Sustainability, community, and collaborative are some of the adjectives used to describe the phenomenon that is co-living. In a recent podcast with Cate Maiolini, UK Ambassador for Co-Liv and Christian Schmitz, Head of Tech of Co-Liv, we aim to unpack it even further and further delve into one of their initiatives which is the Tech Community.

What is co-living?

Cate defines co-living as a community that one builds around their brand, their space, and everything that one wants to achieve within a living environment that they wish to create. According to her, the community has to be the first element in mind. 

Christian believes that co-living is not just what we were used to; co-living just for young experts, the time after studying and then going and living in a shared community. We now see senior co-living as well as living with families. It’s not just young people living together in a shared community, it’s a more psychological matter.  He believes that age is not a factor, if one has the right mindset and would like to work and live in a different way, then co-living could be an option. 

What is the Tech Community and what is it all that about?

The Tech Community is another initiative formed by Co-Liv, which looks after all disciplines, specifically co-living. The Tech Community looks at how people can live, work, and share amenities in an effective way, says Christian. He also explains that people in co-living understand that tech cannot go without looking after the right design, the right spatial design concepts, it cannot go without the community, keeping the ‘co’ in mind. During one of the Co-Liv events, tech came up as a really dominant request because technology is definitely on an acceleration path now, due to COVID especially, but also as co-living and coworking is more tech-savvy. 

Key issues raised during the summit.

According to Cate, the summit put strong focus around community and sustainability. Those two were the very big things that came up. People are really understanding the space, how to make it really sustainable and a really good environment for people to live in. Considering every single detail, from light, to materials, to every single thing. The combining of the community and tech elements also came out really strong during the summit and the team was able to bring to the summit in two days, different players in the co-living ecosystem. 

What’s on the pipelines for Co-Liv?

Co-Liv will carry on doing events, which are picking up soon. In total, Co-Liv has about 46 ambassadors in 25 different countries, and they are getting stronger in starting their own initiatives, so that’s something to watch out for. The organization has just finished a community facilitation mastermind which was a fantastic success, and they might be running a second one soon. 

Christian adds that in four weeks from now, they will start the first get together for the first workshop, and the schedule will be published on LinkedIn.  They will discuss different topics which will be announced on LinkedIn for people to vote on which of those topics is the biggest challenge for the operators and people interested in co-living.

Where to find them online? 

People can visit Co-Liv.org, and there they’ll find all the information about the Tech Community and all other initiatives by Co-Liv.  People can also email them at christian@Co-liv.org and at cate@co-liv.org.