Cracking the formula of co-working
We hosted ‘Hack Coworking’ within our co-working space, HubHub, at 20 Farringdon Street. The event was run by Berlin-based Coworkies, a platform for co-working spaces and the people that work in them.
Here at HB Reavis we fully embrace change and we combine the search for the next new solutions. So, we were only too pleased that our team could be involved with London Tech Week 2019. We hosted ‘Hack Coworking’ within our co-working space, HubHub, at 20 Farringdon Street. The event was run by Berlin-based Coworkies, a platform for co-working spaces and the people that work in them.
The Hack Coworking event saw ‘hackers’ come together to explore solutions that support productivity and well-being. The 55 hackers formed 18 teams to undertake an in-depth analysis of co-working spaces. For our challenge we provided a 1-month backlog of data from our Bratislava office, including information from indoor environmental sensors, anonymised occupancy and interactions data.
Specifically, they were looking at:
- Identifying and quantifying informal interactions. Known as the ‘water cooler effect’, informal interactions in the workplace are an important part of every business, yet are much harder to identify and quantify the benefits of, compared to structured interactions (i.e. in meeting rooms).
- Predictive analytics (anti-ghosting): Due to low turnout or no-show, underutilised meeting rooms can become a real incumbent on room availability. The benefit here would be to predict such occurrence (based on previous behaviour) and to automatically recommend an alternative usage of the room.
- New patterns within the data. The third section of the event asked what other insights could be gathered from the data and how this could be used to enhance our existing knowledge.
Hack Coworking participants were also given challenges from SALTO Systems and Cobot. Each team took a unique approach to the challenges and produced a range of brilliant solutions making the selection process for an overall winner exceptionally hard!
In the end, we were wowed by Jordon Rios and Peter Jones’ team, who created ‘Tinder for co-workers’, a fascinating skill sharing platform which incentivizes informal interactions. Their unique platform is able to merge with Microsoft Office, which populates basic information about each person and their interactions. With ‘Tinder for co-workers’, each individual is able to upload information about the different projects they are working on and/or topics they want to learn about. The clever notification system would use existing sensors within the workspace to help match people up who are working nearby. As our Hackathon champions, they were rewarded a £1500 cash prize courtesy of HB Reavis, AWS credits and one week of free space at HubHub at 20 Farringdon Street.
There was also the chance to win 3 months of co-working space at HubHub for the team that came up with the most innovative workspace solution. We were thrilled by the ‘Co-locker’ team’s idea. Their clever on-demand locker rental solution also works as a 24/7 delivery point, where users are granted a QR code to open the lock, would be an excellent additional service to enhance co-working spaces.
A special mention goes to the ‘Snap Desk’ idea: an app that would allow users to choose where to work and see who else is available for lunch. People who actively participate in their communities are rewarded with the official Snap Desk currency, ‘snapbucks’, allowing them to book their favourite desks and meeting rooms.
These ideas will now be further explored with Symbiosy, our in-house tech and sensory platform here at HB Reavis.
About Symbiosy
Symbiosy assesses space utilization, the quality of the indoor environment and how our collaborative networks truly work with a goal of boosting the office experience. Symbiosy is a virtual twin of your workspace creating visual insights of interactions, space utilization and the office environment.
