Inaugural "Virtual World Tour" scheduled for december

On December 4–5, Fraunhofer IAO is staging a global dialog on tomorrow’s world of work. Organized to mark the culmination of Science Year 2018, this inaugural virtual world tour will spend 24 hours visiting selected labor research institutes around the globe in order to showcase the latest research on future working environments.

This will offer an overview of the current discourse in this field worldwide and reveal where research is still needed. On this basis, it will then be possible to draw up an international knowledge map.

Start of an international dialog on the future of work

The inaugural virtual world tour will accompany the 2018 Work Research Conference. From midday on December 4 to midday on December 5 (Central European Time), a total of 12 institutes around the world will be inviting interested viewers to learn more about their differing approaches – in a range of markets and from a variety of scientific perspectives – to future changes in the working environment.

The virtual world tour will mirror the key topics of the workshop sessions at the 2018 Work Research Conference in Stuttgart. Twelve leading research organizations from Australia, Japan, Taiwan and countries in South America, the USA and Europe will present their view of how the world of work is set to change in the future as well as showcase their latest research.

A key aim of the virtual world tour will be to help inaugurate a more intensive international dialog on the future of the world of work. In turn, this will reveal where more research is needed and thereby enable the creation of an international knowledge map.

Global livestream of the virtual world tour

The virtual world tour will be launched on December 4, just before midday, by Dr. Otto Fritz Bode from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). A live link to the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland will offer delegates of the 2018 Work Research Conference at the Haus der Wirtschaft in Stuttgart an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the transmission studio, which is based in Frankfurt am Main.

The livestream will start at midday with the first of 12 sessions, each of which is scheduled to last two hours. Sessions will feature a variety of formats designed to provide Internet viewers with a glimpse of the way in which researchers from around the world view the future of the world of work.

The livestream is likely to attract viewers from right around the globe, since participating research institutes are to publicize it in their own country as well as provide links via their own digital channels and social networks. For those unable or unwilling to follow the livestream right around the clock, all of the sessions will also be available for viewing on demand.

Closing session from the Future Work Lab in Stuttgart

The last of the 12 sessions will take place in Stuttgart, from 10.00 am to 12.00 noon, on December 5, in the Future Work Lab of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO.

The Future Work Lab is an innovative space designed to provide companies, industrial associations and employees with an immersive experience of how the digitalized world of industrial work will look and feel in the future.

It features concrete Industrie 4.0 applications together with information on skills development and the current state of labor research. In addition, it also offers application scenarios designed to inspire companies to innovate in their particular field of business. Participants of the Work Research Conference in Stuttgart will have an opportunity to visit the Future Work Lab on December 5.

https://www.iao.fraunhofer.de/lang-en/press-and-media/latest-news/1407-inaugural…