From cookies to pitches: wrapping up the year with a BarCamp

Alexandra Carballo Porto & Dr. Petra Wanner-Meyer | December 2025

What better way to end the year at innovaphone than by combining festive spirit with culinary delights and collective intelligence at our traditional Christmas brunch. Let us tell you about our successful BarCamp concept, which breaks down hierarchies and fosters innovation. Supported by innovaphone myApps, the flexible structure of the "unconference" becomes a productive framework for concrete projects and next steps. As the year draws to a close, we proudly look back at the highlights of 2025 – a year full of ideas, progress and shared successes.

A buffet as colorful as our team: our traditional Christmas brunch

Staying true to tradition, we enjoyed our Christmas brunch again this year and our colleagues all brought home-made specialities for a culinary journey around the world! From Spanish tortilla to gingerbread and panettone to baklava – a feast as diverse as our app portfolio and as rich in cultures as our team.

The magic of collective intelligence: why innovaphone BarCamps are our favourite concept for success

Participation is at the heart of innovaphone’s culture, because we firmly believe that the best innovations arise from open dialog. That’s why a BarCamp and innovaphone are the perfect match! Often described as an "unconference", it is an event where hierarchies are dissolved and we all participate on equal footing, jointly creating the content. What began in 2016 as an internal pilot project to overcome silos and promote knowledge sharing has now become a proven concept that we truly value. In fact, we now apply this successful concept to our partner events, ensuring relevant and productive discussions.

Managing a spontaneous agenda without chaos: how innovaphone tools bring greater transparency

The charm of a BarCamp lies in its structure: it allows participants to propose topics and move around freely, guided by the famous "law of two feet" (the freedom to join the conversation where you can learn the most or contribute best; even a spontaneous conversation in the kitchen can spark a brilliant idea).
We use our own tools to support this agility. We developed a dedicated BarCamp app within innovaphone myApps to manage topic proposals, voting and the agenda in real time. Once the sessions are finished, the knowledge cycle continues in Connect, our corporate social intranet. This is where we document and tag the session notes, ensuring that the ideas discussed are promptly translated into concrete actions, such as backlog tasks in Projects or the formation of new teams.

How BarCamp 2025 unfolded

This year, our BarCamp once again demonstrated how valuable and productive the open exchange of ideas and knowledge can be. The day began with an emotional tribute to employees celebrating long-standing anniversaries at innovaphone, as well as the farewell of one of our colleagues entering retirement. All this took place in front of a colorful and varied buffet, which reflected the culinary skills of our team and provided a perfect start to the day.

Well nourished and bounding with energy, we opened the BarCamp with a round of introductions. Each employee shared their personal highlight of 2025 (whether professional or personal) – a wonderful icebreaker, which immediately created a sense of closeness and plenty of conversation topics.

The agenda that followed was shaped by numerous ideas, new impulses and exciting questions, which will undoubtedly be explored in greater depth and expanded upon in 2026. The topics ranged from proposals for designing new products and strategic questions on business development to philosophical debates on potential change driven by the latest technology trends, and discussions on the importance of a vibrant feedback culture within the company.

An improvisational theatre group performed exclusively for us and provided an entertaining and successful conclusion to the event. With sketches, rhymes and spontaneous songs, the performers generated plenty of laughter and brought the day to a thoroughly positive close.

Voices from BarCamp 2025

Lars Dietrichkeit, Head of Business Development

“When I first encountered the BarCamp concept nine years ago, I was immediately enthusiastic about the idea: a conference with an agenda determined by the participants’ ideas, where everyone communicates on an equal footing. We have already held quite a number of BarCamps at innovaphone, and I continue to be fascinated by how open exchanges on specific topics and cross-departmental knowledge bring the participants together to createsa very special, unifying team spirit.”

Rüveyda Kabalar, apprentice

"It’s great that we trainees are actively involved in exciting topics, get to know new colleagues and can contribute even without prior knowledge."

Daniel Thirso Angulo Zamora, Regional Support Consultant

“Great event! It’s fabulous to see that everyone in the company has the opportunity to be heard and to brainstorm with colleagues on topics that matter to them. Great ideas and exciting discussions!”

Year-end review and Christmas greetings

The year 2025 was marked globally by the growing importance of digital sovereignty and the deep integration of artificial intelligence into our daily working lives. Against this backdrop, innovaphone looks back on a strategically successful year. Our primary goal was to provide our customers with a secure and future-proof platform. We have successfully positioned ourselves as a trustworthy European alternative – with a focus on KRITIS requirements and "Made in Europe" quality.

Your loyalty and trust in our reliability as a privately owned company are our greatest motivation. We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to you for this at the end of the year. We wish you – our customers, partners and their families – a peaceful and reflective Christmas season and a healthy, successful New Year!