Coworking Space Events to Boost Your Member Experience Optix Blog

Community is the heart and soul of your coworking space. Coworking space events are a great way to build this sense of community and are one of the most valuable coworking member perks you can offer. Events enable you to provide value beyond just space rentals.

They are also a great tool for helping members achieve their personal and professional goals, not to mention they can serve as your most valuable marketing tool. Whether for networking, professional development or socializing, every event is an opportunity to bring members together and create lasting connections.6 coworking space events to try out in your coworking spaceThere is no shortage of events you can host in your coworking space.

Were excited to share some of our favorites:Lunch & learns: Who doesnt love to learn? Lunch & learns are great community events that can create a real culture of collaboration and idea sharing in your space. They can be led by members or staff.

Members get to learn new skills from each other, while also getting the opportunity to showcase their expertise, network and market their services. Pro tip: Keep things active by kicking off your lunch & learn with an exercise or activity that gets the audience mingling and engaged. : You wont always have the expertise on hand for a lunch & learn.

Identify your members skill gaps and areas of interest and bring in local speakers to share their expertise. It could be an accountant to discuss tax saving strategies for small businesses or an SEO expert to help members boost their digital presence. The key to a successful speaker series is to ensure topics are relevant to your members.

Attendees should leave the event feeling prepared to apply this new knowledge in their day-to-day work.Social events: Not everything has to be about business. Help your members relax and get to know each other by hosting a happy hour, pizza party, or live music night.

Bringing them together in a low-pressure setting will help the conversation flow and will foster that all-important sense of community. You may even want to help facilitate connections by running an icebreaker activity. Pro tip: If you really want to make your social event different and interesting, get your community to work on something together maybe its painting a mural on one of the walls in your coworking space building together is a great way to bond and create connections.

: Sounds like kindergarten all over again, but its not. Many coworking space members are solopreneurs or remote workers. Without team members on site, these members may feel isolated.

Sharing circles are a great way to allow members to bounce ideas off one another and collaborate on their challenges. Plus, it creates an mutually-supportive environment and might even lead to more collaboration on future initiatives. Its certainly helped Darryl Bosa, founder of Spacekraft, to nurture his coworking community.

Open houses: Let the world into your space to experience the fun of coworking by hosting open houses. Similarly to your other events, this could take the form of live music nights with local talent, talks from experts, or a film screening. It also gives you the chance to do some great marketing, showing off your space and the perks of being a member.

Pro tip: When hosting an open house, encourage your current members to invite their friends and colleagues you can incentivize this behavior by offering door prizes or drink tickets!: These are 2448-hour competitions that bring together teams of techies to work on a software project in response to a common problem. At the conclusion of the event, teams present their solutions to a panel of judges.

While this might involve more planning than some of the other events, itll definitely draw a crowd and give potential new members a good introduction to your space.These are just some of the key coworking space events you can host. As you discover the ones that work for you, just remember to tailor them to your members.

What do they enjoy? What are they lacking? How often would they like these events to be held?

If youre not sure, you can always ask! And, when you have the answers, itll be easy to create events that really bring your community together, enhance their member experience and, ultimately, grow your space.Share on Facebook | Share on TwitterOriginally published at on February 28, 2019