Tag Archive for: remotework

September in Athens, the Place to Be for Digital Nomads.

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Athens Nomad Fest 2025 is back, and it’s bigger and bolder than ever.

Whether you’re a remote worker, digital nomad, freelancer, entrepreneur, or simply curious to find out what goes down at the Athens digital nomad festival, mark your calendar for September 12–19, 2025.

This is your invitation to experience Athens like never before with a global group of like-minded people.

Organisers of Athens Nomad Festival

What Is the Athens Nomad Fest?

Imagine seven days of transformative workshops, cultural exploration, and island escapes, all designed around the digital nomad lifestyle. Athens Nomad Fest is not just a conference, it’s a celebration of freedom, innovation, and connection. The festival is your chance to get inspired while soaking up the essence of Athens. 

Whether you’re working remotely from a coworking space, traveling full-time, or considering a leap into freelance life, this festival gives you the tools, a support network, and the inspiration to level up your journey.

Why You Should Go

You’ll hear incredible talks from industry leaders, packed with real insights you can apply right away. Want to grow your business? You’ll get practical tips, tools, and fresh ideas to help you take things to the next level.

At the Athens Nomad Fest, the real magic happens in the connections. You’ll meet digital nomads, entrepreneurs, and creatives from all over. Join mastermind groups to solve real challenges together, collaborate on new projects, and find your people!

2024 Athens Nomads Fest
Rooftop dinner at ANF 2024

The 2025 Athens Nomad Fest Programme at a Glance

Here’s a teaser of what to expect:

Thursday 11

Food Tour at night (find a company, determine time)

Friday 12

10:30 – 13:30 Athens Acropolis Walk (visit Acropolis)
15:00 – 17:00 Acropolis Museum
17:00 – 18:30 Registration at the dinner venue (Liystor)
18:45 – 19:00 Opening Talk
19:00 – 24:00 Sunset Dinner & Opening Party at Liystor in Ermou (rooftop)

Saturday 13 & Sunday 14 – Talks, workshops, and networking dinners @ Ηub Events

Monday 15 & Tuesday 16 – Bootcamp, workshops, city experiences, sunset meet-ups & parties @  P55 Co-working Space

Wednesday 18 & Thursday 19 – Optional 3-day island trip to explore the Aegean with fellow nomads

You’ll experience:

  • Expert-led unconference sessions
  • Wellness mornings to reset body and mind
  • Cultural activities (think: local food, art, and myth)
  • DJ nights and rooftop vibes
  • Unexpected encounters with the coolest people you haven’t met yet

Click here to see the full program: https://www.athensnomadfest.com/program.html

How Much Does It Cost?

Regular ticket: €197

This gives you access to the full 7-day programme in Athens. The island trip and optional outdoor activities are add-ons but totally worth it for those craving something extra. If you’re thinking of attending, spots are limited, secure your ticket now.

Conference Only Pass: €117

Ticket includes the Weekend Conference, 2 lunches, coffee & desert during the coffee break. 

Bootcamps & Workshop Only Pass: €97

Ticket includes Monday’s & Tuesday’s 2 Bootcamps & 10 Workshops 

Workshop at ANF 2024

Stone Soup Coworking Collaboration

This year, Stone Soup is proud to support the Athens Nomad Festival as a media and community partner! As part of our collaboration, we’ll be hosting the festival’s closing event on Tuesday, September 16th on Stone Soup Coworking Rooftop, located on the seventh floor!

The evening program:

  • Sunset yoga at 19:00 under the open sky,
  • Rooftop drinks and DJ beats from 20:00 onwards.

Refreshments and snacks will be provided, but feel free to bring along anything you’d like to share. And don’t forget to connect, converse, and have a good time!

Festival guests can enjoy free day passes at Stone Soup Coworking, your local coworking hub in the heart of Athens. Already part of our community? You’ll get 10% off tickets!

We’re excited to open our doors to new connections and collaborations during this vibrant week-long festival. See you there!

More info and tickets at athensnomadfest.com

Festival guests can enjoy free day passes at Stone Soup Coworking, your local coworking hub in the heart of Athens. Already part of our community? You’ll get 10% off tickets!

Early-bird discount ticket Athens Nomad Fest

Theofilos Petsios from Crash Override on Tech Collaboration and Remote Working

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Getting to know our newest members, we sat down with Theofilos Petsios, who has been a principal engineer with Crash Override since the company’s founding in 2022. We discussed tech collaborations, remote working and the journey of Crash Override.

A Natural Tech Collaboration

After a decade long tenure in the USA completing a PhD in Computer Science at Columbia University, and a short stop in Berlin, Theofilos relocated to Greece and took on a vital role in the NY-based B2B SaaS start-up which is only a couple of months away from launching.

Having worked with John Viega (CEO and Co-Founder) at John’s previous start-up during his time in New York, they happened to cross paths again and join forces on this new project. Both John and Mark Curphey (Co-Founder) are both very well known in the security community, the culture fit and engineering ethos was a perfect match so the decision to collaborate came naturally, as Theofilos shared.

Air tags for code

Air tags for code? Sorted

Founded in 2022, Crash Override has grown to a team of more than twenty, spread across the UK, USA, and Greece. They build tools to help developers understand where their applications are developed, where they live and how they’re deployed—“like air tags for code,” as Theofilos puts it. Initially focused on application security, the team quickly expanded to address broader questions that companies would ask around ownership, development, and deployment of software. This led to the creation of not only a SaaS platform but also a series of open-source projects like ‘Chalk’—a tool to make software lifecycle data accessible to all.

Connecting software

Balancing Remote Work and In-Person Syncs

Crash Override emphasises cross-border collaboration but recognizes the challenges of remote work, especially when time zone differences are involved. “It’s crucial to have an office and for folks to be in the same room” he explained. “There are some things that you cannot really replicate in a virtual environment.” Theofilos stresses the importance of having an office space for in-person interactions, like whiteboarding and spontaneous mentorship, which can’t easily be replicated virtually.

Despite these challenges, Theofilos is optimistic about the team’s ability to adapt, crediting their engineering excellence and collaborative spirit as key strengths that make Crash Override stand out from the crowd. “The technology and foundational things we’re building are really, really cool.” While there are competitors, none are focusing on the kind of visibility Crash Override is offering, and that’s certainly something to brag about, despite Theofilos’s humility.

Life and Networking at Stone Soup

When Theofilos is in Athens, he works from Stone Soup on most days. He loves Stone Soup’s super central location, the lovely terrace and the Athenian feel that the building and décor maintain. “It’s more intimate than larger coworking spaces you find abroad” he stated.

Theofilos recognises the power of networking in his journey and believes it’s particularly important at this early stage of Crash Override. If you see him around our shared spaces or at a community event, don’t hesitate to introduce yourself and say hi!

Check out Crash Override’s blog posts about the security industry here.

From Bristol to Athens: iCOMAT’s Journey in Aerospace and Automotive Technology

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Whether you’re an avid F1 enthusiast or a casual observer, chances are you’ve been mesmerized by the speed and precision of these incredible machines. But have you ever wondered about who is behind such engineering brilliance? We spoke with Giorgos Stamatopoulos, a structural analyst at iCOMAT since 2022, to explore the story of one of Athens’ top funded startup’s and its groundbreaking work in aerospace and automotive technology.

The Spark That Ignited Innovation

It all began in 2017 when Evangelos Zympeloudis, then a postgraduate student in Bristol, envisioned a transformative future for composite manufacturing. Collaborating with his supervisor, he patented a technology that manipulates carbon fibers with precision, steering them without creating defects. This invention laid the foundation for iCOMAT, a company confident to redefine the possibilities of composite materials.

Starting modestly with a small UK team and just one employee in Greece, iCOMAT’s workforce has steadily grown. Giorgos himself was the second team member in Greece, and now the local team is rapidly expanding to keep pace with the company’s growth.

icomat employee working with new state-of-the art technology.

Collaborating with Titans

As Giorgos explains, iCOMAT serves a diverse clientele, ranging from aerospace giants to luxury automotive brands. Their expertise has contributed to components for rockets, satellites, and high-performance cars, including the elusive world of Formula 1. While Giorgos remains tight-lipped about specifics, he hints at exclusive visits to the headquarters of a certain top-tier F1 team. For those outside the field, the impact of iCOMAT’s work boils down to three game-changing benefits: enhanced performance, cost efficiency, and sustainability.

Image with examples of which industries iCOMAT work with: Aerospace, automotive and space.

A Startup Backed by Visionary Investors

Innovation attracts attention, and iCOMAT is no exception. With a staggering €20.13 million in funding, the company ranks 7th among Greece’s top-funded startups according to the Venture Financing Report 2024-2025, Startups in Greece 2024–2025. Velocity Partners, one of their earliest investors, has supported them every step of the way, helping them transform their vision into reality.

The big news? iCOMAT will take its expertise to the next level by producing its designs in-house as they’ve opened their first factory in Gloucester. When asked why the UK was chosen over Greece, Giorgos explained that the complexity of their cutting-edge technology demands specialized knowledge that is currently more accessible in the UK.

A Home at Stone Soup

In Athens, iCOMAT enjoys the collaborative environment of a private office at Stone Soup. Beyond the facilities, they value the dedicated support from Olga and Giorgos, who are always ready to tackle challenges and celebrate milestones. Stone Soup’s community events are a highlight for Giorgos, who fondly recalls the monthly Meet and Drink. An event that aims to bring members together to share ideas and successes.

As the company continues to push boundaries in composite technology, their journey from a university lab in Bristol to global recognition is nothing short of inspiring. With innovation at its core and a team of passionate professionals steering the wheel, iCOMAT is the startup shaping the future of aerospace and automotive technology and engineering—one fiber at a time!

iCOMAT team working at Stone Soup

Ingredients for a tasty coworking experience

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Coworking spaces have established themselves as the “new normal” and their fundamental characteristic is a sense of “community” and “collaboration”. Coworking communities are a transformed version of the traditional workplaces which are slowly decreasing in size as an aftermath of the pandemic crisis.

The coworking space is a new type of workplace: heterogeneous professionals, in terms of employment, their field of work, organizational status, and relationships, work all together in the same space.

This broad definition is due to the fact that there is no common interpretation of coworking in the academic literature. It is not a coherent phenomenon but a “new normal” based on the values of collaboration, openness, community, accessibility and sustainability, which each organization interprets ad hoc.

Uda’s (2013) definition of coworking spaces is a widely accepted one and goes as follows: “it is a way of working in which individuals gather in a space to create value while sharing information and knowledge through communication and collaborating under conditions of their choosing”.

We all agree that the practice of coworking in a space is a hybrid of remote working and working from a flexible office that does not commit you to anything!

Coworkers enjoying their hotdesk memberships

The importance of co-creative work

Co-creative work is linked to the concept of “hubs”. Their structure and content can take various forms, such as coworking spaces, studios, clusters, incubators, accelerators etc. Often the boundaries between these are blurred and there are no clear definitions.

Co-creative work is a manifestation of affective creative labor and its essential ingredients are proximity and co-location. These two characteristics, together with inclusivity, are usually necessary to bring out a complete profile of a coworking space. 

The importance of informality as a component of openness is also in the core of coworking. Informal relationships are truly motivating. When it comes to joining coworking spaces such as Stone Soup, we are proud of our coziness! 

coworking life