Last year, ProHof e.V., one of Hof’s largest associations, approached Hof University of Applied Sciences. The aim of the association’s board was to scrutinize and further improve ProHof’s media presence. Under the direction of Prof. Ina Günther, Professor of Media Informatics, third-semester students now dealt with the ProHof association, the well-known ProHof magazine and the associated Internet presence. Thus in groups ideas for a continuous advancement of the spreading channels and for the digitization of the association contents were to be developed. The results were now presented at Hof University of Applied Sciences and the winning groups were awarded prizes.
In preparation for the project, ProHof board member Michael Maurer and his deputies Anke Bogler and Rainer Krauß had impressively explained the structures and goals of the association to the students last year, as well as the challenges arising from advancing digitalization
The students asked many questions and were keen to find out what ProHof stands for and what we stand for
Michael Maurer, ProHof Chairman
And further: “It was a great pleasure to see how committed and serious the young people approached the task set,” ProHof Chairman Michael Maurer was already enthusiastic about the approach last fall.
Results were presented
A few months later, the results worked out in groups, which were also graded as part of the course, were presented to the ProHof board. The student groups shone with great ingenuity and, in many cases, a clearly recognizable goal
The students gave a lot of thought to how the successful magazine could also be transferred piece by piece to the digital world. The question of whether this succeeds in the medium and long term will ultimately also determine the future viability of our association.”
Rainer Krauß, Deputy ProHof Board Member
He continues, “In the future, the digital set-up will be just as important for us as the print product, but this should in no way be replaced,” says Deputy ProHof Board Member Rainer Krauß. Rather, he said, the aim is to make the association’s activities and their communicative dissemination a second pillar. Thus in particular the classical advertising customers further, target group-specific advertising possibilities are to open, so the ProHof executive committee further.
Diverse ideas
To achieve this, the students had developed a variety of ideas, especially for the ProHof website: To create an exchange for members among themselves was one of the suggestions, as well as the creation of a platform with the help of which one can manage his ProHof membership. Prof. Ina Günther was very satisfied:
It was really great to see how the students dealt with the ProHof association and developed creative solutions for conception and design”
Prof. Ina Günther
The presentation of the values that the association ProHof e.V. stands for was addressed, as well as the transfer of the popular ProHof riddle by Sonja Wietzel-Winkler into the digital world. Other students wished the integration of event calendars or regional recipes into the web offer. Deputy ProHof Chairwoman Anke Bogler commented
We are very grateful for sometimes very exciting considerations. And even if not everything will be affordably for our association, then we took along nevertheless some homework, which we must convert medium-term, in order to be able to become fair the conditions of the today’s medium world.”
Anke Bogler, Deputy Chairwoman of ProHof
Exactly what this might look like is now to be discussed at length by the ProHof board as a whole. In any case, the work of the student groups has now been honored with a total of 1000 euros. Thus, the most creative group in the opinion of the ProHof board received 500 EUR, the second and third place winners received 300 and 200 EUR in recognition of their work.
More about the citizens’ association ProHof…
