Another great year has passed, filled with both big and small changes. Here are some reflections and highlights from us. Enjoy!
Community & Coworking
This year our community grew even bigger when Mindpark opened in both Malmö and Lund. With twenty-three offices in Malmö, seventeen in Lund and forty-five in Helsingborg we are now able to house more companies and people than ever. We are continuously striving to make people connect by offering venues in southern Sweden’s three biggest cities. For our coworkers in Helsingborg, this means that they have access to workplaces in two new cities and even more Mindpark friends than before.
Hence the opening of two new Mindpark sites, we have changed our graphical profile including our logo, to symbolize a new and fresh start! There are no bigger changes to the logo, we have just changed it to all yellow.
In October we started an honourable mission for the long-time home of Mindpark Helsingborg, the old Tretorn factory. Our estate owner, Wihlborgs Fastigheter, gave us the task of organising activities for the people and companies in the entire building, with the aim to make people meet and connect with one another. Among other things, we are sending updates on what’s going on in the building via a newsletter. Subscribe here.
Together with our great community, we won “Best Coworking Space in Sweden” and then going on to win “Best Coworking Space in the Nordics” competing against Maria01 in Helsinki, Rainmaking Loft in Copenhagen, 657 Oslo and Musterið in Reykjavik in Global Startup Awards. A huge thanks and let’s keep on rocking together!
Helsingborg Stad rewarded us with a business star! Here is an excerpt from their nomination “Few have in the same way inspired creative meetings, business and experiences as the crew behind the concept that now sends out satellites in other cities. With you at Mindpark, entrepreneurs, start-ups, students, children, culture, doers – people meet. For us, you are the best example of what a Business Star is.”
Since we probably are the biggest fan of all of the companies at Mindpark, we are always trying to tell the world what’s happening within these companies. But how are we doing it? That is an excellent question! We are putting a really big “intern” bird in their offices sharing it on our social media…Perhaps we should find a new way of doing this, but right now we seem to be caught in the loop of crazy creativity.
During the year we have continued with Mindpark Go that offers workplaces for newly started companies (for the cost of drinking free coffee during a month). Free Pass Day offers people to work for free in our coworking space for one day to feel the “vibe” of the place. Going into the new year, we will keep both of these going.
We have become sporty! Signing up and running Springtime had an unexpected outcome in the shape of lunchtime workout sessions during the whole year. Oh my, that muscle fever! Let’s see what other competitions and sports we can conquer in 2020.
We asked (or maybe we bribed) one of our coworkers to share his view on us
“Mindpark Helsingborg feels creative and is filled with a mix of interesting people. I sit alone in my office since most of my crew is out and about and the others are at our headquarters in Århus Denmark, but I never feel lonely thanks to all of my extra “colleagues” at the coworking space. Mindpark is a very flexible place. Right now I have one solution for the company and my office, but this can quickly change and the Mindpark crew always and easily seem to find new suitable solutions.” / Emil Nilsson, CEO Systemfrugt Sweden & Norway
The Extension
As we all know things don’t always go as planned. The extension with seventeen new offices that was set for September 2019 will be ready during spring 2020. We are super excited! Some offices are already taken and some are still available for you. So come join us!
The City
Our collaboration with the city of Helsingborg, to make Open space a great place, has continued to develop and changed for the better. During this year we have hosted over 220 activities and 10 exhibitions – yay! And more than 4000 participants have visited Open Space. On the other hand, the city startup accelerator, THINK accelerate, have moved out from our premises. Of course, that feels a bit sad, but change is a part of life and we will still have contact with the startups from the program.
Camp Ven 2019
Camp Ven, our three day unconference on the island of Ven, was arranged for the third time this past summer. We are overwhelmed by all of the positive feedback from the participants and are looking forward to the fourth edition in 2021! This time we did some changes including hosting it in collaboration with E-Commerce Park and THINK Accelerate and letting a sponsor organize the really appreciated crayfish party. The unconference grid was easily filled with interesting subjects leading to deep conversations and learnings. On the down-side, we didn’t manage to get as many non-Swedish participants, something we have to work on in the future!
The Café
In the café, we have continued our mission to become more sustainable. Among some other things, we have changed our disposables to more sustainable options eg. 100% recycled material, for instance, PLU plastics.
The famous toast is gone! Why? People simply stopped buying it once we took the turkey out (in other words people went totally cold turkey!).
The sales in our café have actually decreased due to different circumstances in the surrounding buildings. It will be interesting to see if we can change this in the upcoming year.
Conference & Meetings
We put some more colour into our conference rooms because apparently colours affect you in a positive way. The other reason is that our new coworking spaces in Malmö and Lund look amazing, so we wanted to give our place in Helsingborg some love. Who doesn’t want to have a meeting in an all green or purple room?
To make sure everyone always gets a friendly welcome we have moved our reception desk to our café. This way we can make sure you always get the best service by our amazing staff.
And more: after being used as an office for a few years, the popular meeting room Tretorn is back again! Since Tretorn is still neutral in colour, it’s perfect for the ones who don’t like bright colours…hehe, we know you’re out there! (and we do like you as well).
The Mindpark Crew
During this year we have had crewmembers from the other Mindpark sites visiting us in Helsingborg. The Crew at Mindpark Helsingborg has also been working in Malmö and Lund. This is part of our vision to spread the Mindpark culture to our new sites and learning from each other.
AND SOME STATS
During this year our conference and meeting guests can be divided into three groups:
30 % Mindpark coworking space members
20 % Private sector
50 % Public sector
Coffee sold in the café during 2019:
Standard Latte’s: 2464 st
Cappuccino: 1451 st
Filtered coffee: 15045 st
About 170 new people decided to follow us on Instagram this year, we now have almost 1200 followers watching our very serious (or?) posts and insta-stories.
During the past year, we have begun developing our LinkedIn and have gone from almost zero to close to 700 followers. Comparing the reach activity on our Facebook page December 2018 and December 2019, it has multiplied, from 15,349 to 30,034. Since we opened three new sites some changes have been made to our webpage. From 1800 visitors a month to about 6400. It has increased by more than 1200 unique users per month. We are working on improving it even more in the upcoming year.
SNEAKY PEEK FOR NEXT YEAR
The biggest news at Mindpark Helsingborg is obviously our extension with seventeen new offices!
And then there’s nothing else going on…
Joking! Of course, there are. We are planning a huge event for investors, it’s still a secret though so don’t tell anyone. One of our meeting rooms will disappear. It is with great sadness we say goodbye to Biblioteket. If that’s your favourite room make sure to use it as much as you possibly can in January before it’s gone. But don’t worry! We will have two new conference rooms coming soon. We have updated our sustainability policy which now includes minimizing our CO2 emission by 7% during 2020. This means that we’ll have to do some tweaks and changes in the way we are running our daily business. And as you might have already guessed we will continue to intensify the collaboration with our fellow Mindpark sites.
So, pretty exciting stuff right?
If you want to read our report from last year you can find it here.
We are looking forward to an amazing new year!
LOT’S OF LOVE
/ the Mindpark Helsingborg Crew