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!.’
Workingininformatics
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.’
Videogames&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!’
https://www.stonesoup.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IMG_1637-min-scaled-e1666179945548.jpeg10272248Community Managerhttps://www.stonesoup.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ssl300x300.pngCommunity Manager2022-10-21 12:25:112024-04-17 12:39:23Meet Sergio, a freelance dev who fell in love with Athens!
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.
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!
https://www.stonesoup.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/featureimage-scaled.jpg10132560Community Managerhttps://www.stonesoup.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ssl300x300.pngCommunity Manager2022-09-28 11:00:342024-10-25 12:30:51What makes a coworking community thrive is you
We are seeking a professional to join our coworking business to manage our community of members and expand Stone Soup’s partnerships.
Office-as-a-service is booming and demand is growing rapidly. The coworking market requires different skill sets and involves a wide variety of duties and responsibilities, including hosting, sales, management, and marketing skills, but it is equally important that the candidate is proactive cheerful, and outgoing. During the internship, the candidate will learn to manage the physical space, interact with our community, represent Stone Soup, and promote our activities. There is the possibility of being hired into a full-time position after the internship is completed.
Key Qualifications
* Experience in customer service and sales * Excellent English language skills (verbal and written) as we communicate primarily in English * Interest and knowledge about the creative/cultural industry * Digital knowledge and familiarity with creating content that can be used for either social media or digital marketing * Familiarity with software such as Canva and photography or video editing skills is an advantage
Position Description
Stone Soup was founded in 2014 to offer a flexible creative work environment in central Athens. The business manages 900 square meters of fully equipped offices of shared space and other infrastructure, as well as a large rooftop terrace with views of all of Athens. Our services are provided with various subscription packages (daily, weekly and monthly) which are designed to offer the best solution for every professional who approaches us. The primary goal is to provide flexibility in the way our members work but also to create a community among them to form a strong network of support, interaction, and empowerment. Stone Soup community members are a very interesting mix of people from all corners of the world with very different skills and professional experiences. We are a social space that grows organically and we are always looking for new people to support us and we in turn give them the opportunity to grow both personally and professionally.
The post includes the following responsibilities:
* Responding to requests from members or potential customers and resolving any problems * Creating, scheduling, and publishing web content in English * Working on new ways to engage the community * Assist with marketing and promotional activities for the business * Represent the company and support events and gatherings
The internship program is powered by the Life Skills initiative. Life Skills is a professional and personal development program for young people run by the British Council with funding from HSBC. The project aims to develop the career prospects of young people (18 to 30 years old) who are either out of education, employment, or training or who are looking for a positive career change to pursue a better future. Life Skills aims to make a real impact on Greek society by promoting work in social and solidarity economy organizations or in SMEs with a social impact, as an alternative and inclusive career option to combat youth unemployment.
The deadline for submissions is Wednesday 14 September 2022, 23.59.
https://www.stonesoup.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Coworking-FAQs-2400-x-950-px.jpg9502400Community Managerhttps://www.stonesoup.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ssl300x300.pngCommunity Manager2022-09-09 15:48:362024-08-09 14:06:34Community management internship at Stone Soup!
Can AI create poetry? Will driverless cars navigate through Athens anytime soon? Will Facial Recognition Technologies be deployed in public places? One of our latest members can suggest many potential answers to these intriguing questions. Sacha analyses ethical guidelines and suggests policy frameworks on artificial intelligence (AI). She works for the nonprofit think-tank The Future Society that focuses on AI policy and ethics. We had the chance to speak with her about her research on AI and the role of women in tech, a field that she is motivated to promote.
Getting into the tech industry and AI policy
Sacha is Franco-Chilean. She was raised in Paris and studied politics, philosophy, and economics in the UK, France, and the US. During her Master’s studies in International Affairs in Paris, she participated in an exchange program in Boston. This decision was a turning point for her career in AI policy. It is during this exchange program that she met the co-founder and president of The Future Society, Nicolas Miailhe. While in Boston she became accustomed to AI and digital innovation, but also to the lack of women and minorities present in this field.
She is an inspiring example to everyone who loves traveling and experiencing new ways of working with others. Furthermore, she did research about the lack of women in the tech sector: the gap is huge for reasons that are both social and economic. Her studies led her to argue that diversity (ethnic, gender, socio-economic, political) is an important factor to boost productivity and creativity in the workplace.
From theory to practice: working on responsible AI adoption
Once back in Paris, Sacha was able to reconnect with The Future Society’s co-founder and evolve in an innovative, rapidly changing field. The Future Society specializes in the ethics and governance of AI while advancing its responsible adoption for the benefit of humanity. At the same time, they support the empowerment and active voice of women in tech. In the upcoming month, Sacha will work on Tunisia’s AI National Strategy.
She has also conducted research on different relative topics. These include the ethical challenges for the adoption of contact tracing apps, and the use of AI to fight against the pandemic (with the Global Partnership for AI). As a side project, she built a whole digital community of Affiliates, coming from 20 countries, to advance responsible AI adoption globally and support the organization’s workstreams. They share their views and experiences through a Slack group while using the Signal app for chatting.
Digital innovation & AI policy for a sustainable society
Sacha’s research on AI policy is about finding the right balance between capturing the upsides of AI and limiting its risks.
AI development can lead to curated educational programs and healthcare self-diagnosis on one hand, and online surveillance and political disinformation on the other. For example, Sacha notes that digital contact tracing apps used during the pandemic may be very helpful to identify clusters and limit the spread of the virus. But on the other hand, citizens may not use these apps, even when the design achieves high levels of data privacy, as they have lost trust in governmental authorities and are suspicious of technology using sensitive data! Moreover, Sacha underlined the example of automatization of work. Automatization done correctly can bring work-life balance with less working hours, more free time, and same or higher salary. We must change the way we think about labor values and measurements of productivity, she adds. Lifelong learning can help prepare workers for upskilling and repurposing of work goals and practices.
“It is important to remember that we are still at the dawn of AI adoption, so many paths are possible. We tend to think that the course of technology is linear, when actually we can collectively decide upon its trajectory.”
How does AI relate to remote work?
Digital innovation and AI policy are definitely related to coworking practices! So we asked Sacha to suggest tips and apps we can use while working remotely to keep our private data safe:
Using a Protonmail
Trying the Signal app
Connecting to a VPN
Installing an Adblocker is such a relief!
Checking the cookies on a website is truly crucial too! Let’s learn to avoid the “accept all” option!
The EU currently has one of the most regulated frameworks in the world (GDPR) so it takes two seconds to check your cookies!
The pandemic is an awakening call that teaches us to be able to organize ourselves in distance and work remotely. This can happen on a personal level. We learned from Sacha that Greece kickstarted the process to draft its AI strategy last summer. This builds on other local ongoing initiatives, such as the “AI and Rule of Law” Roundtable, which happens every October. According to the Chair Of the AI and Rule Law initiative, Nicolas Economou, who organized the second annual Athens Roundtable on “AI and the rule of law” last October, this is a very promising initiative that will also help Greece digitize its public sector.
Advocating for more women in tech
During her exchange in Boston,Sacha researched the reasons behind the lack of women and minorities in the tech sector. She shared some shocking numbers! According to a report published in 2019, there are only 18% of women researchers in the field of AI. This inspired her to build curriculums and mentorship programs in AI policy and ethics to train more women in this field. And we might get a taste because we discussed planning an AI policy and ethics discussion group at Stone Soup too (of course we’ll let you know)!
Working on digital innovation from Athens
Do you know what else boosts Sacha’s creativity? Athens itself! She ended up here during the pandemic when she realized that she doesn’t have to stay in a specific place to work. She admits that the sun makes her more productive. Athens is an underrated city in her opinion, still unnoticed by many apart on their way to the Cyclades, and she characterized it as the Berlin of the Mediterranean! She loves how the city flourishes artistically while conserving its original vibes. Because of her work, Sacha is often thinking about the future, and in Athens, she finds the perfect balance to live in the present as well. And we are happy to add her ingredients to our pot!
https://www.stonesoup.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Coworking-empowers-a-lifestyle-of-diversity-v7-scaled.jpg17072560Community Managerhttps://www.stonesoup.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ssl300x300.pngCommunity Manager2021-06-04 14:49:292021-06-04 14:59:50Empowering women in tech and advocating for ethical AI
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