Let's get digital! #Sport #Health #Digital - The Congress

On 26 and 27 November 2020, the online congress "#Sport #Health #Digital" took place, which was organized by the TU Kaiserslautern (TUK) and the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK). According to the organizers, the aim of the congress was to discuss and shed light on the digitalization of the sports and health industries in terms of their interaction and to explore relevant issues at the interface of the respective topics. Interested parties and participants were offered insights into the wide-ranging program in advance, for example on social media and through various onboarding activities, and the anticipation for the online event grew from day to day. At the same time, the #SGD Congress was one of TUK's first purely online events, and even as a participant you could ask yourself in advance whether a digital format would be able to keep up with an analog event. Won't it be very anonymous? Will a personal exchange be possible at all? Can an online event replace a face-to-face meeting, or won't technology ultimately put a spanner in the works anyway? But shortly after logging in to the congress interface and after the first program items began, any fears of this kind were dispelled. The comprehensive and multifunctional platform and the high quality of the program items were convincing right from the start, resulting in a very interesting and successful online congress, with participants joining in from all over Germany and even beyond.

During the general congress warm-up, lobby moderator Carolin Müller gave a confident introduction to the interface, which was very user-friendly and attractively designed. All the important functions could be accessed with just a few clicks, making it easy to find your way around the website or app, take part in the individual program items and connect with other participants at the same time.

The official program, moderated by Prof. Dr. David Matusiewicz from the FOM University of Applied Sciences, began with an official welcome from the patron of the event, Prof. Dr. Arnd Poetzsch-Heffter (President of TUK), as well as Dr. Jens Baas (CEO of TK) and Randolf Stich (State Secretary and Head of Office in the Ministry of the Interior and Sport of Rhineland-Palatinate), who introduced the audience to the general relevance of the central topics and the critical examination of their interface. The keynote speeches that immediately followed included some of the highlights of the program. Dr. Yoshifumi Miyazaki from Chiba University in Japan presented "Shinrin-yoku", or "forest bathing", to the participants. The relaxing effect of nature and forest bathing was presented using physiological indicators such as brain activity and autonomic nervous system activity.

Participants were then able to choose between three parallel sessions, each of which focused on a different topic and were moderated separately. Session two focused on the influence of digitalization on training and doping as well as on the collection, analysis and use of sports data. Steffen Lang from the Technical University of Munich gave a very innovative presentation on the generation and analysis of sports game-specific data and its application, for example in the German Football League. After the end of the first session block, a "moving break" was offered, which was very well received by the participants and was praised by many in the chat. The audience had access to several live offers and recorded videos that invited them to join in, such as loosening exercises for the neck, finger coordination tasks and core stabilization training. This was a very pleasant alternative to a simple "let's move on" screen!

In the second block of sessions that followed, the focus was on topics such as digital sports teaching and the current Covid-19 pandemic. In session five, for example, an app was presented that enables pupils to do homework in the form of physical activity. The app provides the pupils with a set of instructions and a sample movement and they can then carry out the exercises independently. This was followed by a coffee talk, in which participants were randomly connected to one of the more than 300 congress participants according to their previously stated preferences, allowing them to exchange ideas and network with each other. The first day of the congress concluded with a series of public lectures on the "Opportunities and risks of digitalization", which were broadcast via a Twitch livestream. PD Dr. Dr. Christian Mönch from the Westpfalz-Klinikum, Prof. Dr. Prof. h.c. Andreas Dengel from DFKI Kaiserslautern and Prof. Dr. Mandy Schiefner-Rohs from TUK first gave exciting insights into the influence of digitalization on their respective fields and then entered into a stimulating discussion about the questions raised and research approaches.

On the second day of the congress, the focus was on the opportunities and risks of increased digitalization in the context of health promotion and prevention in a university setting. Once again, participants were able to choose between parallel program items, and session seven explored the question of what role a digital offering plays or will play during and, above all, after the corona pandemic at universities and in college sports. Practical apps were presented, staff training in the course of digitalization was explained and socially critical topics such as body shaming were discussed. One of the conclusions that can be drawn from this session is that the importance of offering health and exercise-promoting measures as an online alternative will increase dramatically in the future. The aim is to reach even more people in general, raise their awareness of health issues and get them excited about sport. At the end of all sessions, all participants and moderators of the individual program items came together in a final round. Each moderator now had the opportunity to sum up the sessions and formulate a possible outlook based on the findings.

This marked the end of two very interesting and innovative online congress days, during which a great deal was explained, questioned and discussed with all participants in the form of over 60 moderators and speakers. The broad field of participants was downright enthusiastic about the implementation of the online event, because according to feedback in the congress chat, among other things, this was "a benchmark for future events". Even if an analog event on site would certainly also have been very profitable, the question of whether an online event can do justice to a face-to-face event can be answered with a clear YES after the two days of the #SGD congress!

Author: Sebastian Kelm