Corporate culture as a festival theme

“I was always a digital person,” says Ernst Demmel. The Linzer, born in 1970 and a “Stahlstadtkind” by his own definition, is the initiator of the 24butterfly Corporate Karisma Festival, which takes place from May 2nd to 4th in the Posthof and the Tabakfabrik Linz. The OÖN met him for an interview in his office, which was furnished with a lot of antiquarian charm.

What fascinates you about the digital age, the era of transformation?

When people talk about digitalization, the first thing that comes to mind is the technology. The really exciting area is how a community ticks and functions. The technology often doesn’t work right away, but it usually works after a while. That fascinated me.

As you say, you gave yourself the gift of independence for your 50th birthday and are the managing director of cucocu.com GmbH, as the person who also launched the somewhat different company festival. How did this idea come about?

Corporate culture is an exciting topic. What is very noticeable is that culture and cultural development in companies today is something that is viewed from a social and economic perspective. In other words: Those who support corporate culture in a company today, i.e. the shared attitudes, values ​​and norms of employees, are usually sociologists, business economists or business psychologists. The classic cultural workers, creative people, artists and “weirdos” who create are missing.

Why is that?

I am also a partner at “Die Fabrikanten” and we discussed for a long time why the skills that exist in the area of ​​creativity are not in greater demand. There is an incredible amount hidden in the artistic approach to projects that could become valuable for companies. Nevertheless, business and art are relatively skeptical about each other. There is a certain unforgiveness there and at the same time both sides could benefit greatly from each other. The idea of ​​the festival is based on the idea of ​​how this could be brought to the people.

The title of the festival is “culture:hacks”. What is meant by this?

That there is no need for a major cultural strategy development, but rather that I can start at one corner of a company and set out to try things out. If anyone in an organization feels that it would be exciting to find ways to make us a community in interesting ways that make us enjoy our work, then a goal has been achieved. Changing our actions can be a precursor to something good.

What does good mean?

That we operate more sustainably, deal more carefully with human resources and try to create not only humane, but human-friendly working conditions. There are many resources in companies lying idle. We would have levers that probably wouldn’t be that difficult to use.

The festival in detail

“Value-full ideas to fertilize corporate culture” – that is the goal of the somewhat different business conference. The 24butterfly Corporate Karisma Festival will deal with the topic of “corporate culture” from May 2nd to 4th in the Posthof and the Tabakfabrik Linz.

An exhibition that will be on display at the Tabakfabrik from May 3rd to 17th is planned as an experiment, says Demmel. The idea is that companies bring in content, objects and ideas, stage them and present them like art. The question is whether viewers get a sense of what culture feels like in companies.

The first edition of the festival took place in Linz in May 2022, and the topic was strategic cultural development in companies and organizations. This year there are more than 50 actors from Austria, Germany and Switzerland who are focusing on the topic of “transformation” in more than 40 program contributions – keynotes, stage discussions, workshops.

The festival runs under the title “culture:hacks”, by which the organizers mean “small, courageous and sometimes subversive interventions into the existing situation” that open up existing corporate culture for transformation.