After studying the phenomenon of coliving through his MBA at Asia School of Business, Connor became a deep thinker of what coliving and community means.
With the creation of his blog, the Coliving Corner, Connor became known for his forward-thinking content explaining the need, demand, and opportunities for coliving.
As an active Co-Liv member, among others being a speaker and attendee of several Co-Liv meetups, Connor now brings his thought leadership and expertise to the Co-Liv world with upcoming content initiatives.
How do you currently define yourself and what drives you?
At my core I’m a very curious, optimistic, and adventure-loving person. I’m extremely extroverted and get energy from spending the vast majority of my time among other people. From an early age until today I have found that I thrive in close-knit groups of people whether that’s at summer camp, on sports teams, in college organizations centered around community building, or the entrepreneurship fellowship program I joined after college. All of those experiences are founded around one of my core drives: bringing people together. With all of that in mind, I consider myself lucky that I’ve found such a strong passion for enabling the global coliving movement which is obviously all about bringing people together.
What passionates you about coliving and why are you actively promoting the coliving scene?
I whole-heartedly believe in the potential of coliving to facilitate meaningful human connections and positively change the way we live. It’s why I’m eager to launch a career in the industry and try to bring the advantages of human-centric, purpose-driven living to as many people across the globe as possible. When looking back on the parts of my life where I felt most alive, nearly all of them have to do with being a part of a special group of people in a special time/place. The one experience in particular that got me into coliving was a year I spent living/working abroad after I graduated college. I lived and worked in Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. I met such a broad range of people and lived in a few “long-term hostels” that really turned me on to the idea of communal living. When you live around people that are as curious as you are and want to be purposeful about living their life, it has such a powerful positive impact on your attitude towards life. I’ve lived it and I want other people to have that opportunity as well.
What’s your personal vision and thoughts on the future of coliving for the year to come?
I believe coliving will eventually become a very mainstream living solution that will outperform traditional living solutions in its ability to adapt to lifestyles of the 21st century. In 2020 the way people live is drastically different than the way people lived in 2000, yet our living solutions have remained mainly unchanged. We MUST redesign our living solutions to better empower people to live their best lives and inspire them to solve the daunting challenges facing humanity in the coming decades. I believe humans have the desire AND the capability to change the way we live and it’s about time a movement such as coliving came along to do something about it!
You recently joined Co-Liv as “Head of Content” — which opportunities do you want to create for the organisation, its members, and the coliving industry?
I believe coliving is at a pivotal point in its relatively young existence. The industry is picking up a lot of steam and I believe soon will be a major new real estate asset class. Once we reach a point where coliving is mainstream, the values and goals of the movement will be difficult to change. With that in mind, Co-Liv, as a global coliving catalyst, must seize the opportunity to steer the coliving ship in the right direction before other actors/economic forces morph coliving to fit their wants/needs.
Some people in the industry have already seen substantial change in what “coliving” means. Starting from a small, local, human-driven movement, coliving has already become more commercialized as it has grown. This was destined to happen, but it would be a shame if the industry changed too much and lost what makes it so impactful in the first place.
So I believe we need to make content that will remove barriers for coliving companies to remain true to the pillars of coliving AND succeed economically. For example creating content that can help coliving companies create great communities at scale or helping them work alongside city governments to create favourable laws towards coliving that can maximize the effectiveness of their living product.
How did you get into coliving?
As mentioned above, I got into coliving when I was living/working abroad after college. I lived in communal living situations in New Zealand and Australia and a question occurred to me: Why can’t we always live like this? Why can’t we live in an environment that encourages face-to-face interactions and facilitates meaningful human relationships?
That’s when I did a bit of research and found out about coliving. Since 2015 it’s always been in the back of my mind and this past summer I finally had the chance to explore the industry. I got a research grant from my Business School (Asia School of Business) and spent three months travelling North America and South East Asia while researching coliving. I lived in or toured many different coliving locations in the US, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Philippines, Hong Kong, and India among other locations. I interviewed founders, residents, and coliving enthusiasts to learn as much as I could about the global industry and learn what it takes to build a great living community.
Thank you for being part of this movement! How can people reach out and what can you mostly help them with?
If you’re a coliving enthusiast like myself, I’d love to chat! I love hearing about different journeys in the industry and I’m happy to share my experience researching the global coliving industry for the past year. I’m particularly interested in learning about coliving operator models across the world as well as social science research on how our cities function and how we can create robust communities with human nature in mind.
So if you have any ideas on how to improve the global coliving industry or about content that Co-Liv should be focusing on, please get in touch. At Co-Liv we can’t produce great content without having the opinions of coliving experts so staying in touch with the global industry is very important!
Website: https://colivingcorner.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connorjmoore/
Email: connor.moore@mba2020.asb.edu.my
With lots of co-love,
The Co-Liv Team
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