CO-OP Formation Weekend: Building the future of Coworking Bansko
By Javier Fernández
Coworking Bansko wants to grow to the next level. That was the main reason behind the CO-OP Formation Weekend, a historical meeting to decide the future of the coworking space which follows the community first model since its opening two years ago.
But, would it be possible to run a coworking space as a cooperative?
Uwe and Matthias, the founders of the space, have been working hard in putting Bansko on the map of the world’s leading coworking spaces and digital nomad destinations. They believe that becoming a cooperative is the natural way to grow for Coworking Bansko. When they chose this picturesque town in the Pirin mountains they literally created a destination for digital nomads. They are nomads themselves and they knew exactly how a coworking space should be, but more importantly, how to develop a big inclusive community.
From the beginning, the owners of Coworking Bansko were already sharing and promoting many of the values of cooperatives. Under the co-op business model, it is possible to achieve common goals and in a bigger dimension. Cooperation is the essence of a better community and it could work amazingly for a place like this.
Bansko is not only a must visit place for winter sports aficionados. For the last two years it is also a mecca for independent location workers from all over the world. The comparisons to major nomad hubs are obvious and many coworking enthusiasts believe Bansko has a huge potential for growing into a huge nomad ecosystem.
But others believe that Bansko will always that beautiful mountain village you never heard about; a place which attracts a very special type of nomad who is not looking for the hype, but for a real experience in a beautiful location with a community feeling.
Currently Coworking Bansko is a business with a solid community and with proven capacity to grow and create value. Financially speaking, the company has been cash positive since last August. Then, why would the current owners share their success with others?
Because their vision is making a real impact and go after bigger goals together. And to achieve that, more than two people are needed.
In addition, the thriving community at Coworking Bansko should have a say in the future of the space and pool their ideas and ressources together. That is why a group of digital nomads, entrepreneurs and other creative types met in the social space of Coworking Bansko in the beginning of November, where they discussed during three days how to grow Bansko together to the next level — the coworking space and the ecosystem.
What is a cooperative?
Probably we all have heard about cooperatives, which are owned and democratically governed by those who become co-op members under the rule “one member, one vote”. That is exactly what is in the works for Coworking Bansko.
It has been already tested that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The group who attended the CO-OP Formation Weekend believe ownership is the next big step in order to have a stronger impact on the future of Bansko.
Not a cooperation neither a company, co-ops are unique because they have two goals: economic and social. They provide a way for a community to capitalize on its own business and to provide for needs that would otherwise go unmet. Economically, they can return the economic benefits of that business back to the community. Socially, co-ops actualize the ideal of human cooperation. They operate democratically, and they suggest a new type of relationship between businesses and consumers. They can provide people with a new measure of control over their lives, and they offer a context for community organizing.
The cooperative model is very rare in Bulgaria, where there are only a few agricultural cooperatives registered. This model has pros and cons, but the biggest advantage is that its members can join and leave the coop easily. What it matters is set all the rules and to guarantee that every member has an equal vote. Besides that, the members should join their efforts to achieve common goals. Accounting can be also more complex than a normal company.
To build a cooperative with very shared principles and ideas can be challenging, especially in a country like Bulgaria, where is considered a “rare breed”. At the same time it is a business model so unique and exceptional that nobody really knows much about it.
Getting to know the partners
The journey started with an introduction by Uwe. He talked about the current situation of Coworking Bansko and its good health, which is sustained by a happy community of members who gave a good reputation to the business.
Coworking Bansko is not the only adventure of Matthias and Uwe. Both of them are currently involved in a few side projects, and managing a space like this requires a high involvement. Sometimes they feel tired of operating and a good example is “the paradox of the coffee machine”. When they are about to take a financial decision, like buying new equipment, the owners have to make a smart choice and it can be very hard to decide when they are only two people. The situation changes when a big group can vote and choose the best solution based on a wider vision.
Uwe is the heart and Matthias is the brains in a duo that believes in the more you share, the bigger community you will build. But many more hands will be needed for the vision that takes Coworking Bansko to the next level.
A bigger building with a coliving space, a second location near the Gondola area, a cabin in the woods, a Makerspace, a community of tiny houses, a carsharing service, a nomad incubator… You name it! These are only a few of the ideas that were bounced around. Greater financial capacity and owning property long term are goals a cooperative could achieve in a near future, but the possibilities are endless.
The people who joined the CO-OP Formation weekend had very different backgrounds and reasons to join the cooperative. After the initial round of presentations, the room became some sort of sociological experiment where we found not only nomads or coworking enthusiasts in general. For example, there was a local businessman interested in making Bansko a more dynamic place for businesses all year round. In the opposite corner of the table there was a person who wants to become an actor in coworking and wish to have a first-hand experience managing a space. Both of them had very legitimate reasons and showed that the high diversity will bring a broader knowledge to this working group.
After the first discussions, it was not clear the level of involvement expected in order to become part of the cooperative. Also the number of members attending the event, around 20 people, was a bit lower than the 50 members expected by the organizers. Besides that, many questions were remaining in the air: What is a certain size for the co-op to be worthy? What if the co-op does not happen this weekend? What if the members do not agree to a fair deal for everyone? If I do not live in Bansko, can I be part of the co-op?
The first day finished with a bittersweet feeling floating in the atmosphere. There were areas where agreement was not reached quickly or easily, and that is really great because the participants should not be bound by artificial deadlines.
Money making machine vs. social impact
The word of mouth of Coworking Bansko is strong and usually the members become ambassadors to spread the message. They all share the values of the Coworking Manifiesto and have agreed to a code of conduct, this could also be the basis of the co-op.
Taking Coworking Bansko to the next level is a bigger responsibility than a simple membership. To be part of the cooperative means to give your best expecting the same from your partners. Those who want to be part of the cooperative will have to cover every area of the business: operations, marketing, capitalization, members involvement, etcetera.
The good news for the co-op is that after 2 years the basic coworking operations are practically running without too much management owersight. Uwe and Matthias have automated many operations and defined many processes that are carried out by staff and suppliers. And the active community organizes a lot of events and activites without the need of a community manager. So even when they are both out of town everything works great at Coworking Bansko. A group of senior members always provide help to newbies who do not know how everything works in here. Only new things that never have been done before are tedious and time consuming.
Most of the weekend’s participants have chosen Bansko as a long-term base and are happy to work a certain amount of hours for the good of the co-op. But there were also people interested in being just an investor, refusing being an active member, an issue that will be addressed afterwards.
The meeting by itself was a learning experience to everyone who enjoys the art of meaningful discussion. In this sense, individual profit versus social impact was one of the points which generated an intense debate about the reasons to become a member of the co-op.
For the founders, Coworking Bansko could be a “making money machine” but a profit-oriented model would change everything. The co-op should be a passion project and the profit has to come from additional services. In other words, nobody who wants to join the co-op should be thinking in high profits as the main reason to be part of it. On the contrary, the main goal has to be bringing more nomads to Bansko, encouraging new members to be residents and making an impact on a local scale and within the coworking industry.
“No” to control, “Yes” to transparency
First of all, the model of Coworking Bansko once being a cooperative should be sustained by active members. If everyone put a bit of work, probably there is no need to hire more employees. Only for those tasks which no one wants to do there is a need to hire someone.
Luckily the cooperative is formed by a lot of people with advanced skills. For the majority of the members it could be a challenge to spend about 100 hours per year working for the co-op.
At this point, it is important to understand that everyone has their own job, schedules, holidays and needs. Some members are based in Bansko all year round and other members will stay only one or two months per year. Taking that into account, remote work will be an option for some roles or tasks. There is no need to be in Bansko in order to participate in the meetings but the members should do their best to attend them. Otherwise a partner has to assign a proxy if there is a vote. Additionally, every proposal made by a member has to be seconded or sponsored by other member of the cooperative.
It can be also difficult to measure the time that each member spends working for the co-op. Again mutual trust and strong shared ethics should be at the core of everything done by the cooperative. The members agreed in transparency at every level, but not in a rigid control of what each person does. Nobody should take advantage of the non-hierarchical working philosophy within the co-op. It is great to be responsible for your own work, not having to give feedback to top-down management.
Is it possible or necessary to get rid of the passive people? Of course, every member who joins the co-op has commited to take care of a specific area of the business. What if someone hates every task? Well, that is hard to believe since there are many different activites: Marketing, Legal, Finance, Auditing, Tools, Expansion and Operations.
How is the work organized? The co-op members will be divided into teams, being one person responsible or head of a department.
There will be also a backup for each position because one of the principles of the cooperative is offering each other support. And more important, the members of the co-op will have a chance to move to different parts of the business after a certain period of time. It is also important to highlight what operations take more time since it is hard to figure out the workload for specific roles.
The managing committee, control board and the chairman can be voted for up to 4 years (maximum). But this can change every year and/or by vote of general assembly at any time. If the chairman would get a salary, then a work visa would be required as this would be considered a labor contract. However so far no salaried positioned are envisioned inside the co-op.
Changing to a cooperative model for Coworking Bansko is itself a learning process for all its members, which agreed on the values of a cooperative based on equality. Each person perceives equality in a different way, but in Coworking Bansko they believe on it as a tool for the common knowledge rather than valuing some skills or experience more highly than others.
From now on the members of the cooperative will make decisions together that affect them and the organization, including a long-term strategy, working conditions and what to do with any surplus. A co-op structure is translated in a real sense of ownership and understanding of the business while learning from one another all the time. That is the only method to make strong, well-founded decisions upheld by all members.
We have a deal!
Cooperative enterprises build a better world and Coworking Bansko will definitely go to the next level. The possibilities are endless and this group of 20 individuals committed to put their work to goods and interests larger than themselves. After more than 20 hours of discussions, the participants had come to a deal. There were three days of intense community life with people from different backgrounds, an experience which was pleasant and enriching, but also rather difficult.
There is a special beauty and power about cooperatives and also a democratic spirit that everyone should respect. During the formation weekend, the debates were sometimes chaotic and at one point it appeared necessary to name someone in charge of leading the group in order to assure everyone was heard. At the same time, to be equals means that everyone made questions that invigorate the debate. To find a common ground was so hard and exhausting, but at the same time was priceless because it generated a particularly rewarding exercise of democracy.
This is how the social space of Coworking Bansko became a laboratory of ideas, agreements and disagreements about a wide array of topics that provoked intense passions. And finally it was worthy to experiment how was the process to create something unique in the world of the coworking.
There is no doubt that becoming a co-op is an exciting adventure which just started for Coworking Bansko. The same exciting as challenging and hard to accomplish. Probably it will cost sweat and tears to agree in many things. On the other hand, more ideas will engage a bigger and stronger community. For sure this will happen in the bonding between cooperative work partners as they share the intimacies, values, hopes, and productive efforts of their work lives. But it can, and often does, go well beyond that.
About the author:
Javier Fernandez is a journalist from Spain currently living in Bansko, where he is learning what coworking means and how important is having a real community behind it. He has lived and worked in Poland, Canada, Mexico, India, Sri Lanka and Scotland. If you are interested in volunteering, entrepreneurship or alternative music, Javier will be glad to talk with you until wee hours of the morning.
