This is Marcel Kalveram, coworker at Wayco since last year. He is German but he is really into Valencia, participating in communities such as Toastmasters and recently as the organizer of Creative Mornings Valencia. In this guest post he is telling us about his experience as a coworking in our city.
When I came to Valencia for the first time, I had no idea what awaited me… and if you had told me that I was going to stay for six years, I would probably not have taken you very seriously. When I first arrived in Spain, I was a student, planning to go abroad for one semester! Being a student I also needed to somehow maintain my Spanish lifestyle, so I decided that between my university classes, language lessons and the beach I was going to work a bit, from the distance.
That was in February 2009, which marked the beginning of my career as a remote worker. I didn’t have a physical office anymore, and I would only communicate with my colleagues via Skype, at random hours of the day.
Working remotely in Valencia
After a couple of years I came across Workether, which was among the first coworking spaces in Valencia. I decided to move my virtual office there, after a long period of working from my comfy home or the university’s library. After finishing my studies, it was time to get more serious anyway.
That was in 2011. Fast-forward to January 2015, it’s hard for me to imagine what it was like before.Moving to a coworking space has significantly improved my productivity. Just the fact that I leave the house in the morning flips a switch in my head to get busy. As a nice side effect, I run into a lot of new people, which in my particularly case, already facilitated a few interesting career opportunities.
Working at Wayco
With the years, I’ve been working at a few other coworking spaces as well. When my Hanno teammate Matt came to visit me in Valencia last year, I decided to temporarily move to Wayco.
Wayco is a cozy place just 5 minutes away from where I live, close to the historical center and just a few meters away from the drained river bed. Something which allows me to have a chilled picnic at lunch during the months of summer, or simply have a refreshing walk after a long day of work.
Another beautiful thing is Wayco’s café and its appendant terrace, a luxury which you can hardly find in any other coworking space in the city. During the summer month, it’s an excellent place for relaxed meetings, some laid-back work or networking with some of the other coworkers. I realized that I wouldn’t want to miss that anymore and decided to stay there.
The future of coworking
With that said, I personally think that remote working is the future of work in many fields, especially in design, development, online marketing and every other digital labour that only required you to have your laptop and an internet connection. Most of the people who start working from home and get to enjoy the benefits of a flexible schedule are going to realize that beside the advantages that I mentioned above, it will give you a much greater feeling of satisfaction if you leave your comfortable home in the morning and flip that mental switch.
