Community Building For Remote Workers & Entrepreneurs

Cahoots Coworking

Remote work has allowed greater flexibility, letting us choose how and where we work and live. In many ways, it’s created more connections and autonomy, but it’s also created greater disconnection and reduced opportunities for creative collaboration. I first experienced these problems while working virtually on a project in another city. I felt like a houseplant, disconnected from the rich network of roots and exchange with other living organisms, alive but not thriving. I began volunteering with a local coworking space, which led to eventually working directly with them to create social experiments and programming to facilitate deeper connections between remote workers and their physical community. Because whether you’re a person or a plant, we all do better when we’re physically rooted and connected to each other.

Read what I wrote about each initiative here (and yes, several of the names were inspired by my own chickens):

Flock

A mid-week ritual check-in to share wins, highlights and struggles using the rose, bud, thorn system

While everyone came from different job titles and companies and had different experiences, they all share the same understanding of what it feels like to be frustrated with a communication breakdown, anxious about a looming deadline, or feeling unheard in an exchange… having the opportunity to connect on this level created a greater sense of camaraderie and friendship.

Hatch

A monthly roundtable for entrepreneurs to get feedback and perspectives on problems in person

“The people in my company are like-minded, and we tend to have similar approaches to solving problems,” shared one entrepreneur. “I find it really helpful to get perspectives that are completely different from what I would normally hear, it helps me look at things in new ways.”

Discover A2

A series of field trips for adults that I developed in partnership with Destination Ann Arbor

Through a series of field trips, people learned more about the trees, art, businesses, and the history of downtown Ann Arbor as a way of creating more meaningful connections with the places and spaces they lived in.

Community Committee

Empowering community builders with the structure and support to create the change they wanted to see

“The experience had created an overall increased social feeling in the space. Additionally, we noticed an increase in informal initiatives as people saw others trying things and felt empowered to do the same, whether it was creating a special interest event, asking for help, or inviting somebody new to lunch…But perhaps the strongest win of the committee was the chance to work with other members on these initiatives and support each other in their ideas… it’s nice to have drinks, but the connections you feel from collaborating on a shared purpose are much stronger.”

You can hear my reflections on this project on this episode of the Everything Coworking podcast.