Following a number of western European cities like Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon, Milano, Brussels, Amsterdam and Dublin, Belgrade has finally and after a decade of waiting become the host city for the long-awaited conference dedicated to a contemporary global trend of coworking and coliving. The international conference entitled “Coworking & Coliving Conference Southeast Europe” will be held from 9 to 11 October in Belgrade (Kombank dvorana) and Mokrin (Mokrin House), gathering over 300 participants from around the world.

Coworking & Coliving as a novel business concept is changing the world economy, but at the same time aims at developing a new level of human interaction, stimulating cooperation and intrinsic networking, as well as creativity and exchange of ideas. The concept also boosts innovation, entrepreneurship and employment, developing a community that is open to ideas swap, cooperation and readiness to change –underlined Miroslav Mijatov, the convener of the conference and founder of the first coworking space in Serbia – “Smart Office”. He also used the opportunity to again shed light on the fact that coworking spaces have been hosting freelancers, entrepreneur and digital nomads from around the globe for years now, and that even corporations are adopting the concept as it boosts creativity and team work of the employees.

From 2005 till now, over 15,000 coworking spaces were open across the globe. Serbia has over time become the part of the community and a pioneer in the implementing the concept in 2012 was no one else but Miroslav Mijatov when he opened Smart Office. Today, almost 40 coworking spaces are operational in Serbia, while one of the most innovative concepts was developed by Ivan Brkljac as a coworking & coliving space in Mokrin village – Mokrin House, a house of ideas where digital nomads who believe in the freedom to operate business from any corner of the world come together. Thanks to this philosophy, Mokrin House ended up on the Forbes list of best coliving spaces in the world for digital nomads.

The first two days of the Conference will take place in Kombank dvorana in Belgrade, while on the third day all the guests will continue with conference activities in Mokrin House, one of the co-organizers of the event alongside the Coworking Association of Serbia. The hot topics such as self-employment, freelancing, remote work, digital nomadism, innovations and start-ups will charge the majority of panels and workshops. The partner of the Conference is GIZ – German Society for International Cooperation, and the importance of the event was also recognized by the Serbia creates platform that operates as a part of a wider initiative of the Serbian prime minister, Ms Ana Brnabic focused on supporting existing and developing new concept of Serbian creative industries.

We want the conference to be held annually in one of the Southeast European countries and to continue to promote the importance of entrepreneurial business model and self-employment for local economies. The aim is to internationally spread the coworking & coliving ideas and business concepts and get more closely connected to the global network while strengthening the Serbian coworking community, exchange of ideas and examples of good practice from around the world, and keep actively promoting Serbia as one of the primary hubs for creative industries in the SEE region – organizers have underlined, also announcing the participation of numerous key speakers from the global coworking community  such as Carsten Foertsch (Germany), Mike LaRosa (USA), Tobias Kremkau (Germany), Ronald Van Der Hoff (Netherlands), Lenneke VanRessum (Netherlands) as well as many other prominent experts from Serbia and the world including seven TEDx speakers: Lazar Dzamic, Branimir Brkljac and Slavimir Stojanovic from Serbia, Matthew Trinetti, Kelsea Crawford, Betsy Bonnema from the USA and Stéphanie Brisson from the Canada.

Securing a place at the event is possible upon registration here, while more details on the Conference are available on the official website of the event: www.cccsee.com