A virus continues to restrict private and business activities around the globe – including in-person trade fairs. This situation also af-fected automatica 2020, which could not take place due to the pandemic, and it still dashed all hopes of having a normal trade fair the following year. On the other hand, we had a community in desperate need of orientation, exchange, inspiration, and business after a long dry spell. Our answer to this challenge: automatica sprint.
How can we continue to provide inspiration to an industry that neither wants nor can afford to wait another year for the next leading exhibition automatica? This question inspired the development of automatica sprint – a new digital event that was originally intended as a hybrid format to enable flexible reactions to the current situation at any time. The pandemic decided: Hybrid turned into digital and automatica sprint became an online-only event that was held for the first time from June 22 to 24, 2021.
The community had thus gained a business and dialog platform of unlimited reach – a short agile sprint preceding the leading exhibition in June 2022. The result? More than 3,500 interested participants and lots of inspiration that will also become part of the digital offerings at automatica 2022.
Participants
Companies presented in digital brand rooms
Average number of participants per presentation format
Contacts
„With automatica sprint, we really made the best of the pandemic situation. The digital event scored with the quality and coverage of its content, and we learned a lot for the future. But now we are looking forward to the automatica 2022 in-person trade fair!”
Wilfried Eberhardt, Chief Marketing Officer der KUKA AG
The new format offered an extensive range of innovations as well as numerous presentations and panel discussions. More than 80 companies presented products and solutions and could be contacted through various channels. There were insights into new developments of the indus-try’s key players as well as round table discussions with industry experts on topics such as 5G, robotics in SMEs, and machine vision. The vir-tual VDMA R+A OPC UA Demonstrator that visualizes the advantages of digital twins in production, thus breaking new ground in explaining complex technologies in the digital realm, was an example for an investment into the future.
automatica sprint successfully offers digital stage to automation sector