Waterkant Festival 2018: A Model for Learning and Working 4.0

On 14 and 15 June 2018 the 2nd Waterkant #startupSH Festival 2018 took place on the former naval airfield in Kiel. The Waterkant Festival was organized by Open Campus, StarterKitchen and the FabLab in Kiel and was attended by international guests from various fields. The sessions and participation offers were manifold; here we offer a short insight.

Open Data, Science Communication and Culture App

Sven Thomsen, CIO of the State Chancellery of the State Government of Schleswig-Holstein, spoke about open data. The state government is committed to open data . According to Thomsen, there is already a lot of open data in Schleswig-Holstein. However, it is often difficult to find. Thus, the data from a measuring station at the Theodor-Heuss-Ring in Kiel, which lead to a discussion about a driving ban for diesel vehicles being discussed, are available as open data. But even he, although he is an insider of the subject, needed 32 minutes to find this data. This is not the “easy and usable way” that the state government has set itself for open data. All data in Schleswig-Holstein will be made available via API. The state government invites the inhabitants to “Hack your country”. That is why they are to be enabled to simply take data, such as that of the measuring station, and, for example, to develop apps on this basis that improve life in Schleswig-Holstein. To this end, a small team will be assigned to take care of opening up data. An open data portal in Schleswig-Holstein is to go online in 2019.

With the culture app Kultursphaere @kultursphaere a new offer from Schleswig-Holstein was presented. Cultural activities that are available in the vicinity and on the way are presented on a virtual map on the smartphone, which lists all the cultural institutions of the federal state. Filter and search functions make it possible to select specific offers.

Prof. Tom Duscher focused on how scientists can make their findings visually understandable.

Community building

In his session on community building, Steffen Voß recommended combining online and offline meetings.

A community that organizes itself both online and offline is the Digital Media Women. At their Meetup, Nici Beckendorf, member of Digital Media Women in Schleswig-Holstein, gave a brief insight into their activities and also recommendations for networking.

The Digital Media Women are an association with 125 active volunteers from nine districts and over 19,000 community members. Its goals include supporting women in networking, making role models and diversity in the design of digital change visible to the outside world and participating in digital change on an equal footing.

Communities are also an issue in co-working. Ulrich Bähr presented how the project #CoWorkLand brings co-working to rural regions.

He brought the container with him right away, which is being used as a mobile co-working space.

Waterkant Festival: Another great format for learning and networking

At least as important as the exciting sessions and hands-on offers: The lovingly organized surroundings, the location and the format of the event. The Waterkant Festival thus offered a forum for closer networking and the emergence of communities. It offered inspiration, new technologies, exchange, start-up ideas, maker atmosphere and much more. And all of this was perfectly organized, which was even an improvement in comparison with the first Waterkant Festival.

Thus, the Waterkant Festival embodies a model for learning and working that fits today’s world and also the context of open science.

Further Links:

• #Waterkant18 on Twitter
• Blog post about Waterkant 2017