About the DTHG
The DTHG ("German Theater Technology Society") has existed since 1907 as a professional association for the theater and event technology industry and now unites 1500 members from technical, technical-artistic and artistic fields. The aim of the association is to support this multifaceted industry, which not only provides a mere leisure activity for the general public but also holds it together. It creates awareness and helps society cope with crises. The DTHG promotes education and training within the industry, as well as technical and economic development at theaters and the like. The latter is thereby more important than ever, as the cultural and creative industries in particular were, and in some cases still are, severely affected by the economic impact of the Corona pandemic.
Why Stackfield?
"Before Stackfield, different tools, such as Slack, forums (Mybb), databases or task managers were used in parallel. It was complicated, time-consuming and lacked a high level of data security," says Hubert Eckart. As managing director of the DTHG, Eckart is the responsible project coordinator for the funding programs "Neustart Kultur" for pandemic-related investments and "Wort.Livekultur" for organizers of live cultural events. He also handles the certification of indoor air quality by the DTHG in theaters, cinemas, and concert halls.
When selecting a tool, Eckart paid particular attention to finding a centralized solution that could combine team communication, task and project management, event management, audio and video telephony, and file management, while guaranteeing a high level of usability and data security. After years of research, Eckart found all of that in Stackfield in 2018.
"Stackfield combines all the benefits of popular chat, calendar, telephony, and task management tools while bringing a high level of data security and member privacy protection."
Today, DTHG's employees work together in Stackfield in a total of 270 rooms, which are divided into room groups and cover a wide range of work areas and topics: Committees, various working groups (e.g. for the Executive Board) and various projects.
Smooth transition to home office with Stackfield's help
Remote work, asynchronous project work and decentralized communication have long determined collaboration at the DTHG. As early as four years ago, a mindset shift took place within the company regarding internal work methods. "It doesn't make sense for everyone to travel to the office every day to do the same thing they could do at home," says Eckart.
Hubert Eckart - Managing Director of the DTHG
With the introduction of Stackfield, work at the DTHG was gradually converted to the home office, meaning that even before the pandemic, people were working almost exclusively from home. "Then Corona came along, and we said we'd stay home completely." Eventually, Eckart's employees were glad that he had continually exposed them to new tools over the past few years.
"At the beginning of Corona, the very colleagues who used to complain beforehand said: 'Thank goodness you've been pushing us like this! It was absolutely no problem to switch to home office full-time.
Project management with Kanban and email integration
Due to Corona, in 2021 one of the project teams dedicated itself to the special task of giving those who belong to the cultural sector the best possible fresh start against the backdrop of the pandemic. The DTHG faced particular challenges in terms of time, as the bureaucratic effort had to be completed as smoothly as possible in order to be able to provide the funding for a total of 1,700 applications in the shortest possible time.
The DTHG has implemented a well-designed system to manage funding calls. After verification, calls for funds, audit results and consulting requests are sent directly to Stackfield via email integration and are automatically converted into tasks there. They land in a specially designated room for further processing, where the subsequent internal workflow for processing is mapped with the help of the Kanban Board. Here, outstanding tasks are assigned to the responsible parties for execution.
In general, email integration is intended to avoid cumbersome forwarding and thus extensive email traffic. "People usually only notice afterwards that messages and tasks suddenly follow a certain structure, one that is also comprehensible. That saves a lot of time."
Eckart also sees particular success in task management, although it involves the implementation of project requirements, individual responsibilities or team tasks.
"The options for subtasks, assignments, and third-party sign-offs are especially helpful. Stackfield is the best tool we know of here."
Seamless communication via Stackfield
The DTHG makes sure that all communication within the team takes place via Stackfield. "The team members work 100% from their home offices in different cities in Germany. They need to be able to communicate quickly and without loss of information about the project's progress, the division of responsibilities, appraisals, public relations, and deadlines in changing constellations - Stackfield does a great job here." In addition to internal communication, Stackfield has simplified internal processes many times over. But for the DTHG, the conciseness of the communication goes beyond the boundaries of internal communication.
Prospects for the future
Maria Bürger, who is part of the project team and primarily responsible for communications work at Neustart Kultur, sees the potential for the theater: "I think if you want to break it down completely, the first thing to do is to carry out the funding program well and responsibly, and then derive new goals from that." The idea is to create a network in which communication between members can be further expanded. The idea, she says, is to "lead this exchange via Stackfield."
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