What Happens When 40 Community Managers Walk into a Room?

Visibilio.io
1 day ago
2 min read

Group photo of all COMS Summit 2025 participants in Brighton, celebrating the first global gathering of community managers.

Stefania Doncheva takes us behind the scenes of the first-ever COMS Summit in Brighton

Let’s face it-community management is often invisible work. It’s the welcome smile that sets the tone of your day. The spontaneous kitchen moment that leads to a product breakthrough. The thoughtful ritual that makes a Thursday morning feel like something more.

But who takes care of the people who take care of the rest?

This September, Stefania Doncheva, our very own Community Manager at Campus X, boarded a flight to Brighton to find out.

She was one of 40 professionals from around the world attending the very first Community Managers Summit (COMS)-a gathering built not around keynotes and slides, but around belonging. Hosted by the wonderful team at Coworkies and Projects, COMS brought together community managers, ops leads, and experience designers from ten countries to share, reflect, and learn from one another. Not in theory-in practice.

“We laughed. We shared. We were understood.”

That’s how Stefania sums up the day. And for anyone who’s ever managed a shared workspace, those words hit home.

This wasn’t a conference. It was a table-with room for the real stories behind the spreadsheets. Attendees traded workflows, event blueprints, onboarding rituals, and hospitality playbooks. They also traded war stories: the emotional labor, the burnout, the joy, the weirdly cathartic experience of having someone else nod and say “Yes. Same here.”

And as Stefania puts it, “It felt amazing to be understood.”

Community managers, including Stefania Doncheva from Campus X, collaborating on ideas during a workshop session at the COMS Summit in Brighton.

Takeaways from Brighton

Stefania returned with more than good memories-she brought back tools we’re already seeing in action at Campus X:

Onboarding isn’t a checklist. It’s an invitation. From “Hello” to true belonging, every step matters.
Events and rituals build culture. Not just attendance. Not just photos. Real, sticky culture.
Safety + empathy = magic. It’s the formula behind why people stay, engage, and grow.
Community managers aren’t support staff. They’re experience architects. And their craft deserves professionalization.

The Global Pulse of Coworking

From the Netherlands to Japan, from Budapest to Brighton-community builders across the world are asking the same questions:

How do we create spaces where people feel seen?
How do we scale warmth without becoming artificial?
How do we care… sustainably?

One of the most striking themes was that coworking isn’t about buildings-it’s about building people.

As Sara Ozorai from KLUSTER put it:

“The bad news: you’re a community manager. The good news: you’re a community manager.”

Stefania Doncheva from Campus X speaking during a roundtable discussion at the COMS Summit in Brighton, surrounded by fellow community managers.

🙌 The Campus X Echo

We’re proud to have Stefania represent Campus X in this global circle. Her presence-and the wisdom she brought back-remind us that even the most forward-thinking spaces need to be held with care. We’re not just managing desks and bookings-we’re designing belonging.

And if the community is our heartbeat, Stefania is the pulse.

💛 Huge thanks to Coworkies (Pauline Roussel & Dimitar Inchev), Projects Brighton, and all the humans of change who made COMS what it was-and what it will become.

Written by Visibilio.ai