How do you actually measure community?

It’s a question I’ve been sitting with for years. And at Coworking Europe in Berlin, I heard people talking about it. But honestly? It doesn’t feel like the conversation has moved that far beyond RSVPs and event check-ins.

Even when I was part of the founding team, ten years ago, I coined the term the PLATF9RM Pound: the real value generated when people work, meet and collide in the same space.

Back then I had dreams of mapping it visually, the whole ecosystem. Who worked with who, who hired who, whose friendship turned into a business. I remember flicking through David McCandless’s Information is Beautiful and thinking: that’s what I want for us. A living map of the network we were quietly building.

I’ve watched members pay £99 a month and bill £3,000 in a single week. I’ve seen people build entire freelance careers simply by joining a coworking space, not because they showed up transactionally, but because they genuinely invested in the community around them, without expecting anything back. I’ve seen friendships formed, marriages made and even a baby or two. The return came precisely because they weren’t chasing it.

That’s the thing about community. The value is real. It’s just almost impossible to put a number on without something being lost in translation.

I don’t think we’ve cracked it yet. But I don’t think we should stop trying.