Wow! What a year 2019 was for DeskLodge, from launching DeskLodge House to welcoming lots of new DeskLodger’s and our ever expanding DeskLodge Team, right through to some crazy events and socials which we plan to match in 2020, it’s been a fun and productive time!
If you want to find out what you are in for this coming year, can we get a rewind on 2019 and find out exactly what happened at our three workspaces in both Bristol and Basingstoke.
We started the year extremely excited as we celebrated our great big launch party for our legendary six floors of coworking amazingness, DeskLodge House in Bristol! This legendary party had an Alice in wonderland theme, featured lots of drinks, live music from local surf band Los Savages and lots of fancy dress costumes! Find out more here DeskLodge House Launch party
We crowned Zoe Taylor from one of DeskLodge Old Market’s first ever office teams Sparkol to be our first DeskLodger of the month for 2019 and introduced Sweet Friday to perk up our DeskLodgers after a week of mega-productivity.
Our fun Basingstoke offices were really starting to build up momentum as coworking became the new buzzword on the local scene and hotdeskers started to enjoy the benefits of this new way of working.
In February, we introduced the DeskLodge Company Profiles which would transform into a full-on vlog series as the year progressed, our biggest and ever-growing team at Old Market Blu Wireless, were the first to take part.
DeskLodge Basingstoke joined in with the DeskLodger of the month series, introducing fix ed desker Carl Whitehood from 99 Boat as their first DeskLodger.
Oh, and It snowed but we stayed open! What snow day?
We have been celebrating International Women’s Day since 2018 and hope to continue with this empowering celebration every year. Celebrating women in business and in life, with inspiring talks that encourage DeskLodgers and female empowering groups to join us and share their stories and achievements as strong women in Bristol. It would be great to expand this to all centres in 2020!
A social event that always goes down well are the DeskLodge Games Nights. DeskLodger Chris Lock hosts with a selection of indie board games at the very popular DeskLodge Old Market Social with good fun and beers, it’s like having our very own Games Café but the drinks are free!
As DeskLodge House got busier and busier we hired our superhero host Sam (known as Sam VT as we already had another Sam) who joined us at DeskLodge House, Sam has since been promoted to Lead host in less than a year, so it’s been a great year for him!
Up on the third floor at DeskLodge House fun new spaces were appearing from The shire, think Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to fun meeting rooms including the Kingsmen space and the Brexit Bunker full of all the supplies you will need when the alarm rings out!
Our Desklodger of the month was hotdesker Pascal Eissler from Transformational Business Network and a resident at DeskLodge House.
With April comes Easter and the annual Easter egg hunt and DeskLodgers go mad for it! Who will be the lucky winners this year?
As part of our Productivity blog series we tried & tested the Pomodoro Technique to find out if it really did help us stay productive…Read about the Pomodoro Technique
Other productivity blogs from the series include
Shhhhhh! Sofar Sounds came back to DeskLodge for another secret gigs session in The Oak Tree with brilliant performances from Myylo, Jonny Morgan Music and We are Oof. It was such a pleasure to have such talent and a friendly crowd join us again!
Sofar Sounds returns to DeskLodge
Over at DeskLodge Basingstoke the Hants & Surrey Google Developers Group joined us for a successful evening and live streaming from Google HQ in San Francisco! It was great to see such a big meet up event making use of our amazing Atrium space!
Our Desklodger of the month was Alice Stephenson who is the CEO at Stephenson Law and residents at DeskLodge Old Market.
In May we decided to redirect our Company Profile blogs into vlogs, offering a virtual interview and really sharing the characters and personalities of the companies that use DeskLodge as a base.
First up was Emma Millington from long term Old Market resident team Modular, who discussed why Modular choose to work from DeskLodge, how they use our spaces and what keeps them productive.
Watch more DeskLodge Company Profiles on our YouTube channel
DeskLodge Basingstoke The Big IoT Hackathon weekender in May which saw tech head form groups around the open Atrium spaces with amazingly positive and productive results.
DeskLodgers of the month included Nick Turston from BookNow at Besingstoke, Emma Woodham from Old Market residents DAS and Luke Allsop from Mantis PR at DeskLodge House
Our amazing in-house sports therapist Natasha Ryan celebrated a year of helping DeskLodgers de-stress and relax with her super massage skills at DeskLodge Bristol. This girl is always booked up in advance, so make sure you book in for her sessions early to avoid disappointment!
In June we celebrated National Coworking Day at DeskLodge Old Market with a lovely big (locally made) cake to say thanks to all our amazing DeskLodgers.
DeskLodge House got double busy when Network Rail moved in for a few months whilst their new offices were being made, they were a great team and we were sad to see them go at the end of the year.
Basingstoke introduced the super-fun host Mollie Openshaw to their team and things have been sunny at DeskLodge Basingstoke ever since!
DeskLodgers of the month included long-standing Old Market host Sam Daly and Richard Lowe from Hewlett Rand at DeskLodge House.
DeskLodge just kept expanding and we introduced another new host at DeskLodge House, the dashing Dan Seal! He’s got a lovely beard!
In his spare time Dan enjoys travelling, flying drones, photography and caring for his beard!
DeskLodger of the months included Dan Rutherford from DeskLodge House residents Envelop Risk, Basingstoke nominated Daryl Mitchell from Imagesound and Harriet Yate-Smith from hotdesking company MWC at Old Market.
Hanan Moller took centre stage representing Ultrasoc in the latest Company Profiles Vlog, watch below!
DeskLodge Old Market also went live on Instagram Stories which was great fun!
The month ended with another new edition to the DeskLodge Team as Hollie Skinner became part of the super host double act with Mollie at Basingstoke. These hosts have certainly put their stamp on the place!
In a month when most people are holidaying , we still managed to cram it full of fun events and moments here at DeskLodge from welcoming the inventive Vegan Vend machine Daisy who fills DeskLodgers bellies with yummy vegan treats 24/7.
As our DeskLodgers of the month we nominated Stig Telfer from the Stack HPC hotdesking team at Old Market, Alistair Tripp from Glassboxx in Basingstoke and Kora Faithful from Nudge Digital at House.
We focused on mindfulness techniques to help productivity up on the blog to help ease the stresses of daily life.
We also introduced Pete who has been a valid member of the DeskLodge House Team offering support to the hosts whilst he works on his masters degree in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Science, what a hero!
Enterprise M3 took over one of our large spaces as part of our DeskLodge family in Basingstoke.
This month saw the return of the legendary end of the summer DeskLodge social. The theme was Mexican Fiesta and saw the whole of Bristol DeskLodge from both the Old Market and DeskLodge House locations come together for the party of the year.
From mexican décor, DJs, face painting and tex-mex treats, this party went off with a bang and will seriously take some beating in 2020!
Find out what happened in our blog - DeskLodge Mexican Fiesta
Our DeskLodgers of the month featured Jade Wicks from Ask an Artisan and Heather Cullimore from Severnside Community Rail.
Basingstoke doubled up on the coffee and cake events raising money for both the Macmillan Cancer and Jeans for Genes Day charities.
Building encouragement to keep up the enthusiasm in your work the DeskLodge blog offered 5 productivity boosting ideas to keep you going as the darker nights started to draw in!
To end the month Team DeskLodge took a well earned away day trip to Cardiff and a visit to the castle!
The Great DeskLodge Bake Off returned for a second year raising money for Bristol Giving Day! This popular event saw DeskLodgers share their baked treats with the always willing DeskLodgers….Who doesn’t like eating lots of cake? Find out in the blog which DeskLodger/Baker became the Bake Off winner up on the blog….
Inspired to save pre-loved items from landfill, DeskLodge Old Market held their first DeskLodge Jumble where DeskLodgers could bring in pre-loved fashion, homeware and tech items to sell whilst raising more money for the Bristol Giving Day charity! Expect more of these events to pop up in over the next year!
Brian Mason represented Equal Experts who are based at DeskLodge House in October’s Company Profile vlog, find out what Brian said here……
DeskLodge Host Sabrina McCue became Old Markets DeskLodger of the month, alongside Matt Wherlock from House’s residents Indigo Careers.
The Halloween social kicked off with a pumpkin carving competition and plenty of beer crowning hotdesker Zoe Brown for her winning pumpkin design.
Infradata and Glyconics teams joined DeskLodge Basingstokes as new residents.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a coworking spaces. Find out the basics on how DeskLodge House was created in the November blog.
The lovely DeskLodge resident Rory Mccgwire from Atom Content Marketing was chosen to be Novembers Desklodger of the month and Old Market’s Lead Host Sam Daly left us to go travelling, don’t worry, rumour has it he will be back in the next year! We wished him luck and look forward to seeing (hearing hehe!) him again very soon.
Forest Bakery popped up at Old Market much to the delight of our DeskLodgers, did you see the size of those pain au chocolat??
Basingstoke welcomed new resident EM3 with a big party event and swapped their evening social to a lunchtime social with pizzas instead of beers and also shared a blog post on the top 5 places to eat in the area.
Old Market got a makeover with improvements made to both Grumpys Shed and Grandmas House meeting spaces. We said goodbye to the Benn Room but hello to the new meeting room The Cellar and our lovely new, and already very popular, hotdesking space, The Grove.
The month ended perfectly with our super-cool new host Anna Smith joining us to help out at both Bristol locations, welcome Anna!
With December comes Christmas sparkles and merriness kicking off with our annual DeskLodge advent calendar where DeskLodgers are chosen at random to open a daily calendar door (or in our case - envelope) on the countdown to Christmas.
Basingstoke launched their first Complany Profile vlog with the lovely Martin Teasdale from BPA Quality watch here…..
Both Bristol and Basingstoke locations held Christmas Markets and the whole team celebrated Christmas at The Spielgeltent in Bristol.
We ended the year with our annual Christmas jumper, mulled wine and mince pies days and wished each other a very merry Christmas! And that’s our year, in a nutshell!
Happy New Year DeskLodgers, you’ve been amazing!
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