{"id":2157,"date":"2015-03-17T19:08:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T19:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ukgcucco0.web01.sundaramdesign.com\/?p=2157"},"modified":"2015-03-17T19:08:46","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T19:08:46","slug":"gcuc-in-the-new-worker-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/gcuc-in-the-new-worker-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"GCUC in the New Worker Magazine!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_2563\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Over on the New Worker Magazine, Melissa Mesku has a great profile on history and culture of GCUC. \u00a0The entirety of it is reproduced below. If you haven’t seen the New Worker<\/a>, ch-ch-check it out!<\/em><\/p>\n

In most industries, the annual conference might warrant a raised eyebrow at\u00a0best. But in the case of GCUC, the industry is coworking, and that makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

The quirky name,\u00a0Global Coworking Unconference Conference, is in homage to a Stephen Colbert skit, and its acronym, GCUC, is pronounced \u201cjuicy.\u201d Why not? To extend the joke, there\u2019s a\u00a0juice\u00a0bar; last year, the logo had\u00a0a juice droplet on it, and the event\u2019s\u00a0d\u00e9cor was\u00a0of\u00a0oranges, lemons and limes. The fun overtone is befitting of the self-styled\u00a0(un)conference and to some degree the coworking movement\u00a0itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now in its fourth\u00a0year, GCUC is the leading coworking industry event. Recently it\u2019s\u00a0really earned the \u201cG\u201d\u00a0for global\u2014this year\u00a0will see GCUC USA in Berkeley, CA\u00a0on May 6-8, the first GCUC Australia on June 4-5, and first GCUC Canada\u00a0on September 16-18, with more to be announced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since its inception in 2010, GCUC has been headed by Liz Elam. She started off as an avid attendee of coworking meetups and helped get sponsors for a\u00a0short coworking unconference run by now-defunct Loosecubes. When they decided they\u00a0weren\u2019t going to continue with it, they asked if she\u2019d take over.\u00a0She went for it. To get her feet wet, a\u00a0few months later she attended\u00a0the\u00a0Coworking Europe<\/span><\/a>\u00a0conference. Now, she said of the long-running European event,\u00a0\u201cWe do a lot of sharing of ideas. We implement each other\u2019s direction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A self-described\u00a0extrovert,\u00a0Elam worked from home for Dell and entered the world of coworking\u00a0when she decided to build her own space. \u201cI wanted to be around other people. I had plenty of time to contemplate\u00a0what the perfect office would be. I was always forming the space in my head,\u201d she said.\u00a0Elam\u00a0founded Link Coworking in Austin, TX, in 2010. It now operates two locations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201ccoworking community\u201d often refers to all people who own, run, or are a member of a space, but GCUC is mainly geared for the subset of coworking space owners and managers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The three-day event begins with a\u00a0more traditional conference day wherein\u00a0newcomers are given\u00a0a solid introduction into the world of coworking. Each year an increasing percentage of GCUC attendees are completely new to the industry. In 2014, 70% of attendees were about to open a new space or wanted to open a new space.<\/span><\/p>\n

The widely agreed-upon favorite, however, is the unconference on the second day. The\u00a0\u201cun\u201d part of the conference refers to its bottom-up rather than top-down approach to\u00a0discussion\u00a0and learning. The premise is to create ad-hoc sessions based on what the attendees want to discuss. \u201cThe best thing attendees get from GCUC is a community of owners and operators to learn from and see how they do things,\u201d said Elam.\u00a0This process can make an impromptu\u00a0expert out of anyone, and is an intoxicating\u00a0experiment in collaborative knowledge formation and\u00a0community learning.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s only\u00a0natural\u00a0that\u00a0a conference full of coworking space owners would tend to resemble some familiar aspects of coworking<\/span><\/a>. GCUC does this by demonstrating that it exists to\u00a0bring\u00a0everyone together and that its role is to be responsive to the\u00a0needs of those they serve. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to replicate some traditional agenda of a typical conference. We just look at who the attendees are and try to meet what they need,\u201d said Elam. Typical conferences in most industries are known for having a top-down approach\u00a0with a fixed schedule of expert speakers.\u00a0By contrast, many aspects of the event\u2014especially the unconference\u2014let value and expertise rise up from within the ranks. This gets people to talk\u00a0with\u00a0each other rather than\u00a0at\u00a0each other. It reflects the boss-less\u00a0environment\u00a0of coworking spaces where the real value is in getting to know your fellow coworkers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leading an organization according to these ideals is not merely a matter of stepping aside\u00a0and letting the community create the culture. Quite often, a fair degree of stewardship and heavy doses of reciprocal communication are required.\u00a0To this effect, every year GCUC conducts an in-depth survey 24 hours after the conference wraps up. \u201cWe get amazing results because it\u2019s so timely,\u201d said Elam. \u201cWe use that info to tell us what we need to change in order to continue to develop and grow.<\/span><\/p>\n

The results of the survey steer the direction of future conferences.\u00a0\u201cOne of the things we heard loud and clear is that everyone wants more unconference time.\u00a0People are looking for things they can implement the day they get back,\u00a0actionable things they can do to change their business immediately,\u201d said Elam.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year I host an unconference topic on how to change the conference. Last year I heard \u2018we want to see a debate.\u2019 I\u2019m happy to give people the real deal. So next time there\u2019ll be less of a panel and more of a debate.\u201d Between the post-conference survey, and Elam\u2019s own unconference agenda, GCUC makes an explicit effort to\u00a0find out what attendees want.<\/span><\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be coworking, though, if there weren\u2019t some business partnerships, too. Some companies like Verizon\u00a0were\u00a0in attendance last year looking to connect with coworking space operators.\u00a0\u201cWe have a lot of business partnerships that have formed because of GCUC. But the most powerful thing that coworking offers is human interaction,\u201d said Elam.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coworking\u00a0is both an industry and a movement\u2014one without\u00a0a president or official spokesperson.\u00a0In putting on a high profile event like GCUC, and running two coworking spaces,\u00a0Elam has often found herself\u00a0playing the\u00a0role of coworking representative to the media. It\u2019s well deserved; in the case of GCUC,\u00a0no other coworking institution has enjoyed the same reach\u00a0and brought together so many face-to-face.<\/span><\/p>\n

Given\u00a0their role in bringing together people, GCUC is looking to start holding smaller regional events. They\u2019re also considering holding specific\u00a0cross-industry events,\u00a0say, to help educate the real estate industry. \u201cOnce a week someone walks into Link Coworking and their jaw drops. They want to implement coworking but they have no idea how to do it,\u201d said Elam.<\/span><\/p>\n

Delivering more content on their website is another plan for the future, which makes sense considering\u00a0their\u00a0finger is on the pulse of where coworking is headed. For\u00a0example,\u00a0one of the big topics at last year\u2019s event was how to handle running multiple locations. Industry insights like this are\u00a0coveted by\u00a0the\u00a0business press, and\u00a0GCUC is\u00a0ripe with them\u00a0(juice pun intended).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs coworking continues to grow, the conferences around it will continue to grow as well. It tells me that, to me, I bet on the right horse. I thought years ago that this is the future of the way people will work. I fully believe this is the majority of where workers are going to be in the future,\u201d said Elam.<\/span><\/p>\n

In most\u00a0industries, professionals attend and speak at conferences in order to hobnob and advance their career. But attendees at GCUC comprise an actual community and look forward to seeing each other every year. In large part, they attend because they want to make themselves more effective leaders of coworking spaces. They also attend because they\u2019re friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a person who works from a couple different spaces, I am regularly struck by the lengths that space owners and operators go to. Like a customer, I never have to think about what went into creating the vibe or the physical space. But unlike a customer, I feel a sense of belonging and I often develop some sort of friendship with the people that run the space. When coworking space owners and operators spend a week in another city to unconference with their ilk, it\u2019s remarkable to realize that in some way\u00a0they\u2019re doing it for us\u2014for me and for the rest of their members. That\u00a0makes all the difference.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tickets are still available for GCUC USA.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Melissa Mesku<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is the founding editor of New Worker Magazine. She is a designer\/developer and co-founder of nontoxic dental services company\u00a0Pure Cure Dental Technology<\/span><\/a>. Melissa coworks from multiple collaborative spaces in New York City.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over on the New Worker Magazine, Melissa Mesku has a great profile on history and culture of GCUC. \u00a0The entirety of it is reproduced below. If you haven’t seen the New Worker, ch-ch-check it out! In most industries, the annual conference might warrant a raised eyebrow at\u00a0best. But in the case of GCUC, the industry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}