I took a job at a coworking space. Programs lead, first person in the role, at a $12 million entrepreneurship hub in South Bend. When I walked in, the operations ran on memory. Fifteen tools that didn't talk to each other. Event logistics living in people's heads. Grant reporting assembled from scattered spreadsheets at quarter end. The kind of setup that works until someone gets sick or forgets a step.
I'm building the nervous system. One Airtable record triggers everything downstream.
Create a record for a workshop. The system creates the RSVP page on Luma, generates graphics in five formats through Canva, publishes to the Framer website, schedules social posts through Buffer, sends email blasts through Resend, and tags the right contacts in HubSpot. Fourteen time-based triggers run from T-minus-14 days through T-plus-7. Staff get the right reminder at the right time. Nobody has to remember anything.
After the chairs get stacked
The part I'm most pleased with is what happens after an event ends. Two hours later, automation runs. Attendee list pulled from Luma. New contacts added to HubSpot. Thank-you email sent with a tour booking link. NPS survey auto-calculated. Three days later, an auto-debrief pulls together attendance, satisfaction, tours booked, new contacts. No meeting required. Just a report that was already writing itself while the chairs were being stacked.
Grant reporting compiles itself the same way. Events per quarter, total attendance, NPS averages, attendee-to-tour-to-member conversion -- all accumulating in Airtable as the work happens. When funders ask what we've accomplished, we're not scrambling. The numbers are there because they were always being collected.
The whole thing runs on $5 to $15 a month. Almost everything is on a free tier. That part still surprises me.
The unsexy work
I also built an equipment intake flow where photographing new items automatically adds them to the database. Three operational forms -- plan an event, log a completed event, collect attendee feedback. A real-time dashboard for the lobby TV. Parking maps for daily and event variants. Printer tracking codes. AV inventory. Member onboarding flows.
None of it is glamorous. But a coworking space that runs fifty events a quarter needs infrastructure, not features. Before this system, the answer to "did we send that email?" was "I'll get to it." Now the answer is in the database before anyone thinks to ask.
The philosophy behind all of it fits in one sentence: eliminate the gap between "something happens" and "all the systems know about it." Humans do the work that requires judgment -- which events to run, how to welcome someone, what the space should feel like. The system remembers everything else.