Barcamp | Digital Transformation: Entrepreneurs start into the digital transformation together

Netresearch is planning an event on February 25, 2021 aimed at business owners and CEOs. Our goal is to get entrepreneurs to talk about topics that affect them all. In everyday business life there is often no room for an intensive exchange, which is why we decided to discuss the topic of our time: the transformation of our own business model into the digital world.

When thinking about digitization in e-commerce, the first thing that comes to mind are usually online shops that complement or even replace stationary retail. However, the possibilities of digitization go further: Numerous ideas and new branches of business can arise on the basis of these new possibilities. If there are also new perspectives for cooperation, nothing stands in the way of a new business model that complements the analog business.

The participants of our barcamp can develop these new perspectives together. You get the opportunity to network with each other and get to know new methods of generating ideas. In the best case scenario, you can take home a specific idea of how you can transform your business into the digital world.

Barcamp – what's that after all?

The barcamp is a format that is characterized by a relatively open program. In contrast to the hackathon - which was our original idea - there is no central question here. The participants set the topics. The proposed topics are then worked on in sessions, which can be designed in very different ways: From discussion to lecture to the use of agile methods or design thinking, there is room for everything.

According to legend, the name "barcamp" goes back to a play on words by the publisher O'Reilly, who launched this format. His "FooCamp" means on the one hand "friends of O'Reilly" and on the other hand alludes to a placeholder (for nerds: metasyntactic variable) that every developer knows: foo. Another such placeholder is "bar". So the title has changed a bit over time. This format is also known as the "un-conference" because the program is determined by joint reflection and the exchange of experiences instead of frontal series of lectures. The program may even be just determined by the participants at the beginning of the event.

Barcamp – was ist das überhaupt?

Das Barcamp ist ein Format, das sich durch ein verhältnismäßig offenes Programm auszeichnet. Im Unterschied zum Hackathon – das war die ursprüngliche Idee – gibt es hier keine zentrale Fragestellung. Die Teilnehmer setzen die Themen. Die Bearbeitung der Themenvorschläge  erfolgt dann in Sessions, die ganz unterschiedlich gestaltet sein können: Von Diskussion über Vortrag bis hin zum Einsatz agiler Methoden oder Design Thinking findet dort alles Platz.

Der Legende nach geht der Name "Barcamp" auf ein Wortspiel des Verlegers O'Reilly zurück, der dieses Format ins Leben gerufen hat. Sein "FooCamp" meint zum einen "friends of O'Reilly" und spielt zum anderen auf einen Platzhalter (für Liebhaber: metasyntaktische Variable) an, den jeder Developer kennt: foo. Ein weiterer solcher Platzhalter ist "bar". Der Titel wurde mit der Zeit also ein bisschen variiert. Dieses Format ist auch als "Un-Conference" bekannt, weil das Programm anstelle frontaler Vortragsreihen durch gemeinsames Nachdenken und den Austausch von Erfahrungen bestimmt wird. So kann es sogar dazu kommen, dass das Programm erst zu Beginn der Veranstaltung gemeinsam von den Teilnehmern festgelegt wird.

The Barcamp | Digital Transformation 2021

In our version of the barcamp, things should not be quite so free: The sessions are framed by keynote speeches and supplemented by exchanges in the plenum. So far, we have partnered with the Unternehmerverband Sachsen and the Mittelstand 4.0 Kompetenzzentrum Chemnitz. We look forward to gaining further partners as co-creators or sponsors. In addition, the format lives through people's input - after all, the focus should be on precisely those topics that have high priority for the participants.