Research Campaign A Focus At Orgatec 2008

In just a few weeks Orgatec 2008 will be held in Cologne, Germany from October 21 to 25. There will be a focus on Ultima Office, the largest market research campaign conducted on tomorrow’s office world. However, the campaign has already been launched before the start of the convention on the Internet.

At the Web site all interested parties can develop visions of the living and working worlds of tomorrow in a collective brainstorming process by participating in a structured survey. Concurrently, individual experts’ visions on the office of the future will be posted at weekly intervals. At Orgatec itself the think tank process will be continued. Visitors to the fair for Office & Object will have an in person opportunity to formulate their own future visions in a video statement and participate in the survey. The results of this collective thinking process will be discussed daily on the Ultima Office Dialogue stage.

My Ultima Office (this is the heading for individual future visions) will be posted as video statements. It will begin with statements made by five experts:

  • Andreas Neef: executive director, Z_punkt: The Foresight Company works as a consultant advising companies on strategic future questions
  • Dr. Yana Milev: a media artist, spatial researcher, and cultural philosopher. She works at the interface between art, science, and society.
  • Dr. Joachim Mayer: an organizational consultant, lecturer, coach, and independent researcher in Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Prof. Hansjerg Maier-Aichen: founder of AUTHENTICS and lecturer at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung (State College of Design) in Karlsruhe, Germany.
  • Vera Kockot: director of the Institute for Design Research at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Their personal ideas and visions of the office world of the future will be posted successively and made accessible on the Internet in the run up to the fair. In keeping with the “One Minute of Time for the Future” motto at Orgatec, all visitors will be able to record their individual visions in accessible video boxes on the central trade fair boulevard.

What kind of office do the majority of Orgatec visitors want? Do European office visions differ from Asian ones? And do the self employed place different expectations on the office of tomorrow than salaried employees? Answers to these and similar questions will be provided by The Visionator, the structured survey which was launched online this month and will be continued at Orgatec by mobile survey teams. The online test also provides the respective respondent with information about what kind of office person they are. The result will be presented to them in the form of a postcard with their personal dream office vision.

The Ultima Office think tank process will be accompanied by the Ultima Office dialogue. Here select experts will present and discuss best practice examples and current developments covering all the specialist themes at Orgatec. Each day will be brought to a close by a highlight in the form of an Open Space Event within the framework of the Ultima Office dialogue. Then the best My Ultima Office video statements of the day and the day’s visionator survey results will be presented and also discussed by sector experts and representatives as the trend of the day. An improvisation theatre group will visually interpret and present the visions.