German Coworking Federation: "A good community ensures resilience"

The Cowork Conference is one of the most important program items of the GCF

What does the German Coworking Federation actually do? As the national association of the German coworking movement, the GCF is committed to the promotion and networking of coworking spaces - both regionally and globally - and supports research into future-oriented topics such as coworking and new work. With this focus, the GCF team aims to connect and inspire members and inform them about events and news in the coworking scene.

GCF has been using coapp for internal exchanges since this year, so we spoke to Community Manager Anja Müller and CFO Nico Henkels about their experiences: How does coapp help them on a day-to-day basis and what does using it change for their community?

Anja Müller

Nico Henkels

Nico and Anja, can you briefly introduce yourselves?

Anja: My name is Anja Müller, I am an enthusiastic camper and am at home in the camper community, which is why I am very interested in coworking. At the beginning of 2021, I took part in the German Coworking Federation's academy to learn how to run coworking spaces successfully, especially in combination with campsites. This brought me into closer contact with the nice people at GCF, and when the position of Community Manager was advertised at the end of 2022, I immediately felt drawn to it. My main tasks are membership work and also a lot of administration, which is why I am also one of the first to use coapp.

"With coapp, we now have a central tool for member management and community interaction that is much clearer."

Nico: I'm Nico Henkels from Wuppertal and I opened a coworking space in 2017/2018. I wanted to network with other owner-managed coworking spaces and share knowledge through the German Coworking Federation. I've been on the board since 2018, mainly for financial topics. We used a lot of tools, but communication was often chaotic. We were looking for an administration program for our association that would not only allow us to communicate, but also to collect membership fees and send invoices. With coapp, we now have a central tool for member management and community interaction that is much clearer.

You have directly addressed key challenges: It is often the case that community managers love personal interaction with people, enjoy organizing campaigns or workshops and nurturing communities, but are often held back by a lot of paperwork or office work. How does coapp help you here?

Anja: That was also our main problem. With coapp, we can manage many administrative tasks more easily and organize events simply. It reduces the paperwork considerably.

Nico: For a long time, we used Slack as a community chat module, plus newsletters, a homepage, various WhatsApp or Signal groups and other channels. Communication was therefore totally distributed and fragmented across all possible channels, which was a challenge. Some people knew exactly about individual information or events, others said: "We don't hear anything about you!", and so on. So at some point it became clear to us that we would like to have a tool that would allow us to manage our members and bill them transparently, but also offer a virtual community space where people could exchange ideas and which could also be used for everyday things.

In other words, have you given particular thought to usability for the community?

Nico: What we particularly appreciate about coapp is the fantastic community features. With the social media-like streamline, many people can easily get used to it. Previously, we had the problem with apps like Slack that some people already know it well because they use it professionally, while others are completely unfamiliar with it. With coapp, it's quite intuitive and once you're in, there's a relatively low inhibition threshold for writing in there. We won't be able to say for sure until later - we're still in the middle of the onboarding process - but we think there's a good chance of achieving more interaction with coapp. For us as a community, the main challenge is that we only see each other live once a year at the conference; the rest of the year, people are scattered all over Germany and sometimes even Europe. So of course it's essential to have such a good written platform.

"What we particularly appreciate about coapp is the fantastic community features. With the social media-like streamline, many people can easily get used to it."

How do you see coapp's potential to support and make things easier for people so that they no longer have to search for information on countless channels?

Anja: The advantage of coapp here is that the content remains, in contrast to Slack, where we can search for the content for a long time after 90 days... (laughs) I'm very excited to see how people accept it, because as you said, Nico, some people are unfamiliar with new apps. I've already had the feedback on the table: "Oh no, not another new thing!" But I believe that the community will like it once it's in and sees the benefits. And it's also up to us community managers to prepare it really well now, to accompany people, take them along and simply make it nice so that they feel comfortable with coapp.

Do you have anything in particular in mind that will help people?

Anja: Yes, a really important point will be that we can use coapp not only in the browser, but also as an app, which is now available. Once this is properly set up and running, it will have the great advantage that the app will be more quickly accessible and will be particularly useful for those who use their smartphone a lot for communication or are used to Slack.

How did you find out about coapp in the first place?

Nico: coapp was a sponsor at our GCF coworking conference and we took a closer look at the tool together with Hardy Seiler. As coapp focuses not only on administration but also on networking, it offered everything we needed, especially for community management. Stella was very enthusiastic in guiding us through it, which was great. (laughs)

I'm glad you had a good personal impression. The nature of coworking spaces is that you want to work efficiently somewhere, but it's also about human contact and togetherness. The things that only come about when you get involved and participate. Was it a reason for you to opt for an app where you know the creator? Not a tech giant in the USA where you don't know exactly where the data is, but a provider that you could call if you had any problems or feedback?

Anja: Yes, absolutely, and I really appreciate this support! The coapp team is super available from Monday to Friday, sometimes Hardy even answered me on Sundays. (laughs) It's great to know that everyone helps you immediately if you have a problem and is constantly working on further development. I recently spoke to the CTO Mago, who is incredibly attentive, takes everything on board and improves it immediately if possible. A lot has already happened in the short time we've been using coapp. I'm very happy about that.

You are effectively the meta-association for coworking spaces - a bit like a coworking space for coworking spaces - and have a mandate to ensure networking, for example in the form of your annual conference. What does your day-to-day work look like and how does coapp help you?

Nico: This description is actually quite exciting - coworking space for coworking spaces - but as a rule, we do classic association work. As a federal association, we have set ourselves the goal of promoting the coworking culture in Germany, that's our top priority. That's why we organize workshops, the academy and our annual conference. coapp helps us to centralize communication and exchange so that we can respond more quickly to questions, because we help founders on the way to their own space and also offer exchange formats, network meetings and community calls afterwards. There is also the opportunity to ask questions not only to us, but to the community. We see coapp as being very strong for this forum, for example. If someone has a problem with a coffee machine, a user or the Wi-Fi, you can quickly exchange information.

I took a note from your website earlier: It takes more than packing tables and chairs into a room and turning on the Wi-Fi router for a successful coworking space. What is the most important requirement for a successful coworking space?

Anja: It's actually quite simple - people are the most important thing. So the most important prerequisite is to network people well, to be transparent, to distribute information and knowledge well, and we can do that very well with coapp. Personally, I'm particularly excited about the Circles feature, when we can connect different coworking spaces across regions. With coapp, we want to ensure that not only dates and events are shared, but that people feel at home and have a point of contact to ask any questions they may have about coworking. That there is a lively community that we can continue offline.

Approximately how many members does your community have?

Anja: That reminds me of another feature: maybe there should be a kind of area search that allows you to find other coworking spaces, but also to find people from the community in the area. That works pretty well with the campers (laughs).

Nico: I agree with Anja that it's about connecting people, because in coworking spaces they are looking for something: a community, a workplace, a technically sound environment, but above all other people. If this is well managed and there are people who see themselves as hosts and networkers, then you have a better chance of having a functioning community. With a well-connected community, there is resilience against economic fluctuations. We also noticed this during the coronavirus pandemic: many members continued to support their space and stayed in touch even when they couldn't go. This distinguishes a coworking space from a pure office center with desks and meeting rooms. Coworking culture goes far beyond just providing services. That's the really exciting thing for us.

I think hosting is a great analogy, as it also applies to people who may not even be members of the Space and feel very welcome at an event. A lively community that takes care of each other can do that, which creates a welcoming atmosphere. Thank you very much for your time!

All pictures of Cowork 2024 © Benjamin Hotz