In the summer semester of 2021, I am once again pleased to have had a whole series of top-class experts and former colleagues as guests in my online session. 


Firstly, there is Dr. Andres Charadia from Buenos Aires, who reported on his many years of experience in the field of athlete training. Dr. Charadia, who himself has participated in two Olympic Games as an athlete, was thus able to show the students the perspective as an athlete but also as a coach and shared his experiences from more than 20 years of training in different countries. The students were particularly interested in the topic of talent development and promotion in the Argentinean sports and education system and in the region around Buenos Aires, with its almost 16 million inhabitants.
The well-known track and field expert Günter Lange joined us from Nice (France). The long-distance expert and long-time training director of the World Athletics Federation, was able to give the students insights into the long-term training methodical development of athletes. It quickly became clear that "LTAD", i.e. long-term talent development, sounds very good and coherent on paper, but often has little to do with practice. Especially when you look at the many endurance talents in African countries.
Movement Kinetics Specialist Veeramani Chidambaram from Singapore was my guest in June 2021 as part of a course. For the past 15 years, the city-state in Southeast Asia with a population of just under 5.5 million has been pursuing a broad-based sports strategy, and Veeramani gave the students a practical insight into the Singapore sports system.
It was also not easy to coordinate the appointment with my guest from Australia, Dr. Mark Stewart. The time difference to Melbourne is 9 hours. But even that worked out fine and Mark, who has already trained world champions, world record holders and Olympic champions in pole vaulting, not only presented his training concepts to the participants, but was also available to answer questions about sports in Australia.
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Even though I hope to return to classroom teaching in the winter semester of 2021/22, "virtual" guest lectures will certainly remain a part of my courses and I am already looking forward to my guests and the interesting exchange.

​Even if the current temperatures in Berlin hardly suggest it, the summer semester starts in a few days and I am looking forward to elaborate and discuss the topics of strategy, digitization and sponsorship with my international master courses.
A topic that has had a massive impact on almost all industries in the last 14 months and which is relevant across all sectors: digitalisation and digital change. The course "Digitalization in Sport" introduces the latest technologies that have the potential to give the sports industry a new face in the coming years. We look at the impact that innovation will have on the industry and its stakeholders. Of course, we always take a look at successful projects and case studies not only in sport. 
Digitization will also be one of the topics in the "Sponsoring" course in the coming weeks. In addition to the classic forms of sponsorship, the planning process and impact control, we deal with new strategic sponsorship commitments and innovative and digital opportunities of sponsorship. 
Both sponsorship and digitalization are an important component in the strategic orientation of sports clubs, associations and sports events. The course "Strategic Management" is therefore first concerned with the various internal and external analysis, before we then go into the strategic planning process from an entrepreneurial as well as a marketing perspective. Here, too, the cross-over on the latest developments in the digital sector is an issue.
So it remains exciting and, as always, very practical and application-oriented. Well, and the temperatures in Germany will hopefully rise a little more in time for the summer.