The year 2022 meant a lot of great experiences, meetings, networking activities and business development opportunities for the Campus community. Let’s take a look together at what has happened in the past months.
Return of people to the premises
After two long years of restrictions and the prevalence of working from home, our premises are filled with people again. Every day we had the opportunity to see our members, we met new ones who decided that coworking is the right thing for them. The vision of the Campus has always been to connect people, and therefore we are very happy that we have the opportunity to fulfill our mission again.
Whether it’s a pre-planned meeting or a random coffee at our bar, nothing can replace the personal contact we have between us. Already we can’t wait to see everyone again next year, refreshed and full of new ideas.
Association of coworking centers in Slovakia
Together with 17 other coworking centers in Slovakia – Cvernovka, Kolabo, Campus Cowork, Lab Cafe, Nádvorie TT, Fleck Community TN, 365.labb in BB, Cancel Martin, Banka ZA, STREDCO coworking DK, Coworking space Lučenec, Kruháč Rimavská Sobota, Coworking Poprad, Baňa Coworking Spišská Nová Ves, Coworking Švejkova štreka Humenné – we got together in May of this year and founded an association called Coworking Slovakia.
Michaela Hrnčiarová from Coworking Cvernovka was behind the creation of this initiative. The idea to establish a coworking association arose during the pandemic, which, although it did not favor coworking itself, paradoxically connected and brought us together as a group. The reason was simple – we all faced very similar problems at the same time – we needed to quickly and flexibly adapt to the new pandemic regulations, which were often rather ambiguous for coworking spaces. However, we found out very quickly that we can help each other in other areas as well.
The mission of the Association is to unite community coworking centers for the purpose of their mutual connection, cooperation, sharing of experience, education and development.
The creation of such an association fully corresponds with Campus Cowork’s effort to connect smart people not only within Bratislava, and we are glad that Campus, as an innovation center, can contribute to the creation of an innovative coworking ecosystem throughout Slovakia.
Reflect Festival
I guess every member of our coworking space has already heard about the experiences of the Reflect fest, or even directly experienced its atmosphere. Reflect is a technology conference held annually in Limassol, Cyprus. Countless new ideas, projects, partnerships and unforgettable experiences are born during these few days.
The last few years have not been kind to the event organization, and it also affected the Reflect fest, which had to be held in a hybrid online form. However, the year 2022 was once again characterized by personal contact, and the event was attended by a record number of more than 5,000 people!
The Hacknime.to project
In the summer of 2022, Campus Cowork joined the challenge of the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic, the aim of which was to find a suitable partner for the organization of innovative events called hackathons. We managed to fulfill the challenge and thus became an organizational partner of these events.
The Hacknime.to project, which is financed from the Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Slovak Republic, is aimed at increasing the efficiency and digitization of public administration and improving the quality of services to citizens.
During the second half of 2022, we organized two hackathons at Campus Cowork. The first was aimed at combating misinformation and increasing media literacy, and the second was devoted to the topic of seniors in the digital world. Both hackathons turned out to be excellent, they brought a lot of interesting solutions and their winners have the opportunity to participate in the implementation of their ideas.
The Hacknime.to series will continue and the topic of the next hackathon will be known early next year.
Mentalita foundera (Mentality of a founder)
Do you know the Mentalita foundera podcast? For some time now, our colleague Viktor Štefaňák has been focusing on the stories of (mainly) Slovak entrepreneurs, or as he likes to call it “the story of unicorns and sharks”, who had vision, determination and a bit of luck and founded companies in Slovakia with (often) international reach. In 2022, his podcast became part of the ZAPO (Entertainment in Podcasts) platform.
We definitely recommend listening, the podcast is full of healthy enthusiasm for business and valuable advice from people who have gone through many stages from the very beginning to entering the international market. There is a piece of the founder in each of us. Let’s unlock it.
Christmas & birthday party
You might think that some Christmas celebration is a completely normal thing and does not belong in this blog, but it was a huge success for us! It lasted for two long years when we couldn’t celebrate our birthday with you, have a Christmas punch, or wear that “ugly” sweater with a glowing reindeer that we bought just for this occasion.
Thanks to everyone who participated, it was great! And we believe that the next year will continue to be marked by joint activities and fun.
