Liz Elam is the wizard behind the magic of GCUC. Having entered the world of coworking in 2010 after founding Link Coworking in Austin, she has served as a fearless, quirky, open-hearted leader of the movement ever since. We chatted about what keeps her motivated after five years in coworking, what advice she\u2019d give herself of 10 years ago, and what new things we can expect at GCUC 2015.<\/p>\n
Liz: Coworking is about so much more that just a place to work. We get to take care of people. We greet them, we listen to them and we provide a beautiful space for them to get done what they need to get done. It\u2019s lovely in today\u2019s busy, hectic world to provide a respite from the noise and help people be productive so they have more time to do what they really love. Making a difference in people\u2019s lives, one coworker at a time, inspires me and keeps me going.<\/p>\n
Finding out that people found love at GCUC, finding out that multiple business partnerships were formed at GCUC, and finding out that people were inspired to open a space after GCUC!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m old enough to have lived through a couple of dips in the economy. I worry about people over-committing and getting pummeled in a downturn. I think the best thing I can do to help the industry is continue to provide events, education and information so that we can all make sure we\u2019re planning for the future as best you can plan for the unknown.<\/p>\n
Oooh, good question. I would tell her that worry accomplishes nothing and that it\u2019s all going to be okay. I\u2019d tell her: Follow your dreams and your heart, and you will be led in the right direction.<\/p>\n
Meditation. I know it\u2019s what most successful and happy people do daily but it\u2019s hard! I have a monkey brain, always going from one thing to the next. When I need it the most is when I stop making it a priority. It\u2019s a practice that you have to commit to and do daily. Especially during GCUC planning!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a beautiful, light, bright, modern, clean space. The color palette is light blues, periwinkle, yellow and white. It is filled with happy people working on a myriad of projects. It\u2019s open, but with thoughtful and fun breakout space. It\u2019s got glass garage doors that open to a wrap-around porch with chairs facing the ocean where we can all see, hear and feel the ocean.<\/p>\n
In the surveys, we learned people wanted a lot more unconference time and less \u201ctalking at us\u201d time. So, we have unconference time every day this year. We also figured out that leaving the workshops to the last day was a fail (people had burning questions that weren\u2019t getting answered). We moved the workshops to day one and rebranded them as Camp GCUC. We are also providing a lot of the meals and helping curate meals that we\u2019re not providing. GCUC is unique in that we\u2019re open to changing it up every year based on feedback. We like unique venues and we like to challenge ourselves so we can provide meaningful engagement and real world deliverables that can be implemented the day you get back home.<\/p>\n
Amy Segreti is a writer and editor who focuses on community, culture and helping independents do the work that makes them come alive. Her offerings include expression coaching, high-level editing, holistic productivity maps, and other things that foster greater connectedness with ourselves and the world. Find her at her website, <\/i><\/span>Live All of You<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Liz Elam is the wizard behind the magic of GCUC. Having entered the world of coworking in 2010 after founding Link Coworking in Austin, she has served as a fearless, quirky, open-hearted leader of the movement ever since. We chatted about what keeps her motivated after five years in coworking, what advice she\u2019d give herself […]<\/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":[13,15,14,114],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4079"}],"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=4079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gcuclegacysite.wpengine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}