Free Events/July 2024 + interview with John Shanahan, Founder of WorkWith and GroupFinder.info
Richard Lucas
This email contains information about free events in Lisbon, Ericeira and Peniche, and an interview with John Shanahan, Founder of WorkWith and GroupFinder.info
Open Coffee Ericeira
Friday 5th July Open Coffee Ericeira #10 hosted by Anieke at Coastal Cowork Collective. R. de São Félix 12e · Ericeira 10:00 - 12:00, Sign up here
Please note this event starts on time! Same format as Open Coffee Lisbon. Everyone gets a minute or two to say who they are, what they want, and how they can help others in the room. This gathering starts on time and is always on the first Friday of the month. Let Anieka know if you can help share the organisational lift, or what to contribute to a kids group so that parents with young kids can have them play together somewhere nearby during the event.
About our host
Anieke is a Dutchy living in Ericeira, she's a former Startup Founder working for a Venture Capital fund in Amsterdam that invests in later stage female founders of impactful Tech Companies. In addition, she has set up a Coaching business called The VC Coach, where she's helping VC investors to be more human. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniekelamersnl
We host two gatherings on the last Tuesday of the month in Lisbon and one on the first Friday of the month. See what makes Open Coffee meetups special in this video here, and read why everywhere on earth needs a Newcomer Welcome Club here.
Open Coffee Lisbon
Tuesday 30th July Open Coffee Lisbon at Startup Lisboa 09:30-11:30 with free coffee thanks to the @351 Community Fund and @Capital Factory. Sign up here. I host these events with help from Yuliia, Billy, Giselle, and others. Everyone who attends gets the opportunity to introduce themselves, answering four questions, who they are, what they do, what they want, and - importantly how they can help other people in the room. If you want to help and get involved in making this gathering a regular part of the Lisbon eco-system please let us know here https://forms.gle/hjQUMyFap5K8yo8y9. Please note this event starts on time and is always on the last Tuesday of the month.
Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club
Tuesday 20th July Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club at @Titanic @ 18:00-2030 - Sign up here . Richard is hosting this event with help from Naren, Jacqui, David, Roman, Billy, Giselle and others. LNWC meetups are introvert friendly, designed to work for people who don’t know anyone else in the room. They are not only for newcomers but also for longer term residents of Lisbon who want to welcome them. if you want to volunteer and get involved, sign up here. Please note this event starts on time! This event is always on the last Tuesday of the month.
Open Coffee Silver Coast/Peniche launch
July 31st @ 17:00 @ Largo Space Largo dos Galeões nº1 · Peniche
Tickets here Your hosts for our first event in July are Tracy Rolling, Erik Brunar and Richard Lucas Anyone who wants to help with that please get in touch here https://forms.gle/hjQUMyFap5K8yo8y9
Interview with John Shanahan, founder of WorkWith and GroupFinder.info
Please introduce yourself, any other businesses/projects you are involved in, and why you are sometimes here in Lisbon, Portugal.
I moved to Lisbon from UK nearly 4 years now and have a background on software development.
The three things in working on are:
WorkWith (getworkwith.com) - an app to make it easy to meet people through coworking and find good places to cowork at (you can submit you email on the website to be notified when we launch or try the app now by becoming a tester: https://forms.gle/2Kv4YC1Q4AwCTewaA)
Coworking Friends - a WhatsApp and meetup group which host regular social coworking events, currently just in Lisbon and Bangkok
GroupFinder.info - a directory of social Whatsapp and telegram groups in various cities in the world to make it easy to meet people
Richard: What is the vision for your projects. What problems are they aiming to solve?
I want to make it easy for people to meet others and make new friends.
WorkWith and Co-working Friends do this through coworking because many digital nomads spend their days working alone and I think coworking with other people is an easy and natural way to meet people.
Plus there is also research that shows working with people who are working using timed work sessions to stay productive actually improves productivity, because we naturally want to mirror what other people do.
And for the venues, I think the app has two benefits other than simply promoting the venue:
1) it can make more tables available for other customers because by being a social app, it encourages people to work together on the same tables rather than having one person per table which often happens when people work alone
2) it can even out footfall throughout the day, since I can stop venues appearing on the app when they are busy so less people will go to work there, and promote them more when they are more empty
GroupFinder.info was created because there are many social Whatsapp and telegram groups but they are most easy to find as they mainly get spread through word of mouth. I thought it made much more sense to list three all in one place.
Richard: Is this your first foray into community activities, or have you had any previous engagement/ideas. Tell us more and what attracts you to this type of scene in general ?
This is my first time running events or communities, and I like the idea of helping people in some way, especially with connecting to others as feeling lonely is not a nice feeling but it's quite common especially when moving to a new city.
And regarding coworking, I often work in cafes or coworking spaces and see so many people doing the same but nobody talking to each other and I know many people would want to but they are worried about disturbing others.
Richard: There are many WhatsApp groups, and entrepreneurial communities for nomads. What makes your project different/better ?
Well, people use their laptops so many hours in the week and I think it makes sense to use some of those hours to work alongside other people, instead of working alone all day and then only socialising after work.
And it also feels a more natural way of making friends to me when you do something with people that you would do anyway, but spend many hours with just a few people rather than go to an event after work to talk to many different people for a short time. I still do those things but I often feel that there is less time to build a genuine connection like that.
Richard: What are the main challenges?
With the WorkWith app, I had no experience with making apps so it's been a big learning curve not just in terms of the coding but also all the other things like designing the interface, deploying to the Google play store, talking to potential users to really understand the problem, getting feedback from users etc.
With the Coworking Friends community, I want to make sure users are enjoying the weekly events, and am on the lookout for new places to host co-working sessions, especially with an outdoor area now the weather is warm (more locations coming soon!). The WhatsApp group also required constant moderation and involvement to keep it active.
Luckily I have someone helping me with running this (thanks Elisa!) which allows me to keep focusing mostly on building the app.
Richard: What you are doing is clearly useful - how do you assess whether your project is on track? How will you know that you are succeeding?
With the app, I'm constantly talking to the users I have and improving the app based on their feedback. I'm also talking to cafes and hotels to see what they think to make sure the app goes in the right direction.
I think when the app is ready to launch (currently in testing phase) I will be looking at all the classic metrics to see how many users signup, stop using the app, use particular features etc.
Richard: Can you share a bit about the finances? Does your project expect to make money. What are going to be your main revenue sources? Are there any prominent investors or partners that you want to thank?
The app will be free for a while to encourage people to sign up, and at some point I will start charging a small monthly subscription. I haven't looked into investment at all yet as I have been so busy just making the app.
Richard: Moving onto marketing, how do you make sure that people know about your website, and get the word out so that people who might be interested get to hear about events, or let them know you exist?
Well the WhatsApp and meetup group have around 1500 people combined now, so that's one way of telling people about my other projects.
But at this stage, I still haven't put a lot into marketing but it's something in starting to put more effort into.
Richard: What are your entry standards/quality control over venues who you agree to meet in, or standards of behaviour for those who show up ?
For the Co-working Friends organised sessions, the venues need to have a nice design, good wifi, power points, comfortable chairs for sitting for hours and enough large tables that people can work in groups of at least 4 people but preferably larger.
Currently the only venue we are using for organised weekly co-working sessions is Moxy Lisbon City, which is really nice, but I am speaking with several other places to create several co-working meetups each week.
Members of the community can also organised their own co-working sessions any day, and since these are not paid, they need to just make sure they consume enough that the venue does feel they are being disrespected or losing out on other customers.
Richard: How do you assess the Lisbon and Portuguese business and startup “eco system” compared to others you are aware of. What’s going well/what still needs improvement.
I don't know much about it to be honest, but I expect to be much more involved soon.
Richard: What advice would you give someone who has recently arrived in town, is interested in startups and doesn\t know who to talk to or what to do?
I would suggest going to some startup based events like Open coffee, Future founders and others. Meetup.com is a good website to check
Richard: How can people get in touch with you if they want to ask more questions?
You can message me on LinkedIn (linkedIn.com/in/john-shanahan)
For anything related to the app including if you want to be a tester (currently android only), you can email me at john@getworkwith.com
To add your WhatsApp/telegram group to GroupFinder.info, or suggest a group, you can do that on the GroupFinder website.
And you can join the Lisbon Coworking Friends Whatsapp group here where you can ask me any questions related to that: https://chat.whatsapp.com/CcokFhKZx111hjne5KxEWI
Richard: Brilliant, thanks very much. Happy to have Open Coffee and Newcomers Welcome Clubs as partners for this project. Good luck.
Finally
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