How We Build Community and Grow Through Partnerships - Frank Uffen, The Social Hub

Josiah: You're the Managing Director of Community at the Social Hub. For many organizations, community is almost an entry-level role, right? Where, oh, we have to have somebody think about programming. You have this very senior role focused on community. What does that say for how organizationally the Social Hub thinks about the power of community? You have this top executive role that's dedicated to community.

Frank: Yeah, well, first of all, I think it needs an acknowledgment. I never thought about it that way, but it's a nice question. I think it's part of our DNA. It's also the fact that we, as investors and founders, are still very involved in the organization. We are also an unusually long part of a community, I would say. Our strategy is to acquire buildings, to operate them, to develop them first, to operate them and to own them with our investors. So we're not leasing buildings on a five-year contract and then someone can go in there with another brand. Now we're really building these communities from the ground up. Yeah, we often say that also our general managers of the locations are more like mayors. No, they're like leading the community. And so my role is to keep innovating in that space, to be also a point of contact for the stakeholders in our environment, from policymakers to schools, to startup organizations that are looking for spaces for partners to either work with our community or or to find a home for their own programs.

Josiah: What does that look like practically in terms of how you spend your time? Because it's such a wide range of potential collaborators. I'm curious how you think about spending a typical day or typical week and how you connect with such a wide range of organizations and people.

Frank: Thank God I'm not all by myself. So, in all the locations, we have a connector, which basically supports the local team with creating fun and meaningful experiences that are all about how do we enhance the experience for our community members. How can they make valuable connections and how can they reach their personal goals? And so my role is to look for like, to define the frameworks in which that can happen. It also has a brand quality that is similar in all the locations, but also that it allows the locations to have a sense of freedom and adapt to local realities. I'm also often an advisor. When we started ten years ago, there was no. organization that brought people into student accommodation and co-working and co-living together. And so we started the Class Foundation, which was a network of people that were interested in innovating this space and learning from each other. And so this is also a vehicle where we do a lot of research. We look for ways to create an impact on our guests. How can we improve their wellbeing? How can we increase their employability? So it's a lot of more societal questions that come together in my work. I travel a lot. I see places, and I speak with people. I'm a bit of an antenna, as we say inside, to pick up the new developments and the trends and incorporate them then, yeah, hopefully in the right way in our offering.

Josiah: Doing this at scale is really interesting to me. You talked about building frameworks, and I'd love to hear a bit more about that because I feel I've seen many hospitality providers attempt to build community or even social interaction, and it ends up being not much more than a happy hour or drinks from this time in the afternoon. Sometimes, people show up, but many times, they do not. It doesn't feel like it's truly capturing the potential of the community. My question for you is, What do effective community-building programs look like as you think about frameworks? What are some of the hallmarks of these programs?

Frank: It may be good to understand we have 16 locations right now with over 6,000 rooms and thousands and thousands of shared square meters of shared spaces. So you basically, yeah, as I said, like a beehive, it's like a little village, right? Urban campus and community center combined. And so our own population is quite large already in itself. So we realized that that's the base, like the hundreds of co-working members in the location, the hundreds of students that are staying there, that's the core population that we serve. And then there is the group around us, like, for example, the neighbors that are looking for a space to work as well, or just a place to have a coffee or lunch. But when we think of the programs and the frameworks, we think of different moments that are complementary to what people already do, but can be a challenge, especially when you're traveling or when you're new to a city. So we have rituals, which start basically of creating a structure in the week that you can count on, that is nice that you see the same people. because you share an interest or you have the same hobbies. So we have things like the community morning coffee on Monday, where you just, you know, can hang out, start the week. It's something that a lot of people take for granted when they work for big organizations, but if you're a freelancer or you're new, that's not a given. That goes through the week with sports activities. We have lunch and learn when we bring entrepreneurs and other innovators to the hotels and inspire our community, as well as special moments like celebrations throughout the year. Not only the festivities that people often bring from different cultures, they like to honor it and share it. But also themes that are really important to this generation. We see that the people who are part of our community are above average and interested in sustainability, diversity and inclusion, in human rights, like a lot of topics that are extremely dynamic and exciting. And our program also brings this kind of topics on a regular basis on the calendar and we invite people. that are experts in it, are change makers, are activists, and have conversations with our community. So it's things that I'm also interested in. It's the easiest job in the world, quite frankly.

Josiah: Well, I'm curious because you've done so much, but you also say there's a lot more to do in community. I think broadly speaking, and it sounds like there's a lot of things that you're looking at now, I guess, as you look at, you know, not only the rituals, the things that are in place today, but what the future of community building could look like. Are there things that you're looking at now or doing that you're most excited about that might represent the future of community building?

Frank: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, our challenge is to make communities really inclusive and accessible. I benefited from higher education and opportunities that allowed, you know, my own mobility, my social ability, so to say, to achieve the things that I wanted to do. And I realized the more cities we go to, we're now in seven different countries, that it's not a given anymore. It's not a given anymore for people to find a place that they can afford in cities, they find access to education that they can afford. So for us, in our mission, it's not just to create a better world, and better society together, but also to make sure that people can access what we offer, even if they don't have the financial means. So that's something that I see is not just our challenge. It's something that we also see with our university partners with corporations that we work with. So yeah, I'm currently working on programs that make sure that people have access to what we offer and really create a vehicle to create equal opportunity and to achieve social mobility for those that benefit most from it.

Josiah: Can you tell me a little bit about your partnership with the Talent Garden?

Frank: I found this to be really interesting. Well, this is exactly one of those ideas that for a lot of people, especially in the markets that we are, the skills that they learn in university are often not sufficient. And when you come out of university, often the cliche is that you've learned a lot, but it's not useful for the job that you're going to apply for. Talent Garden is a group that we have known for many years, and they focus on developing digital skillsets and leadership skills that are extremely practical. So it's not like a, they're not very long programs, but something that we can also offer to our community and that will really help them to gain the skills and have access to, to companies, to professionals. That they need to meet to basically find their next job. So that's the base. We just announced it. We're actually working on the pilots for the coming calendar year. But I see a lot of that shift from traditional education more towards like lifelong learning. And we're going to incorporate that in our experiences.

Josiah: We're living in a time of extraordinary technological change and evolution, whether it's artificial intelligence or many other areas. I'm interested in this moment of change. What are the non-obvious areas for innovation? And I feel like what you're speaking to, organizing people, using space and cities, helping people learn skills, These are maybe some of the biggest emerging opportunities for hospitality providers a lot of people aren't talking about. And it's really cool to see you and your teams driving innovation here. You don't just have to work in technology to be participating in all the change that's going on right now.

Frank: Yeah, that's true. For me, technology is an enabler. Also post-COVID in all the interviews that we did, all the conversations we have with our community members, they're just like, don't give me another online course. You know, I have plenty of those. I come to a place where I want to. Be surrounded by people. I want to meet people. I want to hang out. I want to do fun things. So that's really for us, the key understanding is like, how do you use technology to enable connections and sense of belonging and also even wellbeing? We offer wellbeing support for those that need it in their own language. That's something that I could never offer. in each location. That's something that you need a platform for. And the same with how do we create a journey also beyond someone's stay? You know, how do you stay in touch with people? How do you connect members of our community also if they are in different locations? How do we communicate with our community that doesn't only depend on us, but that the community can also talk to each other? So those are things that I'm really, really interested, even in understanding, you know, our community's needs. For us, technology is providing a lot of insights that we sometimes intuitively felt, but we're looking also now for the data to make the point. And also to prove our impact, because our investors are super interested in this young demographic because the built environment, as we said in the beginning, is a condition for quality of life at the end of the day. So if we provide all this experience, if we focus really on community development, how can we also measure that impact? And we see that a lot of people are benefiting greatly from it. Because you see that those that have access to shared spaces and are active in a community, their wellbeing is much higher. And also for those that are already have a bit like a non-traditional background or are facing more challenges. Also having those services helps them become more resilient. Not everyone is going to be always happy, but it's something at least that we know what works and to try to improve that. Yeah. Every time incrementally. So that's the mission.

Josiah: I appreciate you speaking both to people's individual wellness, development, learning new experiences, but also the connection to the business, the community at large, what you're doing, and then the larger city, the environment, because it's also interconnected. And I want our listeners to think about this holistically, think about serving their guests, but also think about the opportunity of bringing people together to drive change, to make better cities.

Frank: I think this idea of learning, of offering learning, is super exciting. How do you actually facilitate this lifelong learning inside your community? Last year, I developed a concept called the Better Society Masterclass. The reason we met a lot of people who were extremely passionate about a societal cause that they wanted to solve, whether through an entrepreneurial approach or more from an activist approach, But a lot of these people lacked skills and networks, and they would come to us to ask for help if they could host an event there. And we thought like, well, if all of you have this in common, so what can we offer in addition to you instead of what you offer to us? And so this Better Society Masterclass was really about bringing change makers together and connecting them with the people that could help them access also resources that individually they found challenging and also develop their ability to build partnerships and collaborations to create the change that they were aiming for. And this sort of community that came together then and the energy that gave it developed in this group. That's when I really saw the power of learning, like learning together and being able to support the community beyond the traditional hospitality offer that we have. So I feel that's something that is very close to the social hubs mission, but I think it's also something that more and more people realize that learning is going to happen outside of the traditional classroom spaces and something that we as a sector can support and inspire people to be part of our community.