Retreat, second instalment

In March, a year on from our first company retreat, the planpolitik team once again escaped the everyday work routine to bask in the winter sun and snow of Brandenburg. But this was not a holiday: Our heads were spinning, new projects were discussed and old work routines reassessed. If everything works out as discussed, expect some changes at planpolitik after this retreat. As always, we’ll keep you posted!

Simulation Game about Local Politics for Landesjugendring Brandenburg

This is how we’d like to work more often in the future (see “retreat, second instalment”): commissioned by the Landesjugendring Brandenburg we developed a simulation game entitled “Young People. Participating Locally.” and then licensed it to the LJR. This means no travelling or supervising the game for us – and it’s still an extremely exciting project. It’s just nice to be able to work from the office from time to time…We are eagerly awaiting the feedback from the first games.

A video about our Module on Negotiation

In this short video, Björn Warkalla talks about our module on negotiation, which we are teaching as part of the International Relations Online Masters at FU Berlin.

The applied side of IR Online

Did you know that IR Online not only teaches you theory – but also practice? Björn Warkalla from planpolitik tells us how he and his colleague Simon Raiser train students to apply major bargaining tactics in global politics. Learn more about the module also on our website.

European elections – Simulations commissioned by the European Parliament

This year will see us run numerous simulations of European elections in schools all over Germany – as commissioned by the European Parliament. The first two of these events, in Pirna and Dresden, were a resounding success. Hopefully, word will get around that we are running a fun and interesting simulation game about the 2014 European parliamentary elections.

Here’s another little something we stumbled across

A small article about planpolitik from our early days, on ZeitOnline, nonetheless…and to be fair, things are not radically different today – except back then we still believed we’d be able to survive on developing and playing simulation games alone…enjoy the read!

Turin, third instalment

Once again we travelled to Turin for the International Training Center and presented a workshop for representatives of employer organisations from 17 European states. This year’s perk: Unlike Berlin,Turin had already been blessed by the arrival of spring. The workshop went all the better for it…

Surreptitious advert for our colleagues at the Centre for Global Politics

We are happy to share the following message from our Colleagues at the Centre of Global Politics, in which they invite you to vote for their Massive Open Online Course – the trailer alone is great.

It appears that MOOC is the new trend in online teaching. It really does sound exciting, and – like so many things – is already rather established in the US whilst still in its infancy over here in Germany. Hence this competition in which the CGP is taking part. If you like it, vote for it!

E-(x)cite. Join the Game of Social Research

VOTE FOR OUR FREE ONLINE COURSE! Help us to get a great fellowship for realizing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) – open to all, free, and attracting students from all over the world. Our course teaches you methods for avoiding plagiarism and producing exceptional scientific research in a fun and interactive way. Watch our trailer, share it, and give us your vote by pressing the green “Abstimmen/Vote” button.

Simulation Game about Right-Wing Extremism at DEKT in Hamburg – overwhelmed by public demand

For this year’s protestant “Kirchentag” in Hamburg, our team dealt with the difficult subject of right-wing extremism. One of the reasons it’s difficult is that we believe nobody should be made to play the role of a right-wing extremist. Therefore, the scenario consisted of a discussion about a church fete after the event – the fete was infiltrated by right-wing extremists whose extremism was not immediately apparent. Therefore, the focus of the game was not on Neonazis but on the increasing tolerance of right-wing extremis in the middle of society.

With an original plan to have 500 people take part in the game over two days we found ourselves to be somewhat ill-prepared for the great interest from Kirchentag visitors. There were 200 people waiting for us for only the first round. We spontaneously threw the schedule out of the window, fired up the printer, and two days and 56 games later, a whopping 1200 people had taken part. We’re guessing this will remain planpolitik’s record number of participants for some time… Media coverage of the event included articles in the German newspapers die tageszeitung, and the Tagesspiegel  as well as a short feature on Deutschlandradio Kultur.