“That’s the only thing that I would like to be known for, not for designing coworking spaces, just that I was able to show up each day to do the work that inspires me the most.” - Dean Connell.
Unreasonable Connection Going Live! London, February 2026.
🎟️ Tickets go on sale in January 2026.
The entire day is co-created by the coworking community builders on the co-creation waitlist.
You know that exhausted feeling when another LinkedIn post promises to reveal “the future of work”?
Dean Connell spent seven years building WeWork spaces across the globe.
He’s designed over two million square feet of workspace.
He’s seen the industry from the inside of the machine.
And he’s done predicting the future.
Dean is the founder of I-AM.D.C., a workplace strategy, FF&E, and interior design consultancy specialising in workspace design and sustainable furniture sourcing. But before all that, he was employee number seventy-something at WeWork, one of seven designers tasked with scaling a Brooklyn aesthetic across continents.
What makes Dean different from the conference circuit commentators is simple: he’s actually built the things he talks about.
Not frameworks borrowed from McKinsey reports. Not insights repurposed from other people’s data. The proof lives in the spaces he’s made, the furniture he’s designed, the mistakes he’s learned from.
In this conversation, Bernie and Dean trace coworking’s evolution through three distinct eras.
There’s Bernard de Coven’s original vision from 1999—coworking as a method of working, equals gathered around a shared project.
Then there’s the 2005 version most of us know—work as the abstract centre, operators competing on price, location, and aesthetics. Beautiful design became table stakes. Everyone got good at desks and fast WiFi.
But Dean’s proposal for what comes next is a fundamental recentring.
Coworking 3.0 isn’t about work at all. It’s about the “hook”—a specific experience that unifies the community.
Veterinarians. Musicians. Parents need childcare. Food obsessives. Wellness practitioners.
The centrepiece shifts from “we have desks” to “this is who we are and why we gather.”
If you’ve been watching younger generations crave in-person experiences whilst the definition of “work” dissolves into digital abstraction, this framework makes sudden sense.
Dean isn’t selling certainty. He’s walking the path and documenting the journey.
For operators tired of chasing trends and ready to create something with genuine gravitational pull, this conversation offers a different way forward.
Timeline Highlights
[00:01] Bernie’s intro: “Today I’m talking with the best coworking space designer in Lewisham ever.”
[01:14] Bernie on the Unreasonable Connetion event: “150 seats because that’s Dunbar’s magic number for community”
[01:55] Dean’s philosophy distilled: “I would like to be known for doing the work... just that I was able to show up each day.”
[03:27] The LinkedIn exhaustion: “Performing in order to engage people to sell your services, for me, is exhausting.”
[04:38] The content trap exposed: “A lot of the content... is created from frameworks or they’re created from data... They’re taking that information, repurposing it.”
[06:46] The proof principle: “I’ve done the work, I have the proof, and so therefore it gives me the confidence to continually talk.”
[11:55] The design maturity problem: “Beautiful design is table stakes... you end up a little bit with beautiful design slop.”
[14:41] The uncomfortable truth: “There is no framework for creating something new... you just have to walk the walk.”
[20:31] Coworking 1.0 explained: “His idea of coworking was people working together as equals... congregate around the table in a non-hierarchical way.”
[22:49] Coworking 2.0 reality: “Most operators today are competing on price, location, and the quality of space.”
[25:51] The 3.0 proposal: “The centrepiece needs to shift to this concept of what I call a hook.”
[26:38] Beyond desks and WiFi: “It’s something beyond we have desks and super fast WiFi... It’s a new centre of gravity.”
[28:34] Programming for purpose: “You can programme the space... to accommodate different hooks.”
[29:24] Where to find Dean: “I am Dean Connell. You can find that on Substack... It’s called Work in Progress.”
The Exhaustion Economy: Why Future-of-Work Content Is Broken
Dean names something every operator feels but rarely articulates: the content industrial complex around “the future of work” has become performative theatre.
He’s been meditating on this. Actually doing the work of thinking it through rather than spinning plates for algorithm engagement.
The pattern he identifies is damning.
Most future-of-work content creators build from borrowed materials—McKinsey frameworks, conference insights, and other people’s data repurposed into LinkedIn carousels.
They’re aggregating rather than originating. There’s nothing wrong with synthesis, but when the entire ecosystem runs on recycled thinking, exhaustion becomes inevitable.
Dean’s exit strategy is radical simplicity: stop predicting, start creating.
Rather than telling people what the future holds, show them what today’s actions can generate. The future materialises through the act of doing the work, not through speculation about what might come.
For independent operators drowning in thought leadership that never seems to apply to their actual Tuesday morning problems, this reframe is liberating.
You don’t need to know where coworking is heading. You need to know what you’re building today and why it matters to the humans who show up.
The Proof Problem: Consultants vs. Builders
Dean draws a sharp line between those who advise on workspace and those who’ve actually delivered it.
His own credibility comes from a specific vantage point: he worked in-house.
Not as an outside consultant dropping recommendations and disappearing, but as someone embedded in the business delivering the product to end users. Strategy, design, user experience—he held the whole stack. The feedback loops were immediate and unforgiving.
This 360-degree view changes everything you understand about work.
When you’re accountable for outcomes rather than presentations, theory becomes expensive. What survives is what actually functions.
The workspace design industry has matured to a point where landlords are waking up to their ecosystems—retail, residential, commercial, all woven together. They’re hiring traditional consulting firms to develop these products.
The result, Dean argues, is beautiful design slop. Polished surfaces with no product evolution underneath.
The inherent product isn’t really evolved, he says. It’s just prettier.
For operators making decisions about their spaces, this is a helpful filter. Is this advice coming from someone who had to live with the consequences of their recommendations? Or someone who delivered a deck and moved on?
Coworking 1.0: Bernard de Coven and the Original Vision
Dean traces coworking back to its etymological roots, and the history matters more than most operators realise.
Bernard de Coven, an American game designer, coined the phrase in 1999.
His vision had nothing to do with shared desks, hot-desking, or any of the real estate language that would later colonise the term.
De Coven imagined people working together as equals. A project or task at the centre. Ten people congregating around a table in a non-hierarchical way to solve a particular problem. Breaking down corporate structures. Everyone is equal in his eyes.
This is the crucial insight: coworking, in its original form, was a method of working.
A work style. Not a building type. Not a lease arrangement. A way humans could relate to shared challenges without the weight of corporate hierarchy pressing down on them.
Somewhere between 1999 and now, the industry forgot this.
We kept the word but lost the meaning.
Coworking 2.0: When Work Became Abstract
The version most operators know emerged around 2005, often credited to Brad Neuberg in San Francisco.
Dean describes the shift clearly: the centrepiece shifted from a specific project or task to an abstract concept.
Your work, whatever that means to you. My work, whatever that means to me. Company A, Company B, and Company C are all working independently in the shared environment.
The consequences are now obvious.
Most operators today compete on price, location, and quality of space. These are the only levers available when your product is “somewhere to do work.”
This isn’t a criticism—it works. Beautiful spaces in good locations at competitive prices attract members.
But the competition becomes a race to marginal improvements. A slightly nicer fit-out. A slightly better coffee machine. Slightly faster WiFi.
Dean calls beautiful design table stakes.
Everyone’s reached a level of maturity where the baseline is genuinely good. Which means differentiation has to come from somewhere else entirely.
Coworking 3.0: The Hook That Changes Everything
Dean’s proposal for the next evolution isn’t incremental. It’s a fundamental recentring.
If 1.0 had a project at the centre and 2.0 had abstract work at the centre, 3.0 puts something Dean calls the “hook” at the centre—a specific experience that unifies the community.
His examples are deliberately varied: a coworking space for veterinarians. A space for people passionate about animals. Music. Food. Wellness. Childcare. Coffee. Sports.
The hook isn’t work. The hook is identity.
It’s the answer to “who are we and why do we gather?”
This makes intuitive sense when you consider what’s happened to work itself.
In a world where knowledge workers can work anywhere, where AI is dissolving the nine-to-five, where “the work” is becoming increasingly abstract—asking people to gather around work is asking them to gather around smoke.
But asking them to gather around a shared passion? A community of practice? A specific problem set that matters to their lives?
That’s something people will commute for. That’s worth leaving the home office for.
Programming for Purpose: The Space as Platform
Bernie connects Dean’s framework to a conversation he had with Xavier at Commons Hub in Brussels.
Instead of charging a monthly fee for access, Xavier programmes different days for different communities.
Monday is crypto day. Tuesday is food people. Wednesday is game designers.
The insight is almost embarrassingly obvious once you see it: nobody goes to a coworking space five days a week anymore. So why sell it that way?
Dean built on this logic when developing Old Sessions House.
The space isn’t fixed—it suggests utility. You walk into a particular environment, and it signals how you might use it. Different hooks accommodate different modes. Different days accommodate different communities.
The implications for operators are significant.
Your space isn’t just a location. It’s a platform for gathering. And platforms need programming.
The Walk-the-Walk Problem: Why There’s No Framework
Here’s the uncomfortable truth Dean keeps returning to: there is no framework for creating something new.
You can’t download a template for building a veterinarian coworking space. No consultant has a playbook for the music-focused community workspace. The path doesn’t exist until you walk it.
This creates a specific kind of anxiety for founders and operators.
We want certainty. We want case studies. We want someone to tell us it’s been done before and how to do it.
Dean’s value proposition isn’t certainty. It’s documentation.
He can codify the proof from his own journey—the decisions made, the trade-offs encountered, the outcomes generated. He can show you what happened when they put rooms without natural light in specific configurations. He can share the breadcrumbs he’s left along the way.
But he cannot walk your path for you.
The specific hook for your community, the particular experience that will create gravitational pull—that’s yours to discover through the act of building.
The work is the work. There are no shortcuts.
What This Means for Independent Operators
The operators who’ll thrive in the next era aren’t the ones with the best crystal ball.
They’re the ones willing to experiment with specificity.
What’s the hook for your space? Not “community” as a vague aspiration. Not “great vibes” as a marketing claim. What specific experience unifies the humans who should be gathering in your space?
This requires knowing your neighbourhood.
Understanding the latent communities that exist but haven’t found their physical home. Paying attention to who actually shows up and what they actually care about.
Dean’s not prescribing answers. He’s describing a methodology: do the work, document the journey, let the future emerge from today’s actions.
For operators exhausted by trend-chasing and thought leadership that doesn’t apply to their reality, this is permission to stop predicting and start building.
The future of work doesn’t matter.
What matters is what you make of today.
Links and Resources
Dean Connell’s Work
Dean’s Website: IMDc Co
- and on SubStack
Link mentioned in the podcast
Projects & Community
Join this and other conversations with people in the LinkedIn Coworking Group
Unreasonable Connection Monthly online gatherings for Coworking Community Builders.
London Coworking Assembly
Bernie’s Projects
One More Thing
Coworking brings communities together, helping people find and share their voices.
Each episode of the Coworking Values Podcast explores Accessibility, Community, Openness, Collaboration, and Sustainability—values that shape the spaces where we gather, work, and grow.
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