Report: econnect Tour – Day Two

A Whirlwind Tour Through German IT and Culture

The Thursday began with a relaxed meeting at Plantronics, the UCC headset specialists, on the banks of the River Rhine in the south of Cologne. Oliver Jungklaus, Senior Marketing Manager at Plantronics, gave participants a tour of his Smart Office installation, with explanation of a range of noise-reduction techniques for open-plan spaces, and a chance to see a range of state of the art office designs and solutions. Following this, Detlev Artelt, CEO of aixvox GmbH and Leader of the eco Competence Group Unified Communications, talked about “Using a Local Spy” to work in the German market. After this, Plantronics put on a generous breakfast and lots of coffee, and there was time for questions and networking.

Back in the bus, the tour group headed across the river again to Turtle Entertainment and ESL Games, eSports and online gaming specialists, founded in Cologne, and now with an enormous world-wide following. There, Thomas Pöhler and Marcel Menge explained online gaming from an infrastructure perspective, from an event management perspective, as an industry, and from the perspective of their security and anti-cheating solutions. Rolf Claessen, Patent Attorney from Patentanwälte Freisheim, joined the party to talk about trademarking in Germany and how best to protect your company name and logo, and about the problems of Domain Phishing, where a domain name which is very similar to your company domains name is used for nefarious purposes. The visit to Turtle Entertainments finished with 10 tour participants attempting, with varying degrees of success and cluelessness, to play a team game. The rest of the tour members watched with amusement, networked and discussed the ideas in more depth.

eco extends our thanks to the German specialists for their time, energy and input, and our international guests for making the journey to Cologne to be a part of it.

The econnect tour was planned so that participants could stay for the eco Gala on the Thursday evening, and enjoy the hospitality and networking opportunities of eco’s biggest evening. Several eco members also took the opportunity to participate in the eco AGM in the afternoon. econnect is planned to be an annual event, and will take place ahead of the eco Internet Awards Ceremony and eco Gala again in 2016. Senior executives interested in participating next year can contact judith.ellis@eco.de to receive further information.