"Servus und welcome" - whatchado goes international

We’re happy to announce that we’re now an international platform! :) So here’s our story starting – as we did – in German (Austrian! ;) ) ’n then switching to English.

27. Juni, 2011: whatchado startet mit 17 Lebensgeschichten und der Mission, die Lebensstorys der Welt einzufangen und diese der ganzen Welt zur Verfügung zu stellen.

6. Mai, 2014: Wir waren letztes Jahr bei der UNO in New York, waren als HR Experten in Dubai und sind Teil der österreichischen Initiative 21st Austria, die sich zum Ziel gesetzt hat, Österreich weltweit als Success-Story zu positionieren.

Über tausende Lebensgeschichten aus über 100 Nationalitäten und fünf Kontinenten später, könnte man meinen, wir sind unserer Mission, das Handbuch der Lebensgeschichten zu werden, näher gekommen.

Ich sitze gerade im Taxi von Öhlingen Richtung Stein am Rhein, um dann über Zürich nach Wien zu fliegen.

Gestern war das Bodensee Forum mit HR Experten aus Deutschland, Schweiz und Österreich und wir – der einst kleine Verein – durften mittendrin sein.
Und so stolz es uns macht zu sehen, wie weit unser Team gekommen ist, genauso sehen wir, dass wir bisher unser eigenes Bottleneck waren. Meine Gedanken drehen sich um den ersten TV-Bericht im Juni 2011, als wir online gingen.

Dort wurde unsere Mission klar und deutlich kommuniziert: Wir wollen die ganze Welt daran teilhaben lassen.

Wir haben eine Mission – Never forget your mission

Besucht man unsere Website, sieht man schon den ersten Spielverderber: Wir haben zwar über 200 englische Videos aus der ganzen Welt, doch kann man die Website nur dann konsumieren, wenn man der Deutschen Sprache mächtig ist.

Ein Widerspruch in sich … ja, sehen wir genauso.Und daher, seit Mitte dieser Woche, we’re going to offer our whole web experience in English.One would say, that “it’s a shame“ that it took us that long, but things need time.
Sometimes much more time than estimated … and that’s okay.
We don’t say breaking deadlines is the right way to go, but sometimes you need to get other things done, before you can go the next mile.

In our case, it was the production of English speaking content from all over the world and working together with great companies to shoot their multilingual-speaking employees. For example, we used the last 2 month to team up with VOITH, one of the greatest business leaders in mechanical engineering, to shoot their employees in three countries (China, Brazil, Germany).

That’s just the fingertip of what we’ve planned and what others see from outside.

Every marathon starts with the first step

The first step of our internationalisation is the language switch bar on the website, which enables users all over the world to experience the website in English. That switch bar changes all text areas from German to English and pushes English-speaking content to the attention of our users.

Have you said “WOW, GREAT”? … yeah, we also like that very much :)

WHATCHAYEAR 2014 – The Participation age

whatchado is still on track, rockin’ this dream of a few naive people believing that it should be everyone’s goal in life to find one’s calling.

Going English with our website, which is our main communication channel, is like opening a door.

Opening a door for our users and for our customers to provide their stories for a much wider audience.

But also opening a door for us – everyday, we really try hard to convince people to get out of their comfort zone, because we truly believe that opportunity is always where it hurts the most. Therefore we have to go somewhere we’ve never been before.

Muhammed Ali, one of my greatest sports heroes, once said, when he was asked about how many sit-ups he does in a row:

I don’t count my sit-ups, I only start counting when it starts hurting.Muhammad Ali

Going international is a huge step for the whole whatchado family.

Making our baby explorable in another language brings (some :-)) complexity with it and we need to handle that.

We need to be fast – and no matter if succeeding or stumbling, the most important thing is learning. One will also say that after going English we’re not in (international) stealth mode anymore. Yes,that’s absolutely true, but we know that there is always a trade off between protection and openness.

It’s the core of communication’s nature, that you can’t have both at the same time.

The whole concept of the Internet were connections and information, and later, with Web 2.0, sharing and participation.

You can’t share your stuff, if you don’t give people the chance to participate – and language barriers are a mess, it’s that easy. We must open whatchado to the world to see how far we can go and still… we’ve just started our journey.

GLOCAL – Thinking global, acting local

We love Austria, Germany & beautiful Switzerland. Going through a new door doesn’t mean we’re moving our attention away from what we love most and what brought us here.“We are from Austria” – and that’s where our heart is.

Our main business operates in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and we love that and we will still focus on these great countries. We are curious, therefore we’ve started to evaluate other countries and who knows, maybe also our business will go beyond Austria/Germany/Switzerland. To everyone who thinks we’re leaving Austria aside … forget it, Austria is our hood! QUESTIONS, that came to my mind last month, which might be interesting for you as well:

* great, you’re in English – but there are a lot of German speaking stories. How can we benefit from them?

That’s true – a lot of our content is still in German, because we started in Austria, which is a German speaking country.
But we have produced a few hundred stories in other languages, mainly English and that’s just the starting point.
We’re going to increase English speaking content to keep a balance between the languages.
We have a few German speaking stories, which are subtitled in English. The other German speaking stories are currently only available in native German, but … we’re evaluating options to bring them to other languages too.

* what about other languages beyond English?

to keep it simple … we’re evaluating :)

* guys, that sucks – no one cares

That’s okay, but drop us an Email and tell us, what exactly sucks about going English or why you don’t care.

Going back to where I started this blog post:“Unserem Ziel näher gekommen“ ist der falsche Ausdruck, wir haben „gerade mal die Startlinie verlassen” trifft es eher. Wir haben gerade erst begonnen zu sehen, wie groß unser Potential ist. Aber vom Ziel sind wir noch weit entfernt, sehr weit … aber wir sind unterwegs.Do you have any questions? Drop me an Email: ali@whatchado.com