate: he needed to win the game to reveal how broken the game actually is.

Community as Immunity in the Meta-Crisis

When Xavier talks about the “meta-crisis” and “polycrisis,” he’s not being dramatic. Climate collapse, institutional failure, social fragmentation—these aren’t separate problems but symptoms of the exact systemic breakdown.

His phrase “community is immunity” captures something essential about survival in unstable times. When the formal systems fail, what remains is the quality of relationships we’ve built with the people around us. This isn’t romantic community-building. It’s a practical resilience strategy.

The Death and Resurrection of Coworking

The five-day-a-week coworking model died with COVID, but something more interesting is emerging in its place.

Xavier’s themed days—Crypto Wednesdays, AI Mondays, Regen Sundays—represent a fundamental shift from spaces trying to be everything to everyone to spaces that curate specific communities around shared interests.

This isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about creating the conditions for what Xavier calls “serendipity”—the unexpected connections that happen when the right people show up at the right time.

The Economics of Care vs. The Monoculture of Performance

The Commons Hub’s dual-currency system—euros plus community tokens earned through care work—strikes at the heart of everything wrong with our economic system.

We live in what Xavier calls a “monoculture of a single currency” that only values performance and GDP contribution.

Love, care, beauty, maintenance—the work that actually makes community possible—gets no recognition. The dual currency doesn’t solve capitalism, but it creates a small space where different values can breathe.

Coworking as Economic Laboratory

Xavier views coworking spaces as the ideal testing ground for new economic models, as they’re small enough to experiment with yet substantial enough to matter.

When he says “coworking spaces could be this amazing laboratory where those experiments can be run,” he’s talking about something more radical than better coffee or faster WiFi.

He’s referring to spaces where people can explore various ways of relating to money, work, and one another. Where the logic of extraction gets suspended, even temporarily.

From Monoculture to Permaculture

The shift from “monoculture to permaculture” isn’t just an agricultural metaphor—it’s an economic strategy. Just as monoculture farming depletes soil, economic monoculture depletes communities.

Permaculture farming recognises that ecosystems need diversity to thrive; human communities need multiple currencies and ways of contributing.

Xavier’s vision isn’t about rejecting money entirely but reducing dependency on it by creating more ways for people to participate meaningfully in community life.

The Physical Commons in Digital Times

Despite his tech background, Xavier insists on physical space as essential infrastructure for community building. Churches provided this network of neighbourhood gathering places; coworking spaces can fill that role in secular, pluralistic ways.

But only if they embrace their civic responsibility rather than just chasing commercial real estate returns. The Commons Hub, located across from Brussels Central Station, isn’t coincidental—it’s positioned as infrastructure for the kinds of connections that make democracy possible.

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Episode Summary

“It all started at 5 AM. We had explosions. My husband works for the Red Cross — they evacuate people. We’re always awake, tracking the news and knowing what's happened. I don’t know if somebody was injured tonight, but I’ll find out this evening when he comes home.”

This is how Helga Moreno’s morning began. Not with a standing desk and a flat white. With explosions.

With her husband running towards danger, she walks the dog and opens her laptop to write about member retention strategies for coworking spaces.

Helga is a senior marketer at Spacebring, an English Literature graduate and the author of fairy tales about coworking — including one about cyberspace that feels like it was written in a different lifetime.

She lives in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, near Odessa and the Black Sea. The sunny south, as she calls it.

Additionally, a frontline region where drinking water hasn’t run from taps in years, electricity cuts out for hours at a time, and heating remains uncertain as winter approaches.

In February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Helga and her family made a choice that would define everything that followed: stay together, no matter what. Her husband and son couldn’t leave Ukraine. So she didn’t either.

They’ve lived through displacement to Lviv, the return to Mykolaiv, the daily air raid alerts, the 11 PM blackouts, and the permanent uncertainty that rewires how you think about the future.

But here’s the contradiction that makes this conversation so vital: Helga’s job is to write polished content about optimising coworking spaces — automated invoices, maximised revenue per square foot, reducing churn.

Meanwhile, the coworking spaces in her country proved their value by doing the exact opposite. In February 2022, Ukrainian coworking spaces didn’t optimise.

They opened their doors for free. They became bomb shelters, refugee centres, humanitarian aid hubs. They abandoned the profit motive entirely because survival demanded it.

Helga holds both of those truths at once. She co-founded the Ukrainian Coworking Association, which partnered with CBRE to document the state of the industry under war conditions.

She travels to conferences — two-day bus journeys, flights via Moldova — to experience “normal life,” where the lights stay on after 11 pm. And she comes home to a city where choosing a coworking space means asking: Does it have a generator? Does it have a bomb shelter?

This conversation isn’t about marketing tactics or SaaS metrics. It’s about what coworking actually means when everything transactional falls away. It’s about a storyteller who wrote children’s fantasies about cyberspace, now writing testimony about digital resistance and economic survival.

And it’s about a community that proved — when one of their own needed £1,500 per night for private hospital care to save her son’s life — that community isn’t networking. It’s tangible, life-saving support.

Helga is speaking at two major events: an online conversation with Jeannine van der Linden and Marko Orel on 27th November about displaced Ukrainians and reconstruction, and Coworking Europe in Berlin.

Her conference bio ends with an invitation: “While her focus is on marketing, Helga lives in the south of Ukraine; if you want to know how things are right now, she invites you to come and ask.”

Bernie took her up on it.

Timeline Highlights

* [01:36] “It’s Mykolaiv, near Odessa, near the Black Sea” — Helga introduces herself from the sunny south of Ukraine, a frontline region

* [04:45] “It all started at 5 AM. We had explosions. My husband works for the Red Cross — they evacuate people.”

* [06:24] “We still don’t have drinking water in my city. We have electricity schedules — 2 hours on, 3 hours off”

* [08:02] “We decided we must stay together. My husband and my son couldn’t leave Ukraine. So if I go, I leave my men here in the warzone.”

* [09:13] “I keep my laptop charged all the time. If I’m out of charge or internet, I go to a café. We have one coworking space that still works.”

* [10:38] “Power generator and bomb shelter” — the criteria for choosing a coworking space in Ukraine

* [11:57] “To go to Berlin, I go to Moldova and take a plane. Otherwise, it’s a bus for two nights and two days.”

* [15:56] “We don’t deal with uncertainty. We have to accept it. We can’t plan for years. We’re not buying an apartment because it can be ruined anytime.”

* [18:55] “Every night we have air raid alerts. People in Kyiv sleep in the subway with their kids. It’s really cold already.”

* [20:31] “My part is to analyse the coworking industry during wartime — from completely zero when everything stopped, to thriving spaces now”

* [21:57] “My son was drafted. He lived in a tent in the snow without heating. He got really sick — 40-degree fever for three weeks.”

* [23:55] “The hospital was €1,400–€500 per night. The coworking community did fundraising. We could afford it. My son fully recovered.”

* [27:25] Bernie’s reflection: “How do you juggle going to a conference, blogging about member retention, and rescuing your son like that?”

When the Profit Motive Vanished Overnight

In February 2022, Ukrainian coworking spaces had a choice: optimise revenue or save lives.

They chose lives. Instantly. Without committee meetings or PR consultants.

The Future Hub in Lviv sheltered families fleeing from Kharkiv and Kyiv. Startup Depot hosted over 150 refugees, primarily women and children. B-Working in Kyiv turned its concrete basement into a public bomb shelter during missile attacks.

Helga mentions one coworking space in Mykolaiv that’s still open — chosen not for its coffee quality or meeting room availability, but for its generator and bomb shelter.

This is the contradiction Helga lives inside. Her day job is writing about automated invoices, maximised square footage, and reducing churn.

But the coworking spaces in her country proved their value by doing the exact opposite. They gave everything away for free. They ceased to be businesses and became civic infrastructure.

“We decided we must stay together,” Helga says, describing the family decision in February 2022. Her husband and son couldn’t leave Ukraine. So she didn’t either. It’s a microcosm of what happened across the sector.

The transactional gave way to the existential. Revenue per square foot became irrelevant. What mattered was shelter, warmth, electricity, and community.

Helga worked with the Ukrainian Coworking Association. Their first significant act wasn’t policy work or internal strategy. It was documentation. They partnered with CBRE to gather data on the state of the market under war conditions. It was an act of testimony. Proof of existence. We are still here. This is real.

The global coworking industry debates tactics for reducing churn and optimising meeting room pricing.

Ukraine demonstrated the fundamental value proposition of shared space: the capacity to transform into life-saving infrastructure in a single day.

The Philologist Who Wrote About Cyberspace

Before the war, Helga wrote a children’s fantasy book called Journey into the Net. It was about the hopeful possibilities of cyberspace, the magic of digital connection, and the adventure of navigating the online world.

Now she writes testimony. Documentation. Strategies for survival. Her company, Spacebring, isn’t just selling software anymore — ...

“We have people literally knocking on the door... ‘Do you want to buy 100 Google reviews?’ We made the call very early doors that that was not in line with our values, and we would never do that.”

Stephen Phillips spent most of his adult life in London’s casual dining world. Now he’s co-founded Neighbours & Nomads—a coworking space, bar, and community hub in El Nido, Palawan, Philippines.

The transition wasn’t gentle. Double the budget. Twice the time. Learning to navigate Philippine construction, permits, and bureaucracy from scratch. Opening in the downseason with a fragile local power grid and the constant threat of infrastructure failure.

But here’s what makes this conversation worth your time: Stephen brought something from those London restaurant years that most coworking operators never develop. The ability to create genuine hospitality at scale.

The instinct for when to apply commercial savvy and when to just be human. The understanding that you have far more time to build rapport in a coworking space than you ever had serving tables—and what to do with that gift.

This isn’t a “follow your dreams” story. It’s a clear-eyed account of what it actually takes to build community infrastructure in a place where digital nomads worry the Wi-Fi will fail mid-call and the power will cut out during their deadline.

Stephen solved the infrastructure problem—dual fibre connections, backup systems, air conditioning that works—but that’s just the entry ticket.

The real story is in the human systems. How do you obtain genuine Google reviews without resorting to bribery? How do you recover from service failures when you’ve got weeks, not minutes, to make it right?

How do you balance the economics of serving both Manila professionals working remotely and nomads earning global salaries? And why does the word “nomad” mean something completely different in the Philippines than it does in Bali or Lisbon?

If you’re running a coworking space in a destination location, or thinking about it, this episode will save you months of expensive mistakes. If you’ve ever worked in hospitality and wondered how those skills transfer, Stephen’s already done the translation work for you.

Timeline Highlights

[01:48] “Creating local spaces that open doors to locals and remote workers and create opportunity for growth and community”

[03:33] “Double the budget and twice the amount of time... If we could have done, I think having more time to build the community”

[05:22] “I now know how to build, construct a building in the Philippines... what permits I have to get and how to get them and how to avoid fines”

[07:27] “The hook for me was confidence... their assumption is the infrastructure... will be terrible. You've got to give them the confidence that you’ve worked that out.”

[09:34] “You can’t get volume out of locals when it comes to reviews... Often, just asking... is half the battle”

[12:25] “We have people literally knocking on the door... ‘Do you want to buy 100 Google reviews?’ We made the call very early doors, which was not in line with our values.”

[14:01] “Commercial savvy with genuine hospitality. I think the two have got to really work hand in hand.”

[16:53] “It’s more of the upside and far, far less of the downside... You have the time to build rapport and relationships.”

[19:38] “We saw that they’d used a half-day pass and we just recredited it... sent them a note... It’s easy to look for those opportunities to wow people.”

[22:24] “We call them remote workers because in the Philippines, nomads still probably got that slightly 19th-century connotation to it”

[25:45] “A nomad has got that connotation of a hobo... the drifter... The word has just not been modernised like it has in the West.”

[26:52] “We need a bit more critical mass... Pure volume is going to bring our ideas to life.”

[28:16] “We’re going to put all the infrastructure in and all the training in... now it’s got to be stress-tested”

The Infrastructure Confidence Game

Digital nomads researching the Philippines face a harsh reality: the infrastructure may not be reliable. Power cuts. Unreliable Wi-Fi. Backup systems that aren’t actually backed up.

Stephen’s first job wasn’t building community—it was solving the infrastructure problem so thoroughly that remote workers would believe him when he said it worked.

Dual fibre-optic connections. Reliable power. Air conditioning that actually runs all day. These aren’t luxury amenities in El Nido; they’re proof that you’ve done the homework.

But here’s where it gets interesting: you can’t just solve the problem. You have to prove you’ve solved it. That’s where the Google reviews become critical. A digital nomad choosing between Bali, Thailand, or the Philippines will do desktop research.

They’re looking for social proof that someone like them successfully worked from your space without their client call dropping or their deadline getting torched by a power outage.

The infrastructure is the entry ticket. The reviews are the invitation. Neither works without the other. Stephen learned this faster than most because he came from the hospitality industry, where the gap between what you promise and what you deliver can destroy businesses overnight.

The Art of the Genuine Ask

Stephen’s team doesn’t buy Google reviews. People knock on the door weekly, offering to sell them 100 five-star ratings. They say no every time.

Instead, they’ve built a system that feels human: they wait until someone’s last day, when the experience is fresh and complete. They ask directly—would you mind leaving us a review? If the person says yes and genuinely had a good time, they offer a coffee as a thank you.

The coffee costs less than 20 pence. That’s not the point. The point is timing and intent. These remote workers have spent weeks in the space.

They’ve built relationships with the team. They’ve seen the kitchen, met the chef, and experienced the care. By the time someone asks for a review, it’s not a cold transaction—it’s a natural extension of the rapport that’s already there.

This only works because the underlying experience is genuine. You can’t manufacture five-star reviews with a 20p coffee if the Wi-Fi failed three times and lunch was consistently late.

The “commercial savvy” Stephen talks about isn’t manipulation—it’s recognising the moment when someone genuinely wants to help you and making it easy for them to do so.

The contrast with fake reviews isn’t just ethical. It’s strategic. Fake reviews create expectations you can’t meet. Genuine reviews, even if they take longer to accumulate, bring you the right customers—people who actually want what you’re offering.

Hospitality Time Versus Restaurant Time

In a restaurant, you have 90 minutes to make an impression. Maybe two hours if it’s a special occasion. Everything moves fast. If something goes wrong, you’ve got minutes to recover before the experience is ruined and the customer leaves forever.

Coworking spaces operate on a completely different timescale. Someone buying a monthly pass will be in your space for weeks. You build rapport gradually.

You learn their name, their work patterns, and their coffee order. When something goes wrong—and it will—you have time to notice, time to fix it, and time to go beyond fixing it.

Stephen tells the story of a lunch order that got lost in the kitchen for 25 minutes. In a restaurant, that’s a disaster requiring immediate comped drinks and a grovelling apology. In the coworking space, the customer didn’t even care. They’d met the chef. They knew the standard. They’d built enough relationship capital that one mistake registered as human error, not system failure.

But Stephen’s team didn’t stop there....

The panic hits when winter arrives, and you can’t be bothered to leave the house.

When it’s easier to dial into the Zoom call than get in the car. When streaming feels more sensible than showing up.

When convenience wins and connection loses.

Shamena Nurse-Kingsley runs Cowo & Crèche in Alexandria, Virginia—a faith-forward, family-focused coworking space that hosts Celebration Church DC every Sunday morning.

She’s a US Air Force veteran and former federal employee who’s built what she unapologetically calls a “Kingdom business.”

In a city of 159,102 people, she’s got 50 coworking seats and capacity for 338 at events.

Her response when Bernie asks about the numbers: “I like my odds.”

This conversation cuts to the heart of what independent operators are avoiding: that convenience is killing community. Trying to appeal to everyone makes you invisible. Those values-driven spaces cut through the noise better than generic flexibility ever will.

Bernie brings his own experience growing up in church communities—the barbecues after Mass, the football teams, the youth clubs—where connection happened not because it was convenient, but because people showed up.

Shamena talks about partnership agreements that blend grace with structure, about hosting Muslim groups for Iftar celebrations, about baptism pools and production equipment. About why “people are good” and why showing up in person still matters even when the screen would be easier.

This is for operators who’ve watched members drift towards the convenience of home. Who wonders if community still matters. Who needs permission to lean harder into their values rather than softer?

Timeline Highlights

[01:35] Shamena “I am being known for my very unapologetic, faith-forward space”

[02:56] Alexandria has 159,102 people—Shamena likes her odds with 50 coworking seats

[04:51] “It’s Club Jesus. Every single Sunday, it’s absolutely Club Jesus here!”

[06:09] How partnership agreements work: assets, lighting, production, grace, and structure

[11:30] Shamena’s story: flying to Paris to see Messi play, then he moves to Miami

[13:34] “There’s this sense of relief. You can hear the music, you can get a hug.”

[15:16] The elephant in the room: “Connection is more important than convenience”

[17:04] “Winter is coming. It is cold here. It’s going to be like 50 degrees.”

[19:28] The critical question: is the faith organisation a partner or a client?

[21:23] The baptism pool situation—where grace meets logistics

[22:45] A Muslim group calls to host Iftar: “Yes, sure. Come on in.”

[24:02] “People are good. I’m still a believer, Bernie, that people are good”

[26:03] “Bernie is palm tree shady”—the banter that proves real friendship

The Elephant Everyone’s Avoiding

No one wants to say it out loud: convenience is killing community.

Shamena names it without hesitation. “I think no one wants to step on people’s toes, right? No one wants to say, speak out against remote work because everyone’s like, it’s so convenient.”

Remote work is convenient. Streaming church is convenient. Staying in bed on a Sunday morning, in your pyjamas, with your Bible and the television, is convenient.

But convenient isn’t the same as connected.

“We’ve just put so much emphasis now on our convenience and self, and my own convenience and my own comfort. And now, connection is going down, down, down that list.”

This isn’t anti-remote-work. Shamena built Cowo & Crèche partly because remote work created impossible situations for working parents—she didn’t want YouTube raising her children whilst she worked. The problem isn’t flexibility. It’s when convenience becomes the only metric that matters.

Bernie recognises this tension immediately: “We talk about connection and community more than ever, and maybe that’s just because we’re in the coworking industry.”

But talking about connection and actually creating the conditions for it are entirely different things.

The operators who thrive won’t be the ones offering the most convenient option. They’ll be the ones creating experiences worth the inconvenience of showing up.

Partnership vs Client: Structure Behind the Grace

Here’s what most operators miss when working with faith organisations: the distinction between partnership and client relationships matters.

“Is this a partnership with the faith-based organisation, or are they a client? That’s a good starting point.”

For Cowo & Crèche, Celebration Church DC (pastored by Anthony Vaughn and Brenda Vaughn) isn’t just renting space on Sundays.

They’re in a genuine partnership—sharing assets, production equipment, and lighting. The church has invested in permanent infrastructure that benefits the space all week.

But partnership doesn’t mean woolly boundaries.

“We do have our SOPs. We do have partnership agreements. You should lock those things in and let it be tight. But also knowing that, listen, we’re going to have a baptism here coming up on Sunday. There’s a whole baptism pool situation.”

This is what Shamena calls “Kingdom business”—grace layered with structure and systems. She’s got 25 years of experience in budgeting and logistics and two master’s degrees. “By no means am I just here riding on a Jesus high with no structure, right?”

The emails about mop situations and towel logistics for baptism pools. The evening setup time is not charged at market rate because it’s a partnership, not a transaction. The clear understanding that business remains business even when relationships run deeper.

Grace and structure. Both are held in tension.

The 160,000-Person Opportunity

Bernie asks the question every operator should ask: “How many people live in Alexandria?”

Shamena Googles it mid-conversation: “In the city of Alexandria, as of 2024, there are 159,102 people. In my space, I have 11,597 square feet, and the fire marshal tells me that I can have 338 people in here.”

Her response: “I like my odds.”

This is the mathematics of the niche. In a city of 160,000 people, you don’t need to appeal to everyone. You need to become the obvious choice for your people.

Bernie makes the point sharper: “There’s actually more coworking seats in London than there are people... There’s always more people than there are seats, and people are always trying to be the same.”

Everyone’s competing to be vanilla. To be neutral. To offend nobody and appeal to everybody.

Shamena’s doing the opposite. Faith-forward. Family-focused. Veteran-owned. Unapologetic.

The question isn’t whether your values will turn some people away. They will. The question is whether they’ll make you magnetic to the right people.

When the Building Becomes a Congregation

Every Sunday morning, Cowo & Crèche transforms.

“It’s Club Jesus. Every single Sunday, it’s absolutely Club Jesus here.”

Shamena and her husband don’t pastor the church—they host it. They’re part of the congregation. They’ve woven their business and their faith community together in ways that blur the boundaries in generative ways.

Bernie names what this really is: “It’s like hosting a party every weekend, guaranteed in your coworking space.”

People come through the doors after a hard week and feel relief.

* They hear music.

* They get hugs.

* They feel at home.

* They’re part of something that doesn’t kick them out on a time clock.

Bernie recognises this from his own upbringing: “My mum was a teacher and sh...

Episode Summary

“I really struggled to relate to people at school because the conversations that I was hoping to be able to have with my friends were about the things that were going on outside the school gates... But what I love about finding the collective is that it’s given me permission to imagine another way of doing things, and that it really has felt like a real homecoming.”

Ellie Meredith is 19 years old. She’s a Community Cultivator at Re-Action Collective, co-organiser of Shrewsbury’s Climate Café, and the protagonist of a 25-minute documentary called ACTionism that’s currently screening in living rooms, pubs, libraries, and coworking spaces across the world.

But two years ago, she was crawling inside herself, overwhelmed by climate anxiety, trapped in a classroom where nobody wanted to talk about the things that actually mattered.

The shift came from two questions. Not from a therapist. Not from a careers advisor. From Jon Alexander, whom she’d emailed after reading his book about citizenship.

He asked, "What gives you joy?" And where does that joy meet the work that needs doing in the world?

Those questions cracked something open. Within weeks, she’d met the crew at Re-Action Collective—a grassroots organisation challenging the outdoor industry’s throwaway culture by teaching repair, running gear rental schemes, and making the outdoors accessible to people who’ve been priced out. She’d found her people. She’d stopped trying to save the planet alone.

This conversation isn’t just about Ellie’s journey. It’s about what coworking spaces can do with a 25-minute film, a room full of chairs arranged in a circle, and an invitation to dream together about what could happen next in your community.

Bernie and Ellie walk through the mechanics of hosting a community screening—how to avoid the tumbleweed moment after the credits roll, why repair workshops and art supplies work better than Q&As, and what actually happens when you give people permission to imagine differently.

If you’ve ever wondered how to use your space for something deeper than hot-desking, this is the blueprint. Find your people. Host a screening. See what begins.

Timeline Highlights

[01:14] Bernie sets the frame: this is about getting like-minded people in your coworking space, watching something together, and having intentional conversations afterwards

[02:21] Ellie’s realisation: “Do you know how much of a life fluke that is?” — finding your people quickly after leaving school

[02:35] “I was feeling quite lost at sea and fairly lonely. I really struggled to relate to people at school because the conversations I was hoping to have were about things going on outside the school gates.”

[04:21] The origin of Ellie’s climate concern: volunteering with Shropshire Wildlife Trust, watching flooding happen more and more, seeing nature collapse on her doorstep

[07:51] Bernie’s question about neurodiversity: Does feeling things more deeply make the horror worse when you see a flood?

[09:09] “Being neurodivergent certainly adds another level of complexity to the read that I have on the world.”

[10:19] How ACTionism works: community screenings in living rooms, pubs, libraries, anywhere people gather—not on streaming platforms, not touring cinemas

[12:37] Bernie asks the hard question: how do you avoid the awkward silence after showing a film?

[14:25] The circle method: sit everyone in a big circle, including the filmmaker, so it’s not one person answering questions but the whole room having a conversation

[16:04] What happens after screenings: dreaming activities with post-it notes, repair workshops, art supplies for visual responses

[19:09] Bernie: “How on Earth did you find yourself in a film?”

[21:12] The email that changed everything: Ellie writes to Jon Alexander after reading his book about citizenship

[24:46] Bernie’s main takeaway from the Conduit event: we don’t have to have all the answers

[29:00] Where to find Ellie: LinkedIn, and obviously the Re-Action Collective

The Neurospicy Activist Who Hated Four Walls

School was suffocating for Ellie. Not in the vague, everyone-hates-homework way.

In the specific, visceral, ‘I’m-crawling-inside-myself’ way that happens when you’re neurodivergent and the world insists you sit still in four walls whilst climate collapse is happening outside the gates.

She describes herself as a “neurospicy human”—a phrase that does more work than any clinical diagnosis could. It signals: I feel things on a different frequency.

The mounting pressure of exams didn’t just stress her out; it became too much. The conversations at school weren’t about what mattered. They were surface-level whilst floods were getting worse in Shropshire, whilst nature was collapsing on her doorstep from her volunteer work with the Wildlife Trust.

Bernie picks up on this immediately. He asks if neurodiversity exacerbates the feeling of horror when you see a flood.

Ellie’s answer: “I definitely feel things a lot more deeply than other people. My senses around it are very much heightened, and I don’t really know where to put any of that energy unless it’s part of collective action.”

This is the heart of why ACTionism matters for coworking spaces. Your members aren’t all neurotypical. They’re not all processing climate anxiety, economic precarity, or community collapse in the same way.

But many of them are feeling it deeply, and they don’t know where to put that energy. The solo mission to save the world—buying a reusable cup, recycling properly—feels joyless because it is. It’s action without connection. It’s doing something to feel less helpless, not because it actually changes anything.

Ellie found the outlet she needed when she found Re-Action Collective. Not because they had the answers, but because they gave her a crew. People who cared about the same things. People who were doing something together, not alone.

Two Questions That Rerouted Everything

After leaving school, Ellie emailed Jon Alexander. She’d read his book about citizenship—stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things—and it cracked something open. She wasn’t expecting much back. Maybe a thumbs up. Maybe nothing.

Instead, Jon invited her to London. They sat down together, and he asked two questions:

* What gives you joy?

* Where does that joy meet the work that needs doing in the world?

Those questions are deceptively simple.

They’re not: What do you want to be when you grow up? Or what’s your five-year plan? They’re citizen questions, not consumer questions. They assume you have agency. They assume the world needs what brings you alive.

Ellie’s answer: she loved being outside, volunteering with the Wildlife Trust, and she wanted to do more with other people in her community.

Jon made the connection to Re-Action Collective, a grassroots organisation in the French Alps working on circular economy solutions for the outdoor industry.

Two years later, she’s a Community Cultivator there, and her journey is the spine of a documentary being screened in hundreds of communities worldwide.

For coworking operators, this moment is instructive. The most valuable thing you can offer your members isn’t faster WiFi or better coffee.

It’s the connection between what gives them joy and the work that needs to be done. Sometimes that connection happens in a casual hallway conversation.

Sometimes it happens because you hosted a film screening and someone realised they weren’t alone.

Jon Alexander didn’t solve Ellie’s climate anxiety. He asked better questions. Your coworking space can do the same.

Community Screenings as Civic Infrastructure

ACTio...

Episode Summary

“When there is such a place in a peripheral area, it’s usually a place that a young person will visit one way or another. You can reach out to them. You can walk around the neighbourhood because we’re talking about small communities, so you know each other.”

Dimitris is a PhD researcher at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, Research Fellow at Politécnico di Milano for the Remaking Horizon project on remote working policies, project lead for Rural Radicals, collaborator on EU and EEA-funded initiatives like ResMove and Cowork4YOUTH.

He’s a storyteller who changed his medium from literature to community infrastructure. His entire professional life reads as a search for a new, more empowering narrative for the people and places left behind by Europe’s dominant economic story.

He grew up in Greece’s intellectual centres—Thessaloniki and Athens—but now turns his focus to the periphery. The forgotten villages. The declining market towns. The suburbs where the last young person left decades ago.

He’s translating the language of the urban core and applying it to heartlands that desperately need new economic models.

The problem is stark: across Spain, France, Greece, and beyond, entire regions are being drained of their young talent. Not a trickle, but a haemorrhage.

The brightest minds pack bags and board planes from regional airports, heading for Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona, and London.

The term “brain drain” sounds clinical. But behind every statistic is a family losing a daughter, a village losing its future, a local economy losing the one person who might have started something new.

Dimitris isn’t just researching this crisis. He’s building the infrastructure to reverse it. His work poses a provocative question: what if coworking spaces are more than just remote work and good Wi-Fi?

What if they’re actually civic infrastructure—the new town squares where young people practise economic citizenship, where migrants find pathways to entrepreneurship, where peripheral communities discover they don’t need to move to the capital to build meaningful work?

This conversation explores how collaborative spaces can become mediators, bringing together digital opportunities, community networks, and practical skills training.

Bernie and Dimitris discuss everything from the cost-of-living crisis pushing people back to smaller towns, to the specific challenges facing Greece’s social enterprise sector, to why youth retention requires more than sporadic events—it demands organised, sustained policy that connects bottom-up needs with top-down support.

This episode matters because it challenges the narrative that economic opportunity only exists in major cities. For independent coworking operators, this masterclass helps you understand your role not just as a business owner, but as a community anchor.

For anyone working in peripheral regions, it’s proof that brain gain is possible when you build the proper infrastructure for connection, learning, and economic agency.

⏱ Timeline Highlights

[01:24] Dimitris introduces himself: PhD researcher studying youth engagement and employment policies in collaborative workspaces across peripheral Europe

[04:04] Bernie asks the sleep question—when does Dimitris rest with so many projects spinning simultaneously?

[06:45] “Peripheral doesn’t just mean rural—it can be a left-behind suburb or an old warehouse area inside a city”

[09:05] “Building your network is one of the hardest things young people need to do. The opportunities to build your network are very, very small nowadays.”

[12:23] The economic reality: young people move from Vigo to Barcelona and Madrid, taking their wealth with them—coworking spaces can anchor people locally

[16:00] “The cost-of-living crisis discourages young people from staying longer in big cities”

[17:51] “Many old institutions, like community centres, adopt coworking practices and rebrand themselves as hubs”

[18:04] Bernie asks about Dimitris’s ideal hub—the mental picture he carries

[20:19] “It’s really nice, in Greek, we say to listen to a good word, to a nice word every day when you go.”

[22:00] Where to find Dimitris: LinkedIn is the central hub for all his projects and deliverables

[24:01] Bernie’s closing: host a screening of the Actionism film in your coworking space to kickstart community conversations about collective action

The Peripheral Economy Problem

The language matters here. Dimitris doesn’t say “rural decline” like it’s inevitable. He says “peripheral areas” because geography isn’t the only factor. You can be peripheral in the heart of a city—an old industrial quarter where the factories closed, where services dried up, where nobody opens new businesses anymore.

These areas share common symptoms: population loss, ageing demographics, limited job opportunities, poor digital infrastructure, and a persistent sense of being left behind. The social and economic isolation feeds on itself. When young people leave, they take energy, ideas, purchasing power, and hope with them.

This isn’t just about losing workers. It’s about losing the social fabric. When the young leave, community organisations lose volunteers. Local businesses lose customers. Schools close. The remaining residents age in place, and the cycle becomes self-reinforcing.

Dimitris has spent years interviewing young people across Europe who are beneficiaries of employment and engagement initiatives run through collaborative spaces. What he’s discovered challenges the fatalistic narrative that these places are doomed.

The pattern he’s documenting suggests that with the proper infrastructure—both digital and social—peripheral regions can offer something cities increasingly can’t: affordability, community, and quality of life.

The pandemic proved this wasn’t just a theory. During lockdowns, knowledge workers fled expensive city centres for countryside cottages and coastal towns.

Some stayed. The question now is whether communities can build the right conditions to make staying attractive, not just temporarily tolerable.

Youth Engagement as Community Infrastructure

Dimitris describes a methodology that works: use collaborative spaces as the physical anchor for youth engagement, then build programming around what young people need.

First step: stop waiting for them to find you. Walk around the neighbourhood. In small communities, you know each other. Do customer research—ask young people what events they’d actually attend, what skills they want to learn, what barriers they face.

Then bring them into the space with other like-minded peers, some professionals, maybe policymakers, depending on the event. The magic isn’t in the formal programming—it’s in the informal networks that form when people start showing up regularly.

Someone mentions they need help with graphic design. Another person knows someone. A conversation leads to a collaboration. A collaboration leads to paid work.

Dimitris is careful to distinguish between engagement and employment. Engagement is the umbrella term—getting people out of isolation, connecting them to community, giving them a place to belong.

Employment is one of the direct or indirect effects of engagement. You can’t force job creation, but you can create the conditions where economic opportunity becomes more likely.

The spaces that succeed with youth retention share standard practices: they offer skills workshops on remote work, business setup, and digital tools. They host regular social events that aren’t explicitl...

Episode Summary

“There is a real disconnect between community coworking spaces and the people who will fund these kinds of needs.”

There’s a gap. On one side, people are arriving in Europe with skills, education, and drive. On the other side, coworking spaces are built on community, collaboration, and openness. In the middle, a wall of bureaucracy, funding applications, and municipal departments that nobody knows how to navigate.

Jeannine van der Linden has run a coworking space in Oosterhout, Netherlands, since 2010. She knows exactly what it feels like to walk into her local municipality with a good idea and watch officials stare blankly because nobody knows what to do with her.

That disconnect — between community coworking spaces and the institutions holding funds for community projects — is costing everyone. Migrants can’t access spaces. Spaces can’t access funding. Economic potential sits idle whilst paperwork piles up.

Enter RES-MOVE: 11 partners across 10 countries, funded by the European Commission’s AMIF (asylum, migrants, and integration fund), with one mission — turn coworking spaces into real integration hubs. Not charity. Not handouts. What Jeannine calls “a strategic economic necessity.”

This conversation strips away the polish. Jeannine talks openly about writing grant proposals that bombed because coworking operators think like entrepreneurs (will this turn a profit?) whilst municipalities think like impact assessors (what will this do for our community?).

She explains why the Ukrainian diaspora became the initial focus, and how it evolved as the reality of long-term migration set in. She reveals that NGO partners already possess the municipal contacts that coworking spaces have been seeking for years.

The friction is real. The timeline is slow (EU projects move from first contact to active work over several years). But the pathway is clear: coworking spaces need to stop reinventing the funding wheel and start partnering with organisations that already know how to open those doors.

If you’ve ever felt stuck between having the capacity to serve your community and no clue how to fund it adequately, this episode hands you the map. Jeannine’s not selling inspiration. She’s offering infrastructure.

This is for: Independent coworking operators who know their space could serve their community better, but don’t know how to access funding. Community builders are frustrated by dead-end grant applications. Anyone who’s ever been told “somebody will send you an email” by their local council, only to receive nothing.

You’ll leave with: Practical knowledge about EU funding structures, why NGO partnerships matter, how to reframe your pitch from profit to impact, and exactly where the RES-MOVE project needs help right now.

Timeline Highlights

[00:04] “There’s a gap” — Bernie frames the core problem: skilled migrants, community-ready coworking spaces, and a bureaucratic wall nobody knows how to climb

[01:55] Jeannine calls in from Oosterhout, Netherlands — halfway between Amsterdam and Brussels, running a coworking space since 2010

[02:17] RES-MOVE explained: Resources On the Move — migrants as economic resources to Europe, funded by AMIF

[03:24] “Coworking spaces can act as integration hubs” — the central thesis driving 11 partners across 10 countries

[04:31] The EU timeline reality check — from first contact to funding approval to actually starting work takes years

[06:41] The corporate/community divide exposed — some spaces don’t even call themselves coworking spaces or know they’re part of the movement

[08:37] What a coworking space actually gets from RES-MOVE — events, projects, connections to develop their capacity, not just cash handouts

[09:53] “Strategic economic necessity, not a handout” — Jeannine reframes the entire conversation about migrant support

[12:17] The funding disconnect revealed — coworking spaces can’t even find the right person at the municipality; NGO partners already have those contacts

[13:46] The presentation that failed — when coworking spaces pitch profit whilst municipalities only care about community impact

[20:43] “Sometimes this happens in the middle of a project” — ideas evolve, maps get redesigned, new funding opportunities emerge

[25:01] The Call for Ideas is still open — if you’ve got a project that increases inclusion for migrants in your coworking space, fill out the form

[27:24] Marko Orel’s November seminar announced — focusing on Ukrainian diaspora, long-term integration, and what actually works

[31:07] Marko introduced properly — Head of Centre for Workplace Research at the University of Prague, Department of Entrepreneurship, Academic Director of the extended realities research lab

[32:22] Helga Moreno — works at SpaceBring coworking software, Ukrainian Coworking Association leader, “a big cheese”

The Bureaucratic Wall Between Good Ideas and Funding

Here’s what actually happens when you walk into your local council with a coworking project that could genuinely help your community: absolutely nothing.

Jeannine describes the experience with the specificity that only comes from living it.

* You prepare a presentation.

* You explain your project.

* You centre it around what entrepreneurs care about — costs, profit, sustainability.

* The officials nod politely. Someone says, “somebody will send you an email.”

* Nobody ever does. You’re unsure who to follow up with. The project dies.

The problem isn’t your idea. The problem is you’re speaking a different language. As Jeannine puts it, municipalities “literally never had that thought” about whether something would cover its costs and turn a profit.

What they want to know is: what’s the impact on our community? How does this affect the municipality?

This gap has kept coworking spaces away from significant funding for years. Not because the money doesn’t exist — there are substantial funds at the municipal, regional, and EU levels specifically for community projects.

But because nobody taught coworking operators how to frame their work in impact terms, and nobody taught municipal funding officers what coworking spaces actually are.

The Netherlands has made progress — all grants are now consolidated on a single website.

But as Jeannine points out, even when it’s well organised, you as a solo coworking operator probably don’t have time to read that website, decode the requirements, and craft a proposal that speaks their language. That’s not a personal failing. That’s a structural gap that needs bridging.

Why NGOs Already Have the Access You’ve Been Hunting For

One of the quietly revolutionary aspects of RES-MOVE is who’s actually in the room. Out of 11 partner organisations, there are two academic partners, the European Coworking Assembly, and eight NGOs that work with migrants on a regular basis.

They’re not coworking people. They’re migration specialists. And they already know exactly who to call at the municipality.

Jeannine describes walking into the first meeting in Athens and saying, “I have a coworking space, but I don’t, to my knowledge, have any migrants.”

That’s when it became clear: there’s a serious disconnec...