International Collaboration

International virtual collaboration means some people are joining in the morning, some during the day, some after dinner and a few during the night but it works! Above you see a slide from the presentation made by Japan. They where very much hit by the pandemic and shared how they had handled conference and meetings in this situation. See below the world clock, YujiTKAZ Mano was sharing at local time 20.00. Phillips Mueller is working for SAP and was leading the knowledge sharing day. He is working from home-office in the the area around Walldorf and Craig Dale is working for the UK and Ireland User Group and has his desk located in the area around London so he started at 11.00 when I started at 12.00.

The last point on the agenda for Tuesday was to split into smaller groups. This worked fine and below picture is from this gathering. The two people in top are living in Australia and the lady in the first column in South Africa which means she started one hour later than Central Europe. In Australia it depends on where they actually are located as the country is huge but in Melbourn the meeting started 22:00 and this discussion was around 01:00 at night. Bente Boger, I and the rest are located in Central Europe which means this print screen of us, was made around 15:00 on Tuesday the 17th November.

The meeting which ususally is in Walldorf during 3 days is this year 5 days. It started Monday the 16th November with Status report from the work groups where I as SBN representative reported on the charter Im responsible of. Tuesday the focus was on knowledge exchange in the area of virtual events or rather "what to do in times of pandemic when we cant meet and should have meet, as this is a User Groups cor business". The experience of the actions taken so far, like a virtual conference was shared openminded.  Questions where asked and even a kind of discussion was held in this virutal format. I learned a lot, which I belive all particpants did.( In the middle of above picture you find Gianmaria Perancin from France. He is the Chair of SUGEN (the international UG collaboration))

The group discussion was to be 20 minutes but was overrun which shows it was fun and fruitful.

Craig Dale from UK Ireland (in top middle) did lead the days program. When he was summarising the day he also shared a bit more of the details on how UK and Ireland have been working with meetings and conference during the pandemic. This started a discussion and as you see some serious thinking. 😄

Wednesday we are looking forward to presentations by the SAP CEO Christian Klein and Jan Gilg who was keynote presenter at the SBN Conference. The second part of the day the focus will be on contingency and a new leadership team and chairman will be elected. I keep you updated.

Participating from SBN is Bente Boger Vice President, Eva-Maria Fahrer(author of text), CEO and Kolbjørn Havnes President in SBN. 

Thoughts questions or ideas?
Call Eva-Maria Fahrer on 922 52 539 or international +46 70 5697808