Virtual coworking has suddenly seen a massive boom in 2020 thanks to the onset of the Coronavirus. Some industries seem to manage to have bucked the trend. This is mainly thanks to their ability to bring together community through working in a digital space. None more than intrepid communities, soon to be unicorns, that have promoted working from anywhere through virtual coworking spaces.
With over 90% of people saying they want to work remotely the trends certainly growing and with the Coronavirus forcing many businesses to ask employees to work from home the revolution may have finally hit fever pitch.
What’s different between a virtual and physical coworking space? Bar the obvious!
Some virtual coworking spaces have floor plans and digital desks, but this seems a bit of a gimmick. Worse it may potentially be a waste of time for a busy freelancer working remotely. The more seamless services use webinar tools to bring people to a shared space. Here the host can move you to a breakout room if you need a private room to chat to another coworker or you just want to invite someone to a meeting from outside without using you own slightly shaky Skype or Google Hangouts.
We found that the best virtual workspaces also brought a real sense of community by hosting events throughout the day, making it easy to learn from other members whilst making coworking colleagues and friends. Some spaces also use Slack to stay in touch, some of these are very vibrant and host a great number of interesting topics, freelancers, entrepreneurs and digital nomads.
What are the benefits of virtual coworking?
Whether working from a traditional coworking space or a digital workspace, the up-sides are very much the same. Just as you have people working around you in a coworking, cafe or hotel workspace, you get the same in a digital workspace. As many people feel quite lonely when working from, now at the click a button you can interact with others.
The massive benefit of coworking online is the geographic variety of coworkers that are present and the 24hr activeness that this brings the workspace. You can easily meet coworkers around the world, great for those with overseas markets and manufacturing, and if your a late-night worker, don’t worry someone else half-way around the world will just be starting their day.
Where can I try virtual coworking?
Othership provides a mix of online coworking with an active Slack group / online workspace, events, and physical workspaces. We host a weekly network & coffee online. With a combination of free workspaces, coworking spaces, and meeting rooms all available for it’s growing community. It all started in London, but is now spread across the UK with members and workspaces in Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh and many more locations. Expect this group to spread and iterate its newly launched online solution very quickly.
Sococo, provide a virtual floor plan, but sadly it doesn’t have a true coworking offer as is only for teams. The other option is MyWorkHive but this only has a Slack group and is more tailored to B2B consulting.
Arena also had a similar offer to Sococo but seems to have gone offline for now, maybe with a new offer in the pipeline.
So now it’s time to go and see what this all about. Come say “Hi” in our online workspace.
This is nice content and very informative! I hope that everyone gets inspired to work in virtual coworking office it is more safe especially no we are facing this pandemic. Thanks a lot for spending time to share this to us.
It’s good to see how virtual workspaces brought a sense of community. People want social interactions again. Any form of it, even if it is virtual and digital, is helpful.