Digital Society & internet economy and their communication & psychology
On June 26th, we were pleased to have our first joint meetup in cooperation with ThAK, ThEx, KrämerLoft, Webmontag Erfurt, Devoxx4Kids Thüringen, FH Erfurt and Softwerkskammer Jena at ThEx in Erfurt. About 50 guests were interested in the event, many of them for the first time.
The evening started with a welcome of Martin Fache (Founder of BarCamp Erfurt) and Benjamin Nothdurft (Softwerkskammer Jena) followed by introduction talks of Dirk Wegler (ThEx) and Norman Schulz (ThAK).
The ThEx is a cooperated network of different providers in Thuringia and supports founder with workshops, mentoring programs, and financing possibilities. The founder bonus gives the chance, for people with innovative ideas, to escape of the employee-employer relationship and realize their project independently.
Norman Schulz of the ThAK emphasized that “creative economy” is a relevant sector in Thuringia. Especially Software Economy is growing fast. ThAK is supporting the exchange of experiences between different creative sectors to bring enterprises of several sectors together.
The following panel discussion moderated by Martin Fache dealt with the promotion of communication in the internet economy. During the discussion there were many opinions on the topic: “Why is direct interpersonal communication at meetups, user groups, coworking spaces, and studies in times of digital networking useful?”
Seven leaders or organizers of user groups, meetups, and coworking spaces have devoted themselves to this question: Prof. Dr. Steffen Avemarg, Bianca Schön-Ott, Andreas Grohmann, Jonas Hecht, Benjamin Nothdurft, Alexander Hofmeister and Friederike Schmidt.
The common result of the discussion was that the direct exchange of knowledge is a good opportunity to learn about new technologies and to receive tips for ongoing projects.
Afterwards, Sudan Jackson (culture ambassador at REWE digital) closed the first part of the evening with a presentation about upscaling culture. Therefore, he used his company as an example to show how organizational strategies can be created. Consumer behavior is changing rapidly and organizations are growing. Thus, we need new business models and people supporting these.
After a short break with pretzel and drinks, Torsten Weber and Jens Schauder continued with parallel talks about psychology within our digital economy and communication for Software-Engineers and others.
Torsten (CEO of GROSSWEBER and organizer of meetups and conferences) mentioned software needs to be build in a way that it has an impact on the consumer. His main question was: “Is User Experience connected to psychology?”. He did not give an answer directly to this question but was trying to push the audience into answering it on their own by offering many practical examples. The talk gave hints on how to handle things, which make our and the everyday life of others more difficult.
Jens Schauder (working at Pivotal, Founder of JUG Ostfalen and author) was asking the question: How to learn communicating with people instead of computers? As human beings cannot be reset, communication gets more difficult and needs a well-balanced ratio between empathy and honest feedback. Jens provided tips on how empathy can be learnt and that the communication between people can have advantages over communicating with computers.
Finally the evening ended on the terrace with bratwurst, drinks, and conversations.
