1st alfa Barcamp

Retrospective on the first internal barcamp of alfa Media

Barcamps are becoming increasingly popular. They not only invite you to engage in lectures and panel discussions on a specific topic, but also to exchange ideas and experiences with people from the same or different industries.

What are barcamps anyway?

As a descendant of the so-called open-space format, barcamps are largely determined by the participants themselves. Because the organizer sets first of all only the organizational supporting program and a general main topic. Often the topics “digitalisation” and “digital communication” come to the fore. But also “art and culture” are topics that are dealt with at Barcamps. The participants can now act as receiving visitors or contribute content themselves, which they would like to share or discuss with others. All session formats can be offered, from lectures to a successful project to open discussion rounds with a specific question. The content is then distributed to time slots and rooms and organised on a black board, so that each participant of the bar camp can choose his desired content. The barcamp etiquette allows you to leave in the middle of one session to visit another or just to connect and network with other people in the Connection Area.

Why does alfa Media organise an internal barcamp?

Barcamps are not only a characteristic feature of the modern and agile working world, but also help to reflect on one’s own mindset and confront it with impulses for methods from the so-called New Work. Today, it is no longer enough to read or talk about changes; one has to make them tangible in order to keep oneself and one’s own thinking flexible.What works on a large scale between people from different companies can also help cross-departmentally to be open-minded in dealing with the work areas of colleagues. And not just in a technical sense, but more casually over coffee and cake or burgers and beer to create a pleasant atmosphere. This not only strengthens the coherence within the team, but also encourages people to ask questions and discover areas with which they are rarely confronted in everyday business.

In order to gain initial experience with this unusual format, the marketing department deliberately left a lot of room for creativity in the format of the session content. The audience was just as pleased with a visually stunning film about a recent holiday in South Africa as they were with related lectures that cleared up “Agile[n] Myths”. Philosophical and communication-related sessions were also offered and provided insights into research in the humanities, which in turn were ultimately related to sales and technical issues. The active participation of the employees not only provided for full rooms, but also for exciting discussions, which went far beyond the time slots of the sessions and also left room for creative thoughts on connections between the immortality of the soul according to Hume and Kant and the debugging of codes as well as AI.

Conclusion

The internal barcamp of alfa Media was more than a summer party with session experience. It was a further step into the areas of new work and agile working as well as into a modern world of digitisation, which is changing rapidly and requires enormous flexibility in industries and individual mindsets. We are therefore delighted not only about the open-mindedness of the staff towards the new format, but also about the lively participation and the committed activity in the individual sessions and beyond. And we are already looking forward to a continuation.