Real-life meeting: Strategy work in Berlin

Snow-covered streets, bitter cold: our in-person meet-up took place in Berlin from 30 January to 1 February. We warmed up over dinner together and started by catching up on how everyone was getting on – some of us were even meeting in person for the first time. As a team, we usually work together virtu­ally, so face-to-face meet­ings are a special occa­sion for us! The next day, we set to work on the main agenda with great enthu­siasm.

Vision and mission further developed

Last year, we had defined our vision, mission and self-image more clearly. Now it was time to take a closer look: does everything still fit, or do we need to refine it further? To this end, we made a conscious effort to set aside time for this, enlisted the support of a profes­sional facil­it­ator and worked using a variety of methods.

We began with an open discus­sion and brain­storming session to gather requests for changes and new sugges­tions. The next step was more specific: in role-plays, we put ourselves in the shoes of our key stake­holders – journ­al­ists, tele­vi­sion produ­cers and the general public. Is the new proposal easy to under­stand? Does it convey what we really mean? And is it relevant to our target audi­ences?

Armed with this new clarity, we went through our planned activ­ities once again. Do they align with what we want to stand for? And can they actu­ally be imple­mented given the resources we have as a team? How should we prior­itise? Our conclu­sion: a clear roadmap for the year and an outlook for the period beyond.

Found­a­tions laid for the advert

We then turned our atten­tion to this year’s top priority: plan­ning the advert, which we will broad­cast before the ‘Tagesschau’ using the funds raised by the campaign.

How do we convey our message in just a few seconds? And how do we really engage people? What can we achieve effect­ively within our budget? The outcome was a set of initial concepts that we will be working on further, as well as an important decision: As well as the advert, three new epis­odes are to be produced, which will once again be made avail­able on the website and our YouTube channel. So, after five years, there’s going to be a second series – meaning you can look forward not only to the advert, but also to new epis­odes!

For greater visib­ility: New website and social media

The third pillar of the weekend was collab­or­a­tion within existing project groups: the website and social media.

The current website has been online since 2021. To reflect the association’s growing profes­sion­alism and KLIMA° vor acht’s new corporate design, a complete over­haul is on the cards. Whilst we have a wide range of expertise within the team and will be hand­ling content concep­tion, copy and image design, as well as tech­nical imple­ment­a­tion in-house, we are seeking profes­sional support for the design. Our focus over the weekend: eval­u­ating design agen­cies we’ve already approached as poten­tial part­ners. Who has the right exper­i­ence, and what are their rates? We ended up with a clear recom­mend­a­tion that we can now take forward.

We made the most of the fact that we were all together to post on social media. We took some new photos to promote our merchandise, as well as filming some videos about the team. We also filmed a short video for Valentine’s Day whilst we were at it – under the hashtag #Rund­funk­liebe. We really enjoyed the shoot – now we’re keen to see if the community feels the same way.

#OneTeam – Time together

Despite all the work, there’s one thing we haven’t neglected: spending time together. We’ve eaten together, chatted and enjoyed cosy even­ings. It’s precisely these moments that bind us together as a team – and give us fresh energy for our joint volun­tary work.