What this coworking owner saw at the Unreasonable Connection event

Sandie Johnston is good at building community. She co-owns LIME TREE WORK SHOP, a coworking business in a converted warehouse in Sevenoaks, Kent in the UK, and the proof is in the details: her members' children have done work experience at each other's companies. Two businesses that met through their membership now work together as formal partners.

"That is kind of our nirvana," she says. People showing up for each other.

But for a long time, Sandie didn't have that herself. Nobody to compare notes with. No one who understood the particular pressures of running a small coworking space, managing an intimate community, holding the whole thing together with a business partner.

"For a small venture like ourselves, we've only got ourselves that we're asking and talking to."

That changed when Coworks sent her to London.

LIME TREE WORK SHOP and the people behind it

Sandie runs LIME TREE WORK SHOP alongside her co-founder, business partner and, more importantly, sister, Cathy. The space sits inside a warehouse in Sevenoaks, and its identity is rooted in the creative community it serves. It is not a generic flex office. It is a specific place, with a specific feel, built for people who respond to that environment.

Coworks is the software platform LIME TREE WORK SHOP uses to manage operations, and the company sponsored Sandie to attend Unreasonable Connection LIVE! by the London Coworking Assembly, a peer-gathering event organized by Bernie Mitchell.

The idea was simple: instead of putting the Coworks logo on a sign, we sent an operator to an event for operators.

A room full of people who understood the problem

The event brought together a deliberately mixed group: space owners, social impact organizations, local government representatives, tech platforms, community builders.

Four sessions, four rooms, everyone rotating. The aim was conversation, not presentations. There were real challenges on the table, instead of polished presentations.

Sandie's group included Bernie's organization, which measures social impact; a creative coworking space called Gather Round focused on charity and tech businesses; and people from the venue itself, a not-for-profit working with local councils.

The second session on social impact had particular staying power for Sandie. A lot of the discussion was about B Corp accreditation and the gap between genuine community impact and box-ticking.

That led to some hard conversations: If you can't afford the certification, do you stop doing the work? And if you do the work without the badge, are you doing enough to tell the story?

Three things Sandie took away

Beyond social impact, Sandie came home with a clearer picture of a few things LIME TREE WORK SHOP could be doing differently.

• The newsletter can do and be more. LIME TREE WORK SHOP sends occasional updates, but Sandie felt they could be more substantive: interview new members rather than just announcing them, frame events around what attendees will actually get out of attending rather than just what is on, and think of the newsletter as a genuine marketing tool for both current members and people who have not joined yet.
  
  
• Events inside the space are harder to measure than they look. Several operators at the event were wrestling with the same question: are you spending too much on programming that people skip for an impromptu hallway conversation? Sandie's answer is not to stop doing events but to be more deliberate about the invitation itself. "You've absolutely got to be engaging with people and say, you should be coming to this because this is a great opportunity." You can't just build it and wait.
  
  
• A community manager role is one role, not two. Sandie described a lightbulb moment during the fourth session, when the group talked about what a community manager actually needs to be. She left thinking she needed one person who fits deeply, with real latitude to shape engagement, propose new ideas, and carry the culture of the space.

What made it worth the trip

"Huge thank you to you and Coworks for sponsoring me to be there,”: said Sandie.. “It’s something I would like to do again."

The format of the event meant that a different group configuration would have produced an entirely different conversation. The sessions she was in, the people she happened to sit beside, the problems that surfaced because of who was in the room. You could attend the same event twice and leave with completely different things.

LIME TREE WORK SHOP runs on Coworks, the coworking management platform built for operators who care as much about community as they do about operations.

There is a next Unreasonable Connection event planned for the fall. She is already thinking about going back.

For now, she has something she did not have before: a room full of people who understood exactly what she was talking about.

And for more of this feeling, be sure to join the LinkedIn Community Group.