Having worked remotely even in the “Big smoke” Dublin for years, Rainer went full steam ahead with COWORKATIONERS after moving to rural Mayo, where he found several locations of the nationwide “Connected Hubs”-network on his doorstep. Being a member of the German equivalent “CoWorkLand” Rainer embarked on a tour of his new home county to talk to Hub Managers about issues like occupancy, finance, the mix of users, and importantly about “how do you keep your users happy?” Soon, an introduction was made to Stephen Carolan, the National Hub Programme Manager at the “Western Development Commission”. The WDC expressed strong interest in a partnership between “Connected Hubs” and “CoWorkLand”, and after an initial video-call between Stephen, CWL Board Member Hans-Albrecht (Haske) Wiehler and Rainer, a roadmap was agreed on how to make a the partnership a lively one.
The road will lead to Berlin, where the “Coworking Europe” Conference will be held on November 19th and 20th. The WDC’s “Connected Hubs” Team will be there in numbers as the aim is to bring “Coworking Europe” to Ireland next year. In the days around the conference, though, COWORKATIONERS will facilitate meetings on Management-level between the WDC and CWL in order to lay foundations for working-groups in areas like occupancy, finance, Pop-Up Coworking or relationship-building between Hubs in smaller towns and villages and larger companies in bigger cities. Hub Managers will be in the travelling party from Ireland, too, who will meet up with CWL Hub Managers for a first exchange of views and experiences.
Importantly, the tour to Berlin will also be open to Hub-users – leading back to the aforementioned question “how do you keep your users happy?” That question doesn’t fall on deaf ears with Stephen Carolan. “So far we were very successful in building up our network of Hubs, but now we need to take the next step and involve the users of our Hubs as much as possible.” Establishing links with the important EU-economy Germany is a logical step for the WDC in that regard. “I look forward to working with Rainer at COWORKATIONERS who will be able to provide a first cohort of Hub-users with valuable connections and productive meetings while we are in Berlin.”
Berlin isn’t cheap (neither is Ireland), so any Hub-user investing in such a trip would like to see a return on that investment. In order to make that happen the first steps on the road to Berlin are already being taken months ahead of November. COWORKATIONERS is already working with Irish Hub-users in order to arrange productive meetings with potential clients, partners and investors.