Interview with Jorn Vetter from KantoorKaravaan

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In the last year, KantoorKaravaan (caravan office) have been sharing with us their adventures taking their office with them wherever they go. They have been in a rural coworking and coliving tour through in Spain and taught us a lot about how traveling doesn’t need to be something you do every once in a while, but it can be a constant. In this journey, they got the admiration from the coworking community winning the Coworking Europe Conference Award for Best Design. Today they are initiating a new adventure, and before they hit the road again, we had a great interview with Jorn Vetter, one of the members of KantoorKaravaan.

Could you tell us a bit about KantoorKaravaan?

KantoorKaravaan creates custom outdoor office spaces for social enterprise and sustainable business. Our aim is to make efficient use of the abundance of nature and technology, to create a place for out-of-the-box thinking, feeling and doing. In doing so, we make use of our off-grid units, Vintage Caravans equipped with solar, WIFI, desk and coffee-machine. We are currently on our way to interlink people, places and programmes throughout Europe, that align with this philosophy and can help make the transformation of modern working life, a reality.

How did you come up with the concept?

The KantoorKaravaan was initiated by a group of like-minded people, about three years ago. They noticed a growing number of flex-workers, freelancers and digital nomads looking for a different place to work. These people were subconsciously liberating the idea of what an office should be like. Looking at this trend, the founders asked themselves a question: if we could pick any place to work, where would it be? In Nature of course! The growing complexity of urban systems limits the opportunity for people to integrate nature into their lives. With this thought in mind, the first mobile office was built, a vessel that would give people the freedom to make Nature, their office.

And where are you going in the future?

We have now been on the road for almost three years, expanding our ‘fleet’ with another four caravans and working with a great diversity of clients and partners. We are now in a position where we would like to expand our network of members and clients, professionalize our approach and increase our scale. For this purpose, we’re looking to team up with individuals, groups, and organizations that can identify with our philosophy and are interested to collaborate. As a collective, we can realize the dream of a well-established network of outdoor office spaces.

Do you have a cool story of an adventure with Kantoor Karavaan to tell us?

We want our offices to be spaces where people feel free to be creative, solve complex problems or develop new ideas. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don’t. Once, we were based in Utrecht (@metaal kathedraal) and we were receiving a scout, from a company that was interested in working with us. Unfortunately, in our enthusiasm, we forgot to mention that we were out in a field.. a very muddy one, on that particular day. After two instances of disappearing knee-deep into the mud, wearing stiletto heels for the day, she told us she felt compelled to consider some other options.

How can people work in KantoorKaravaan?

People can book one of our units for one or multiple days of outdoor work either as a group or as an individual. At present, we’re also focussing on personalized products and services. We’re highly interested in how our clients envision their dream work-space, and what we can provide to make this a reality.

How can people follow you through your trips around the world?

We are currently active on:

Jori questions

You woke up, looked around and noticed you transformed into an island. Describe yourself.

I am a moving island, perhaps sitting on the back of a turtle, home to all species and adaptive to all climates. I’m probably volcanic too, disruptive, yet never really destructive.

I’m pretty sure that there’s coffee and peanut butter somewhere, and everyone lives a solar-powered life.

In a short sentence, describe what you used to be, but you’re not anymore.

We used to be travelers, always on the move, only rooted in the outdoors. Instead of changing ourselves to fit in, we’ve embraced it and called it work.