I started 2019 with one simple question: what does the coliving movement need to move forward?
Two years prior, I started my first coliving concept in Barcelona as a side-project. When I realized the social and transformational value of coliving, I decided to put all my time and energy into the movement.
I was facing a decision: should I run and grow my concept, or find a better way to fulfill my current life’s intention?
As a lifestyle engineer, my approach is to think in terms of the desired outcome (to grow the coliving movement) and distill possible scenarios. It showed that realistically, growing my own spaces could only do so much and I’d be one of many establishing themselves in the industry.
Talking to more than 100 coliving professionals, the answer came clear to me that the coliving industry is currently lacking two things that I’d be best suited to tackle:
- Knowledge sharing: coliving operators work through trial and error (as every new industry does) and don’t have the time to focus on exchanging best practices.
- Community building: coliving operators operate without a strong support system that connects them with other professionals and opens up collaboration opportunities.
Not only do I want to grab your interest for the upcoming activities (that’s what blog posts do), I’d rather like to share how I’m planning to shape the 2019 coliving industry. Welcome into my brain.
Part I: content creation
Purpose: improve coliving operations and industry development through valuable content.
Objective: impact 1000 coliving professionals through various content initiatives.
Vehicles:
- Create a media platform for coliving news and resources (done)
- Educate professionals with news through a weekly newsletter (doing)
- Interview 100 coliving operators on coliving best practices (in progress)
- Creating guides and resource summaries for coliving operators (in progress)
- Summarizing key learnings and publishing a book (in progress)
After launching the blog Coliving Diaries and launching the Coliving Bible (the first open source directory of coliving spaces), I partnered with Co-Liv to write a book on coliving best practices.
Throughout the next four months, I’m touring across Europe and the United States to interview 50 operators in person, and another 50 from rural areas and other continents via phone (yeah ehm, I mean, Skype and such).
We’re planning to publish the book, which will summarize the world’s leading coliving best practices, in December 2019.
There is a (not so slight) chance that coliving professionals will see a lot of content being released end of this year (running a marketing agency helps for that) so stay tuned.
Part II: community building
Purpose: build real relationships between coliving operators that empower individual missions.
Objective: connect the 20 key coliving professionals within each major coliving industry city.
Vehicles:
- Organize local coliving meetups in 10+ cities across Europe and the US (in progress)
- Co-organize the Co-Liv Summit to include a larger audience of coliving enthusiasts
One month ago, I had the honor to join Co-Liv as International Vice-President on its board.
We decided to use my coliving world tour opportunity to launch local coliving meetups. During this summer, I’m going to co-organise with the help of local Co-Liv ambassadors gatherings in 10 different cities: Paris, London, Berlin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Madrid, Copenhagen, San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.
The goal is to create the first of recurring meetups and foster the local coliving scene by offering a repeated event that brings coliving professionals together to socialize, build alliances and seek solutions to common issues in an informal setting.
Next year, all participants will be invited to the annual Co-Liv Summit and will have a chance to connect to the wider coliving network.
Summing it up: this is for you and me
I’m dedicating this year to the coliving scene. Those projects are not for me. They’re here to foster a cause that I and many others personally believe in - one of life-enhancing living, one of rethinking old models, one of human connection.
Yours truly,
Gui