Changemaker. Forward thinking. Dynamic. Innovative. These are just some keywords that describe our one-of-a-kind coworker, Annelise Meyer.
Annelise Meyer is the founder of L’Alternateur, a professional translator and a proponent for ecological transition who hopes to transform smaller cities into more independent economic hubs. Based in Champigny-sur-Marne on the Eastern outskirts of Paris, Annelise is a great advocate for growing coworking communities and maximising the opportunities for coworking communities.
Work that led to a need for community
Annelise started her professional career as a translator after completing her studies through Université Paris 13 and Université Rennes 2. Describing her translation work as her bread and butter, Annelise has racked up decades of experience as a translator. Fluent in both German and English, Annelise is a suburbanite at heart, having grown up in the suburbs of Paris.
Working independently as a translator, Annelise had spent many years feeling isolated, leading her to seek out suitable coffee shops to work from. On the lookout for a space and coworking community that would meet her needs, she found that most of the first Parisian coworking spaces were not suitable, as they catered almost exclusively to IT and Web developers’ needs.
Finding her own space
Anyone who has ever worked or lived in a major city understands the crisis that exists around the price of real estate and that the prohibitive costs of rent are simply too much for most small businesses. Annelise resigned herself to working from home until she could find a more suitable – and affordable – solution.
In 2014, Annelise teamed up with a group of local journalists to rent a spot they could use as their office. This dusty rented attic was their first foray into the coworking world, and although the dark and dreary conditions were not ideal, it still provided her with a better solution than working from her apartment.
Taking steps towards change
Later that year, Annelise sought out the opportunity to align with other coworkers and started working at Mutinerie, one of the first well-known coworking spaces in Paris. Unfortunately, due to a combination of landlord issues and rising costs, they couldn’t keep this spot and it had to close its doors permanently in 2018.
Around the same time, Annelise also took the opportunity to join Copass, a company that created coworking passes for digital nomads around the world, catering to coworkers who wanted to explore travel options whilst working. Through Copass, people could contact coworking spaces within their network to book a coworking space in another city and also contact their fellow “copassers” to assist with facilitating accommodation nearby.
With a job that allows her to work from anywhere, Annelise has always been hungry to explore and believes the best way to discover a new city is through meeting the locals. With her work needs being as simple as a desk and a reliable internet connection, Copass helped Annelise realise that many other communities like this existed.
The first of its kind: Copass camp
The founders of Copass created the concept of a “coworking camp”, aka Copass Camp, and hosted their first camp to coincide with the European coworking conference held in Lisboa in 2014.
The first camp saw approximately forty members of the European coworking community renting out an entire floor of an old building, creating a new hybrid form of coworking and cohabiting that was both fascinating and insightful. The coworkers would attend the conference together during the day and later come together again to share meals, socialise and sightsee.
The energy that emanated from sharing life experiences with her coworkers created a unique new type of community that Annelise felt perfectly suited for.
Annelise continued her work and travel over the next six years and built up a reliable network of like-minded individuals she could rely on for help when needed. She attended other conferences and Copass Camps across Europe, in Amsterdam, Dublin, and Brussels. Successfully merging coworking and cohabiting into many coworking communities around the world.
Although these camps were seen by many as the ideal networking opportunity and an authentic way for coworkers to experience their colleague’s way of life, the COVID-19 pandemic put an abrupt stop to these camps.
Annelise is hopeful that as the world continues to recover from the after-effects of the Coronavirus, there will be opportunities to re-introduce these unique and immersive Copass camps.
Finding inspiration through a personal transition
Although Annelise still earns a living through her translation work, she came to realise that the work she finds the most fulfilling is in ecological transition. As an individual who has always been an active volunteer worker, she decided to form her business around just that, and this is how L’Alternateur was born.
Deciding to start her business as a hostess and facilitator for local businesses, she set about opening her own space in 2016 to work alongside like-minded coworkers and assist them in developing their ideas.
Annelise wants to act as an incubator that allows people to come together and work on projects that will uplift their local economy.
After doing extensive work in attaining the rights to renovate an old recreational space, the after-effects of COVID-19 and local political changes left Annelise’s original coworking space unavailable to her. To date, she hasn’t been successful in sourcing another suitable space in the local rent-controlled area.
With very limited potential for industry in their local neighbourhood, this urban area seems like a ‘dormitory town’ with all its inhabitants leaving to work in Paris or nearby cities during the day and returning only to sleep at night.
Although they are situated very close to Paris, which can be a blessing in terms of access to arts and culture, they are also cursed with very high rentals in an area that offers no economic life during the day, with most of its inhabitants leaving its territory.
While there are certainly challenges ahead, Annelise is inspired by the dream that Urban Development can uplift the area for all who work and live there. Ultimately, she and her coworkers hope to rebuild a local dynamic which will make for an amazing case study throughout Europe in other areas that are experiencing similar issues due to the increased cost of living.