Communications and Marketing
International alumni conference in September 2015
Many of them were returning for the first time, to attend the conference after quite a few years following graduation from their Alma Mater.
The shared experience of studying in Germany at the H-BRS was a good common basis for exchanges between people from all over the world: it brought together a robotics entrepreneur from India with a manager with experience in China, an African media expert with an IT doctoral candidate from Canada, a CSR specialist from Mexico with a biologist from China.
In the workshops - with speakers from IBM, the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the aid organization "Brot für die Welt" (Bread for the World), as well as professors from the university - the participants exchanged practical experiences in international project-management.
Visits to their previous faculties and meeting the current students served to maintain contacts and led to new connections being made - which meant that many ideas emerged for possible future cooperation.
Therefore, on the last day quite a lot of suggestions were made as to how these former graduates could support our university in their home countries in future - for example as contact persons for interested students and colleagues at the H-BRS - and what they as alumni wanted from the H-BRS.
The conference was at the core of an alumni-project at the university, supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and funded by the Foreign Ministry, with the aim of connecting the international network of former graduates more closely.