It’s Coworking Week! As part of our celebration we’ve opened our doors even wider than usual and are providing a day of free coworking. Throughout the week we will be profiling our guest coworkers to let you in on some of the great things happening.
Karma Lacoff – Creating Culture
Karma Lacoff is the executive and creative director of Creative Okanagan as well as a project and event manager. Her resume is chock-full of impressive experience, both professional and volunteer.
Kodie Beckley — Hi! So for those who don’t know you, who are you in a nutshell?
Karma Lacoff — My name is Karma Lacoff and I am the Executive and Creator Director of the organization Creative Okanagan Artist and Event Development Society. We do basically what we say! Most of the work that I’m working on now is events. Our organization has been producing the Music in the Park and the World Music Festival for the City of West Kelowna for the last five years. Now I’m working on the World Music Festival because it’s just over two weeks away. Lots to get done!
KB — That’s great! What sort of things can people expect from the World Music Festival?
KL — A diverse lineup of artists. We’ve got four artists from the Okanagan and a First Nations artist from Westbank First Nations named Cori Derickson. There are also three groups from Vancouver coming in: an Afro-fusion group, a Bhangra-fusion group named En Karma, a woman by the name of Deana Knight who plays with a band called Hot Club of Mars and they play Gypsy Jazz. Then we’ve got local favourites, actually one of the Syrian refugees who just moved here is going to be playing with the Middle Eastern duo who have been playing together for a while and they call themselves Altrab. I’m really excited about that. It’s great community engagement. He’s a professional musician from Syria, and he just moved here so it’s really awesome to see him play.
KB — What goals or tasks are you focusing on getting done today in the space?
KL — We do an artist development series in the winter so I’ve been working on that a little bit today. I’ve actually been on the phone lots about our installation that we’re doing. We’re still in the process of making the selections and I’ve been talking to one of the other jury members about that. I met with the president of my board today, not here though, I had to go out for that. Next time though, hopefully I can book in here! My to-do list has some other accounting stuff that I often don’t want to get to. Oh, and the press release! I’ve been working on the press release.
KB — What grabbed your attention and got you interested in coming down and checking out Coworking Week?
KL — Well, I live a couple blocks from here. I generally work from home, but it can be a little chaotic having my office on my dining room table and having a small child. It’s always a little… Y’know. I have family visiting this week too, so I thought that it was a great excuse to finally come down and check out what it’s like working in this space.
KB — Are there are social groups, community initiatives, or anything along those lines that you think people should be checking out?
KL — Our organization is growing, so I’ve got to pitch us! Right now we service musicians, but we’re diversifying what we do. We work a lot with the arts councils as well, they’re great. The Arts Council of the Central Okanagan, the Kelowna Arts Council, and of course the Suk’?t?msqilx? West Kelowna Arts Council. I encourage people to support their art councils and any collaborative art groups in particular.
KB — Where can people find out more about you and what you do?
KL — About me personally? My LinkedIn would be the best place, and the organization that I work for is Creative Okanagan.
What is coworking week?
This year is the 11th anniversary for coworking and we at co+Lab are celebrating International Coworking Day on August 12th 2016 in a BIG way. From August 8th to August 12th we’re providing 1 day of free coworking from August 8th to 12th, leading up to the big day. There’s a limit of 1 free day per registrant and coworker registration must happen on our Eventbrite event page.
