Meeting rooms play an important role in the revenue of your coworking space, so you need to plan and manage these rooms in a way that aligns with your vision for the business. Over time, you want to track and improve the usage of your meeting rooms so that you and your community get maximum value from the rooms.

Meeting Room Design

For your meeting rooms to have enough flexibility to handle different creative uses, you need to get the design right. Your meeting rooms need to put its occupants at ease, inspire creativity and encourage conversation. Design effective meeting rooms by understanding the needs of your coworking members.

Ask yourself the following questions when designing your meeting rooms:

• Do your community members need full-size boardrooms or compact collaboration rooms?
• How do the members in your community like to work; in large groups or small teams?
• Are your meeting rooms aimed primarily at internal use or are they designed to be client-facing?
• How important is privacy or noise control to the communal spaces and what solutions are available?

Holding old-fashioned meetings are not the only way to use modern meeting rooms. You can use the rooms to host events that create value for your coworking company and your community members.

Here are some creative ways to use your meeting rooms.

1. Client Meetings: Let your coworking members meet clients in the meeting room instead of a noisy office or coffee shop. The meeting room will lend credibility to your members as their clients will be impressed by the professional dedicated space.

2. Happy Hour: We all love happy hour. Invite members to the meeting room for snacks and drinks. In addition to strengthening the sense of community, a casual happy hour helps members wind down after a long day.

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3. Meetups: Many coworking spaces often use their meeting rooms to host meetups aimed at bringing together developers, freelancers, artists, tech professionals, and community leaders among other people. Depending on the size of the room, it can be anywhere from a few people to more than twenty.

4. Accountability Groups: Your coworking space lets community members share professional support. Accountability enhances that support by letting members keep each other accountable for ideas and projects. Meeting rooms are the perfect space for accountability check-ins.

5. Work Sprints: Meeting rooms are an effective space for work sprints when teams need to bunker down to complete a project. The rooms remove team members from their regular schedules, enhance cohesiveness and facilitate the close proximity necessary for collaboration.

6. Art Exhibits As a coworking space, consider participating in community art walks and First Fridays to help artists in your community network with other artists, showcase their work, and gain exposure. You can run these events in your meeting rooms and invite your coworkers to peek in throughout the day.

7. Bounce Hours: These refer to informal events where members of a coworking community let others know what they’re working on. One common format for bounce hours is where group members go around taking turns to talk about what they’re working on and ask for help if needed. You’d be surprised how many people go straight in to work and avoid learning about their next-door neighbors. A bounce hour could connect the people in your space and help them get work done at the same time.

8. Lunch & Learns. In this case, community members share ideas while having lunch together. You can make your lunch & learn informal, letting anyone share their thoughts and ideas with the group. Alternatively, you can include formal aspects like presentations if you have a particular theme in mind.

9. Skillshares. Community members such as developers can use meeting rooms for skillshares in which they share skills with others and learn new ones. Think of it as a free tutoring session for anyone who’s interested in the skill of the person presenting. This can be anything from a quick writing or coding workshop, to sketching or a history lesson! Get as technical or whimsical as you like! As long as members are interested , it’s a great way to keep people in your space and maximize use of the meeting room.