We all stay in a Hotel for a couple of days once in a while. But calling a hotel your home is quite unusual. As a Nomad I move my home around regularly. So I made a hotel resort in Turkey my home for six weeks. The hotel was not a random selection. Matthias selected this place well to hold the CoWorkingCamp 2014 close the Antalya, Turkey. Because the event take place in November and the first half of December heading south was great.

CoWorking Camp LogoThe CoWorking Camp is an event where a CoWorking Space is placed inside a hotel for some weeks and you come to stay there for a self selected period. While that time you can work like in a CoWorking Space and meet new people even more intensive, because all administrative things are taken care of.
The people there range from digital nomads over location independent entrepreneurs to curious persons who wanted to see what is new thing is. The variety of nationalities was broad with people from all over Europe, Africa, America and Australia.

Coming from Athens changing the plane in Istanbul I landed in Antalya and got picked up by the Hotel-Shuttle-Service. The first time in my life someone with a name-sign waited for me at the exit of the airport. I liked that a lot. After that I spend one hour driving through the night towards the hotel looking at a country I haven’t been before.

Arriving at the hotel close to midnight I got to my room. A very very nice room the receptionist sad to me ;-). Like all of the participants I had a room with sea-view and space for two people. My room was even spacious after I asked to remove the crib the next day. Still awake from the travel I started exploring the resort in the darkness. I really like to see the beach right after arriving. I also got a sneak peek of the empty lovely prepared CoWorking Area. As I found out the next day I just saw a small part of the resort. The name says park hotel and that is true.

The next morning I started early because I challenged myself to go for a swim every morning while in Turkey. The outdoor pool was actual colder then the sea. What I didn’t expected and found out the third day.
Soon after breakfast the german participants showed up in the CoWorking Area. The international once were more relaxed about starting into the day. Maybe a pattern … . Within the first day I got a really good feeling for the group and we started talking about a lot of things. Discussing prejudices about countries, jobs and many more. The international mix right from the start was nice and should get even more colorful.

Like always the first couple of days are needed to find out the basic things and get into new habits. The start was very easy and the whole camp was fun right away. With everyday the group got bigger and the people in light green T-Shirts occupied more tables for lunch/dinner. There was a big and always changing buffet for every meal. Because we had booked all-inclusive we also could get any kind of drink at the bars across the resort. Three times we also went to the a la cart restaurant inside the hotel.
That was a easy life. Oh yeah.

Because we didn’t needed to worry about so many things we spend a lot of time with fun things. But business and learning was also fix part of a daily life. So we had a daily meeting where we presented business ideas or current challenges to the other people to get there feedback and some new insides. The coffebreak also got used for group discussions and knowledge sharing.
I presented my pet project the digital nomad club to the group and got positive feedback and a couple of very good questions I still need to answer to myself and for the future of the project.

So much fun

Preventing us from overworking there was a number of activities going on all the time. We did two boat trips to go diving. We played beach volleyball with and without old german tourists. Where hiking in different places. Had a crazy birthday party at a fast food restaurant. Drove ATVs across rocks and through a river. Went to the hotel spa for the extra portion of relaxing. And the best ritual was playing the werewolf game over and over again or some board games. We even had a paint ball match in the forest. And had a sangria session at the beach to celebrate the camp and the sun.

One special trip I took part in was a three day trip to Istanbul. We visited a lot of the casual sites you have to see if your in that town. But we also met a group of local and international people in a CoWorkingSpace and had a nice chat about who entrepreneurship and the working life develops in Turkey. Very interesting.

We had fun, filled the meantime with productive work and made new connections over the time but the up coming xmas and winter season wasn’t stoppable. So we saw two days of storm and at one point the hotel got some extra decoration. After 42 days of good laziness and so much new experiences the camp ended for me and I flew back to Hamburg for Xmas.

Conclusion

While the temperatures in central Europe decreases, I met a awesome group of different people. The amount and the combination of people changed over time and that kept it always interesting. I made some really valuable connections and learned about things outside my usual scope what I like. If WordCamp or CoWorkingCamp it’s about meeting people, make friends and enjoying the time we share.
This will not be my last CoWorkingCamp and want the thank Matthias for organizing this years one.

During this camp so many things happened so this blogpost is just my personal view and my photos. I’ll try to list more blogposts/photos collections from other participants below so you can read what I wasn’t able to write down here.

I hope I could show to you that’s a great idea to go to the upcoming CoWorking Camp in Tunisia.

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