Recap: Political Morning with Christian Gaebler, Head of the Senate Chancellery @3IT

On 23 September of this year, 3IT’s long-time partner media:net berlin-brandenburg invited for a “Political Morning with Christian Gaebler, head of Senatskanzlei Berlin” at the 3IT. After a welcome by Dr.-Ing. Ralf Schäfer, Head of Video division at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, and Andrea Peters (media:net berlinbrandenburg e.V.), the two moderators Claudia Lehmann (CEO MAZ & MOVIE) and Christopher Hana (CEO The Esports Observer) took the floor to talk with Chrisitan Gaebler about the future of Berlin’s media industry in the face of the crisis caused by Covid19.

During the in-depth session, Christian Gaebler emphasized Berlin’s quick reaction to the difficult situation by providing the media industry with emergency aids. He argued that in particular 3IT’s long-time partner MedienBoard Berlin Brandenburg had to be mentioned in a highly positive light due to its fast and flexible response to the crisis and purposeful support of the media and film industries.

In the discussion with the moderators, the question arose on how Berlin-Brandenburg as an attractive site for the movie and film industry could be secured on a long-term and sustainable basis.

As a reaction to the current situation, as per Gaebler, the film sector would need to embrace new developments and direct its sponsorships accordingly. An example, he argued, was the “Digital Film Production”, which had been presented shortly with 3IT’s partner Medienboard, in order to consolidate and sustain Berlin’s competitiveness in the domain of filmmaking with digital key technologies, such as CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) and VFX (Visual Effects). Next to these very reasonable funding models, he further resumed, for an enduring film sector, qualified workforce would be mandatory, as well as efficient operations, and good sites, which does not necessarily imply the state’s intervention. Gaebler referred to the game industry as a very positive example, which emerged out of an active Start-Up-Scene and thanks to positive conditions without any government aids, had converted  Berlin into one of the hotspots of the Games- and Esports-Scenes. He emphasised the duty of the Senate Chancellery to carry on in providing the space and foundations necessary to guarantee further expansion and growth. Subsequently, he admitted that in terms of digitization, there would be a huge room for improvement, in particular with regards to the development of broad band.

In his outlook at the end of the talk, Christian Gaebler pointed out further important issues that needed to be addressed by the senate in the future: improving the working conditions in film and television and the technical support of non-commercial local radio stations.

Finally, the moderators opened the general Q&A session and the participants were given the opportunity to address their questions personally to the head of the Senate. This resulted in another interesting exchange.

The 3IT-Team was very happy to host its partner media:net berlinbrandenburg’s event. We are looking forward to more fruitful events like this in the future.

For more information on the event, check out media:net’s homepage.