The COVID19 pandemic has effected all of us – some more and some less. For me, it meant cancelling many planned events and international trips to visit my projects. On the other hand, having worked from home for many years now, the „home office“ part is no major burden, although the number of virtual meetings and exchanges has increased significantly in these past weeks. So the challenge was and still is to cope with all the changes and requests in a short period of time!
In fact, in particular the international projects with the European Commission require reorientation and confronted us with a variety of questions to be solved: can we continue a multilingual dialogue with actors from all over the world online? Can all events be converted into webinars and web conferences? Which activities need to be adapted or redeveloped from the scratch? Will the digital divide grow and impede certain groups of people from staying connected?
I have speant some time on updating myself on virtual tools from video conferencing (Zoom, Skype, Webex), to multilingual conferences (e.g. through Kudo), brainstorming sessions (Miró or Mural) or virtual fairs in 3D (Virtway).
Luckily, in the area of communications, being confined at home also means finding some concentration time to work on publications, capitalising on results and analysing the impact of past projects or campaigns. And I have never been as connected with many old friends and colleagues from around the world as during quarantine! Obviously, some projects will have to wait – in particular all video production plans we had made for this year. But let’s look towards the future and make the best out of this special period.