We spoke with Sara Santos, Agile Coach at kununu in Porto. Sara shares how she can combine her former experiences as a social worker and from her Computer Engineering Studies with a role in the technical field.
A tailor-made development program that qualifies talented people from our Burda universe to develop, build and manage digital products and companies.
Katharina Herrmann sums up the training program: “The BDD builds on what I call ‘the core competence of Burda’ – and that is entrepreneurship. It is all about digital innovation, it is about building and designing products, features, companies, and so on. And if that is, what we are really about, then we have to strengthen it in every single employee”.
Further information on the specific content and structure of the program and the application process can be found here.
The ten BDD participants in the second cohort developed their digital product ideas along the five modules. The results were presented to the audience at the crowning final event. The module leaders Stefan Atanassov, Richard Weber, Ulrich Heckenberger, Katja Felke and Christoph Ludmann in particular were very excited and visibly impressed by the results of their supervised project groups at the end.
“Staying in touch with the participants over the ten months of the Burda Digital Degree was awesome. Seeing them taking in new knowledge, applying it to their projects and adding layer on layer on top of their project was impressive to observe. And it motivates me and it is exciting to see how they’ll bring that back to their units“, says Richard Weber, Managing Director at BurdaForward.
Of course, we don't want to withhold the quintessence of the event from you. Below, individual team members from the three final projects briefly present their ideas and what they were able to take away from the BDD trip for themselves and their careers.
Event experience app
Christina Nickel, Senior Project Manager Production & Operations at Burda Verlag, has developed a concept for an event app together with her team members Miroslava Harcegova, Head of Marketing at BurdaMedia Extra, Sarah Klöpfer, Senior Brand Manager at Garden & Living, and Adam Parker, Data & Digital Marketing Director at Immediate Live: “Of course there are a lot of event apps on the market, but we developed a solution specifically for Burda Events. We wanted to enrich the event experience with interesting features and connect the visitors with each other and the exhibitors.”
In the publishing sector in particular, it is important for Christina's team to develop digital business models: “The digital product development, the thinking outside the box and get in contact with people from other business areas was very enriching for me as a project manager at the Burda Verlag, where I have to deal with the traditional print business.”
iBuddy
Robert Ross, Head of Corporate Development at Burda Media Polska, worked on the iBuddy chatbot with his colleagues Mark Luxenhofer, Team Lead Video Automation at BurdaForward, and Teresa Schreier, Head of Business Applications Integrity at Burda Digital Systems.
"Initially, we looked at how the content experience is changing in the market and how the AI world is impacting the whole content journey. We also looked at the social media platforms and how that also introduces ‘doom-scrolling’. And that's why we introduced an idea called iBuddy, which is a platform that connects users and content creators to make the whole content experience journey effortless and very personalised. The idea is that the content is in a non-linear format - like content on demand. Whether it's video, audio or text, the content will be tailored to the way you want to consume it.”, explains Robert.
The international orientation of the BDD enables new networks to be established: “I really enjoyed the entire experience. The exchange with the colleagues was fantastic. I really plan on keeping in touch with all of the members.”, reports Robert enthusiastically.
Move Around
Meike Leyerle, Lead Project Manager Strategic Communications at BurdaForward, and her team members Glidas Lepennetier, Team Lead Data Scientist at FactField, and Gosia Pottmann, Head of New Business at BurdaVerlag, have tackled a major social problem: “Move around is an innovative platform that focuses one of the biggest problems, we have in this country: the lack of skilled workers. We have tried to make the transition for foreigners coming to Germany as smooth as possible. Helping them settle in with bureaucracy, language schools and so on.”
Experts from the areas of communication, data science and new business in one team - it couldn't be more interdisciplinary: “The biggest takeaway for me on a personal level is how to work in groups of very different people and how to tackle very different tasks every day.”, explains Meike.
In the end, everyone and every participant can be satisfied with themselves. Katharina Herrmann is pleased with the result of the Burda Digital Degree. “I was, once again, completely smitten by the diversity of approaches, of ideas and, because I’m an HR person at heart, by the team dynamic I could see in the different groups and how honestly they shared their learning, what they went through and what they took away from this wonderful program.”