Meet Sergio, a freelance dev who fell in love with Athens!

Sergio is a freelancer specialising in informatics who first visited Athens six years ago while travelling. He came back to the city as a digital nomad and spend some of his time co-working with us.

Life in Athens

Having a Spanish origin, he feels very much at home in Athens and enjoys the Mediterranean climate and relaxed lifestyle of the locals. He has already toured a few of the islands as well as mainland Greece. What excites him the most is how easy it is to get away from the city into the countryside and ‘zone out’ as he put is. 

‘I love nature. It makes me feel recharged and gives me fresh energy which I can then put into my freelance work. As a remote worker I am fortunate to get the chance to do that!.’

Working in informatics

After completing his studies in Media, Sergio moved to Germany in order to to pursue a career in informatics. He is currently working as a web developer for a German finance company. During the pandemic he had to work from home most of the time, but accommodating himself into co-working spaces changed his mindset for the better. 

‘I feel so much more concentrated when in an office due to the fact that I get to work without distractions. I especially like Stone Soup as a space because of the warm and welcoming feeling this place has. The atmosphere is quite the opposite from the stiff corporate environment I was used to be around and I really embrace that.’ 

Video games & more

Sergio’s hobby is prototyping video game ideas and developing graphics for them. He finds it way more exciting than anything else and he hopes to be able to make a living out of it in the future. 

‘Having a project of your own is really fun and rewarding at the same time. For me it has been great working in an office space because I manage to split my time effectively in between my job and my hobby as well!’ 

happy coworker; friends and colleagues; coworking community
Sergio’s GitHub profile link : https://github.com/colado

What makes a coworking community thrive is you


The collaborative community formed in coworking spaces is characterized by fluidity, flexibility, mutual understanding, and trust among members of the space. The role of hosts or community managers of coworking spaces is crucial for the aesthetics and ambiance that each space represents and diffuses to its members and customers. Community management is a process of blurring the boundaries between activities that require communication, interaction, and reciprocity.

A coworking community is a story of stories

If we seek for a definition on the concept of community, then a collaborative goal is definitely the central point. Each member’s and host’s experience is built around this common goal that can take various forms!

The concept of community in franchises and independent spaces differs a lot. Each concept is based on the forms of relationships among coworkers and between managers and coworkers. The parameters that reveal these relationships are values, such as trust and the ambiance created, such as coziness. Sharing your needs is a one-way street. Hence it is an experience that all members of a coworking space will collect at some point. The truth is that most coworking spaces are hybrid forms. As a result, there are many variations of community and collaboration narratives.

Finally, the narrative of the community constructed in each coworking space is not introverted and isolated from the larger public space. The spaces are urban meeting points in the city and they have an impact on their surroundings. Depending on the relationship they seek with the public sphere, they are accelerators of growth for startup entrepreneurship, intervention and activism for public policies, and social action and contact with the neighborhood around them.

rooftop drinks

A coworking community is like a novel, a story composed by each member’s storytellings. That is why a host should love listening to people and learning their stories.

Social impact begins from understanding someone’s needs after listening patiently and carefully. Taking advantage of impromptu happenings and serendipity moments is a great start! Unexpected experiences are what make a coworking community look like a group of friends, colleagues, or strangers at the same time. Whatever you pick, it’s your choice, as long as it helps you flourish!

An Expat Family In Athens: Working On International Projects Remotely

Last six months, we had the pleasure to host George and Carla, a couple of marketers who traveled with their family from Barcelona to Athens! We talked with them about their international marketing projects and their experience as a family in Athens. We also inspired them to create content featuring Stone Soup! As part of his content creation aspirations, George just completed a Videography course in SAE! Stone Soup proudly starred in his first attempt at directing a corporate video!

Working remotely

Firstly, we asked them how they got involved in marketing as well as the pros and cons of working remotely. Before the family came to Athens they added many pins to the European map. Carla started working remotely back in 2015 after quitting her job at SoundCloud in Berlin. Back then she had already been away from her homeland, Spain, for 10 years and she was looking forward to finding her way back home. A friend was the one who connected her with a big digital project. Ever since she has remained working remotely either as a freelancer or in a permanent position. She describes her first few years as a “rollercoaster” as she craved social interaction with other team members. However, she now admits that she has mastered it and she truly enjoys the freedom she gets from working remotely. From her current perspective, going back to her previous life with a 9-5 office job seems distant and weird.

As for George, remote working came along with his promotion to a Regional Marketing Manager at SAE Institute 7 years ago. He points out that getting to work from anywhere as long as you have WiFi is very tempting. You only have to find the strength to defeat the “pyjamas syndrome”. Professionally his main challenge was to train, manage and inspire a team of young professionals exclusively from a distance. Interactions are limited to online tools and this fact consequently limits the dynamics between people.

George and Carla at Stone Soup

Marketing projects they are proud of


Their positions as marketers granted them the opportunity to work remotely and enjoy traveling all over Europe at the same time. They involve themselves in many facets of marketing, so we wanted to know more about their interests in this continuously expanding creative field. Carla enjoys working on digital marketing strategies. She loves thinking of ways to find the target audience of her clients online. She also finds challenging to plan out multiple a/b experiments to test what type of targeting may perform the best. As for George, he prefers working on social media projects as there is a more direct interaction with the audience. Aside from that, he likes running event promotion projects, as they move faster, with a greater variety in designs.

George and Carla marketing experts

Working in the marketing field means that you are designing projects that can be both impactful and creative! We asked our members to pick a couple of marketing campaigns they dealt with that are worth mentioning. George feels quite proud of a marketing campaign he runs across five countries, promoting a new portfolio of Games Production courses. It was challenging as he had to overcome cultural and market diversity issues and manage to create consistent storytelling. Carla could not help but point out that she is currently running a campaign to promote the platform adeccojobsforukraine.com. It is a portal created to connect employers with refugees and this goal motivates her to give her best. Any employer can sign up and upload their vacancies and the displaced workers can upload their CVs. It operates as an effective matchmaking platform supporting all the Ukrainians in this terrible moment of their life.  

Traveling to Athens

Their story continued in Athens, where they have been staying for the last six months. Together with their one-year-old daughter, Emma, they traveled to the Greek capital and decided to try focusing on their marketing ideas from here. They both agree that Athens is a lively and exciting city with plenty of things to do and international people to meet. They comment that strolling around may not be that easy but there are so many nice spaces to go to, like the Niarchos Foundation and the National Garden. There is no doubt that having a family limits the number of outings they can have. However, they have realized that there are also plenty of international families in Athens as well, even in Stone Soup!

Why work from a coworking space?

Working from a coworking space can help in achieving a work-life balance. They find it motivating to leave the house and add some flavor to their work life. If the coworking space neighborhood is full of choices (as it is in the case of Stonesoup), then even better! This way they can also pursue their interests as well. For example, aside from their marketing work Carla is exploring the digital art scene and curates content for her Digital Art District project on Instagram. They both find it inspiring to stay creative so they also do some paste-up street art together every now and then (instagram.com/lovnoir). When we asked them what is their biggest motivation lately, they passionately agreed that their number one mission and success story is named Emma, their fantastic daughter that rules their colorful world!

George and Carla part of Stone Soup family

A new summer intern at our coworking space!

Hello, my name is Emmanouela and I am 22 years old! I have just started my internship at Stone Soup coworking space and I come from the island of Rhodes, Greece. I have been living in Athens for four years now doing my studies, but I hope to stay here much longer. Studying Marketing and Communication at the Athens University of Economics and Business. At the same time, I have also enrolled in an another school where I study Interior Architecture and Design. My professional future will definitely be in the creative sector!

This summer I decided to do my internship and I couldn’t have made a better choice than Stone Soup. Stone Soup is a social enterprise promoting a great and innovative philosophy about a new way of working. Before Stone Soup, I was not familiar with the concept of cooperative workspaces and I was very interested to learn more about it. After some research and observation, I came to the conclusion that coworking spaces are the best choice for those who work alone remotely because they have a lot to offer both on a social and professional level. 

My expectations at Stone Soup coworking space

The main ingredient I am bringing at Stone Soup is my digital marketing skills. More specifically, I will be cooking the website’s digital analytics and I will be creating content for social media. Digital media should mirror the cozy ambiance of the coworking space and the diverse background of its members. By communicating our everyday life through social media, more people will have the opportunity to get to know the community and the values of Stone Soup.

I am sure that during my internship, I will gain many other skills that will help me in my professional career. Improving my communication skills and my digital literacy are just some of them. I’ll also have the opportunity to get in touch with new people from different places and various cultures. I am looking forward to it!