A Masterclass in Community Management, with Anna Chuicharoen
Lessons from one of the best
Anna Chuicharoen was the ‘glue’ holding our workspace community together. The former community manager and facilitator of the Startup Club at TownSq Islington, an affordable workspace in the heart of London, Anna is a connector of people and a true community spirit.
As a member of TownSq Islington since October 2022, I can hand-on-heart say that Anna has been the essence of our workspace community. A few months ago, Anna shared her journey in ‘co’ with me.
1. What’s your journey into coworking been like?
Anna: I was previously the Office Manager for a fairly small tech organisation. When we shut the office and worked remotely during the pandemic, my goal was to find cost-effective spaces to work from. I stumbled upon Hubble (the coworking booking platform) and visited some beautiful spaces. I particularly enjoyed working from rooftops, and I worked from Huckletree – I thought it had a community vibe and was mission-driven.
I’ve been a resident of Old Street for a long time, I’m really lucky to be based so centrally. I live in a small flat, and I have a child, so sometimes I just need to be out of the house. I can’t work in a library, I’d rather find a professional workspace.
When I first joined TownsSq Islington, I started to understand what community meant to a coworking space. There was a lot of depth to TownSq’s mission. Since becoming the community manager of TownSq, I’ve seen coworking in a different light. I’ve experienced it from both the user perspective and as the space manager.
2. As a member of TownSq Islington, I can vouch that you’ve been an incredible community manager who truly gets ‘community.’ Where do you think that instinct came from?
Anna: I hear this story a lot – someone goes into a coworking space and nobody engages with them. Or the chairs are crap and the coffee is expensive. This happened to me a few times in the past. When I was an Office Manager, I came to coworking spaces with my colleagues, but I didn’t speak their (work) language or felt like I blended in with them. It was a lonely experience. In some of the spaces I visited, I didn’t even receive engagement from the people who worked there. They were cold and I didn’t like that.
So when I became community manager, I made a major effort to be gracious, kind, welcoming…that’s nothing for me. Being a community manager in a space, you have to have a natural ability to welcome people.
You don’t know what people’s days are like, or where they come from. If you can make somebody smile, it goes a long way. I try to be a gracious host. My life experience has cultivated that.
I think it’s just about being a good listener. Being in an open-plan space at Townsq Islington allowed me to hear the conversations around me. It’s a bit of a speakerphone to knowing and understanding what people are going through. I think it helps that the type of person that I am, and where I am in my life, having empathy and understanding, that’s important.
Some of our members came into the space just to work, and I’ve been forthcoming and welcoming because I know that makes a difference to their day. For example, I asked how their day was going and read what every member needed, but at the same time knew when to step back. Everyone is going through something different.
3. What are some of your favourite stories about how people have celebrated the power of “co” at TownSq Islington?
Anna: I can probably mark it when we’ve had socials. We hosted a Murder Mystery night last year, it brought people together who didn’t know one another. One of our members, Catherine, is really good at bringing people together, she even wrote the script for the Murder Mystery event and put herself out there for hosting the whole thing. She put so much work into it.
After the Murder Mystery event, everyone got to know Catherine, it opened up a few doors for some other people too. Like Neil, who generates AI imagery for an entrepreneur who used to be part of the space. There’s stuff that happens here that I’m not even aware of!
What’s really nice is that we don’t do business stuff socially. We’re celebrating that we’re all human and we like to have fun.
We put on a community lunch a few months ago, where I brought everyone from the workspace along and they told the group about their freelance journeys. There are successful people and then there are people at the beginning of their enterprises, it’s nice to be able to invite everyone to mix together.
There are so many stories but the crossbreed of people who came through the doors has been very special. People naturally met in the kitchen or with me and I connected them with others. Or they connected themselves. I love it when that happens organically.
4. How has coworking transformed your life?
Anna: Townsq Islington is an affordable space with a proposition that pretty much everyone can afford to come into the space. I wish I had this space when I needed free workspace. That’s why I’m an advocate for its offers and bringing people in to try the space out.
I saw our users coming into the space when money was tight, where they were on the cusp of “do I need it.” We have a lot of freelancers in the space (including yourself). I know that having a coworking space where you can meet people and offset ideas is so important. I can see how impactful this space is for you guys.
I love my value exchanges, it’s a tool where I’ve attended some really good workshops here, to understand that it’s a good exchange, and they are, and I can feel it and I’m told it.
Delivering the Startup Club gave me another change of perspective on helping people. It’s opened my eyes to understanding some of the terminology around startups. I’m still learning. And if I don’t know something, then I ask questions.
5. What would you like to see more of in the coworking industry, and what could the sector do better?
Anna: I see how coworking sits in a city of unequal wealth distribution. It’s integral, especially post-pandemic, although I don’t know if we need so many spaces in London.
Coworking needs to be affordable. Space Four in Finsbury Park is a co-operative with a ‘pay what you can’ model. It’s got some cool things going on that are doing really well. I also love the London and European Coworking Assembly – it brings coworking providers together and gives us space and an outlet to share ideas.
As community manager, I always felt like there was so little time because we were so busy growing the space. At that level, the community manager is literally doing everything. I think bigger organisations understand how much it takes to grow a community, and they can lend their shared experience to smaller spaces on how to run space, to have a better understanding towards accelerating growth.
People Make Coworking is a regular blog post series celebrating the people who make up the fabric of the global coworking movement. If you’d like to share your story in co, I’d love to speak with you.