What got us here won’t get us there

GCUC is always a firehose of information, connection and inspiration, and this year was no different. My strategy is to be as present as possible, take notes when things resonate, make new connections, celebrate existing friendships, and just take it all in.

Then, a few days later, I go over my notes and try to make sense of everything.

There were great quotes, smart insights, and stirring speakers who confirmed what we know and affirmed what we talk about all the time—that connection, belonging, and community are indeed the future of coworking and work. And that this doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intention and vision to create something extraordinary.

But my overarching feeling after an absolutely amazing week in Boston that included visits to the Boston Public Library, Boston Common, Beacon Hill, and a ridiculously fun outing to see the Red Sox at Fenway, is that we’re not doing enough.

I know.

I hate even writing that.

Because I am giving coworking everything I’ve got, and I know you are too.

But we need to keep moving.

👉 It’s no longer news that we’re in a loneliness epidemic.
👉 It’s no longer news that we, as humans, need connection.
👉 It’s no longer news that isolation is really bad for us.

If coworking is a tool to create a world of activated and connected people doing work we love—which is the purpose behind all my work—we need to keep leading, keep evolving, and keep creating the future we want to live in.

In one particularly sobering moment during the conference, futurists Ingrid Furtado, Lucy Ziegler, and Liz Elam forecasted four possible future scenarios for work. The first three showed different futuristic scenes, with varying workspace designs and degrees of workplace wellness.

The fourth scenario, however, is still haunting me.

The slide showed a person in a floating pod, surrounded by screens, who relied exclusively on virtual connection and had abandoned all human connection for a life of work and virtual reality.

This, my friends, is what we don’t want. And there’s a future scenario where this is what we have.

So, back to coworking.

It’s up to us to make an even deeper commitment to creating spaces and communities of true connection, wellness and belonging.

I know. You’re already pouring everything you’ve got into your space and members. But it’s time for all of us to step up our service in supporting connected, thriving human beings.

What role can you play in creating a future in which people are connected, healthy, and whole, rather than a future where we’ve all gone further into isolation and artificial everything?

How can you go beyond the incredible work you’re already doing in your space and local community?

I don’t have the answers, but I’m very much taking this to heart, because this is the work we’re called to do as community builders.

But, as the old saying goes, what got us here won’t get us there.

So keep building, keep connecting, keep serving.

The future needs what we have.

📬 This originally appeared in The Coworking Letter.
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