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Yardi’s Paul Rowe and Christopher Cole closed the GCUC UK Manchester stage in June with an argument that ran against the grain of most AI for flex operators conversations: the tool is rarely the problem. The data underneath it is. It is not a small thing to get right. Flex runs on thin margins, somewhere […]

The argument for regional flex tends to be made in London, by people looking outward. At GCUC UK Manchester, a session called The Regional Opportunity + The Data Gap flipped that on its head, handing the floor to operators who have actually built and scaled outside the capital. It was part market analysis, part panel, […]

At GCUC UK Manchester, The Generous Operator session had a deceptively simple premise: you have to earn the right to be generous. It was about understanding the commercial work that creates the headroom for the gestures that matter, whether that’s for your members, your team, or your wider community. So what does it look like […]

The coworking industry has a habit of talking to itself. Operators compare notes with operators, vendors pitch vendors, and the person who actually signs the contract and sits at the desk is often left somewhere down the hall. We opened GCUC UK Manchester by doing the exact opposite, with a session called The Occupier’s Brief, […]

Every coworking brand says it sells community. Very few can tell you what that community is actually worth, or how to measure coworking community metrics. Beyond the RSVP, a panel chaired by Tilley Harris of Akou, set out to close that gap. The discussion was refreshingly honest about the fact that the flex space sector […]

Manchester has a habit of making the case for itself. This year GCUC UK came to Campfield, the old air and space museum that Allied London has turned into a working media campus in the heart of St John’s, and spent the day doing something the coworking industry rarely does: putting the voice of the […]

Business rates. My personal kryptonite. In my previous role on the operator side, I didn’t hand it off so much as stay way clear of it, if I’m honest. The finance and ops teams were far smarter than me, far better geared up for it. The only reason I paid any attention at all was […]

When we were thinking about where to bring GCUC UK Manchester this year, the question wasn’t just about square footage or AV specs. It was about the right room. Set inside two restored Victorian market halls in Manchester’s St. John’s neighbourhood, Department Campfield is a 135,000 sq ft tech and creative campus operated by Department, […]

CoworkingCafe’s latest UK & Ireland Quarterly Coworking Report is out, and the headline numbers tell a story anyone working in regional flex space already knew: Manchester is leading the pack outside the M25. The UK now has 4,270 coworking spaces. Greater London accounts for 1,209 of them, close to 30 percent of the total. That […]