The Coworking Space Concept: Through the Lens of an Intern

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After working at Stone Soup for the past 2 months, I can easily say that the community of people working in this space are welcoming, kind, and made the transition into an entirely different culture, almost effortless for me. I was introduced to many aspects of the local culture through food and drinks, by my coworkers – which is reflective of the kind of place the Stone Soup is.

Throughout my stay, I conducted interviews with several Stone Soup residents, which gave me a more specific insight into what they were doing and what lead them to their current position. This also gave me the chance to properly meet the people in the office, that I was seeing every day, in an organic and informal way. To a college student like me, hearing about how career paths can differ so drastically, is knowledge that both placates my worries about the future, and excites me for what’s to come.

                                           

I also gained experience with SEO marketing, which I previously knew nothing about. My understanding of SEO is very multi-faceted in the way that I was taught about it – I learnt about SEO from many different people around the office, who gave me many approaches to tackle SEO, which I could look at and consider on my own. This form of interaction, in which ideas and knowledge can be exchanged at many levels, with different attitudes, is something that about the coworking space concept that I highly appreciated.

My unique experience here can be attributed to a variety of factors, but an overarching theme revolves around the different kinds of people that I have continually met throughout my stay. The diverse job-fields that I encountered within Stone Soup, broke down the preceding connotations and traditional assumptions that I had about the “work place”. The benefits of a coworking space span a much larger scale than I had previously anticipated – the framework is not limited to startups, but is rather a window into the way that different local and social networks can function.

Many aspects of my experience here have been shaped by, and are a result of Stone Soup, an environment that fosters inclusivity in every sense of the word. There is no way for me to show my appreciation for what Stone Soup has shown me, and the kinds of opportunities that have begun to form as a result of my time here, other than by thanking each and every person that I came across during my stay. I am excited for the future of Stone Soup, and for anyone that has the chance to be a part of the community, even if for just a short while.

The Coworking Community in Athens: Cécile’s experience in a shared office space!

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Cécile is a newly arrived translator here at Stone Soup! Her work consists mainly of proof reading and translation, form Greek to French, for French publishing houses.

Cécile grew up in Saint-Etienne, France, and has a background in literature, latin, ancient Greek and modern Greek. After graduating from University, she spent 2 years teaching, but realised that she was interested in pursuing other aspects of her degree. This lead her to proof reading, for which she made the transition, and in parallel began doing some translations from Greek to French as a freelancer.

After coming to Athens, Cécile found that she needed to work away from home, as she preferred having some separation between her home space, and work space. Stone Soup provides an element of symbiosis to Cécile – a convenient balance between working alone, as well as having the opportunity to socialise and interact with other freelancers.

Cécile highlights the importance of having a good office atmosphere, in which someone with a job like hers can be stimulated socially. Furthermore, as she comes from France, connecting easily to the local community, through the location and the people, is an aspect Cécile places a lot of emphasis on.

Cécile is currently working on translating a Greek novel into French, which is the biggest project she has worked on thus far. As Cécile’s work as a freelancer requires being fairly mobile in terms of the kind of work she is doing, having a community of people to work around brings about a certain sense of stability to the instability of her job.

Introducing Electra Matsangou

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We would like to welcome Electra Matsangou to our coworking community!

Electra is a Psychologist and Psychotherapist who arrived at Stone Soup in February. Electra pursued her bachelor’s degree from Aristotle University, Thessaloniki. She then went on the Erasmus exchange program to Nijmegan University in Netherlands. Having loved her six-month experience in Netherlands, Electra decided to pursue her master’s degree in Leiden university in the Netherlands, after which she did the first part of her training in Gestalt therapy at the NSG Foundation in Amsterdam and the second part at the Gestalt foundation in Athens.

Electra loves to travel, explore different cultures and talk to different people and she feels like she’s stalling when she is in one place for too long. Therefore, Stone Soup provides an ideal setting to Electra as she gets to work with a variety of professionals from different fields and nationalities. With such interactions, “new ideas pop-up in my head and encourage me to be creative”. Electra also loves the energy and the work environment at Stone Soup as it is different from a usual workplace for psychologists.

At the moment, Electra is working on a project that will be targeting people with no access to psychotherapy and she aims to do so by establishing a network and providing seminars and training based on Gestalt psychotherapy and in some cases, offer free workshops and seminars to minority groups and to others in need.

Check out Electra’s website to see some of her ongoing research and projects!

Introducing Our New Intern: Japman Kharbanda

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Hey! I’m Japman Kharbanda, the new intern at Stone Soup. I’m originally from India, but I now live in Canada and I’m doing my Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Sociology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I was given the opportunity to work at a fast-growing organization like Stone Soup through AIESEC, a non-profit youth-led organisation that gives students like me the opportunity to travel to different countries and develop the necessary leadership skills along with some other soft skills. I have been an active member of AIESEC for the past year and my primary focus has been on marketing and communications which involves creating awareness about the opportunities offered by AIESEC and its benefits to university students. I intend to bring these marketing, communications and leadership skills to this job. As a marketing assistant, my focus is to work on Stone Soup’s website in order to increase its online visibility and to spread the message to a larger audience about what Stone Soup does. I am very excited to work amongst professionals with varied backgrounds at Stone Soup and to make the most out of my time here.