Training and flying
Social business and e-learning modules
Like learning, working nowadays need no longer be bound to the one fixed location. This independence of geographical locations promotes freedom in the choice of time and place, but also gives rise to organizational challenges. Social business or e-learning modules – often scalable, high performance, global systems – help to master these.
Community is the magic word here. What has long become an integral constituent of daily life in the form of Facebook, MySpace, or StudiVZ, is now making inroads into German companies – when only hesitantly, according to Stephan Müller-Ziebur. Here, the company, the employees are presented as a virtual community. Stephan Müller-Ziebur is the Managing Director of SocialMediaZolutions in Adlershof, which tailors the required software to the needs of each company, including e.g. various German carmakers, the German Armed Forces, advertising agencies, corporate consultancies, and a famous German maker of sports equipment. After a long history of software development for banks, the former business consultant set up his company in 2012 – in Adlershof, “because it’s also a community. In the real world.”
“In a nutshell,” explained Müller-Ziebur, “it’s about knowledge management”. Employees at a company or members of any other group use a new generation of the social intranet to share, distribute, process, and analyse knowledge and information in real time. In the process, every country and every company has its own political and cultural convictions and requirements. The task of SMZ is to integrate these in the software. “What the software builders don’t make, but the customers need,” explained Müller-Ziebur. This saves time for the users and a considerable volume of e.g. email traffic to and from companies.
One of the communities SMZ supports is a training portal. This uses a new kind of recording device and intelligent software that is intended to elevate the analysis of training results to an all new level. During the training session or event, the system collects data on the athlete’s movements and cardiac activity and analyses these to compile a training schedule tailored precisely to the sports discipline and personal targets. There are even training instructions issued in real time. This training system also allows the online synchronisation, sharing, and comparison of the user’s data – no matter where he is. So, if a football match is currently in progress, the world can follow it from the pitch. The page is accessed by over a million users.
Both flight enthusiasts, Sinikka Salchow and Sven Kornetzky at the Adlershof company spectaculair spent about two years puzzling over and tweaking an interactive training platform that combines modern training methods like simulations, videochats, e-books, virtual whiteboards, and forums. The result is an interactive solution that can be adapted to each learner’s personal training requirements. With their virtual academy, the two aerospace engineers intend to liven things up in the otherwise very dry methods of flight training. This e-learning solution from spectaculair can also be applied to other industries. Specifically the traffic sectors should be greatly interested in modern forms of training that can help to familiarize new employees faster with complex maintenance and safety regulations.
By Rico Bigelmann for Adlershof Special