Wanna Bet! ...
... That’s it! On December 13, 2014, the once popular German family television show “Wetten, dass...?” was broadcasted for the last time. The journalist Heike Kunert wrote on the German online magazine “Zeit online” on this occasion, “The last show had united the television nation one more time. Many a funeral feast was ticked off; others called it public viewing. It was a little bit like in the eighties, when the whole family gathered around the television set: potato salad and sausage had been digested, the children were dressed in their gowns, mommy brought the salt sticks, daddy was secretly waiting for the sports show, grandma was mending socks and grandpa was indulged in his agricultural magazine. It was the time when people were surprised at the hairstyle of Gloria, Princess of Thurn and Taxis, equaling the rostra of a swordfish, which had hardly anything in common with mommy’s perm. It was the time when it was talked about this particular hairstyle on Monday in virtually all schoolyards, cafeterias and offices.”
Nostalgics and elder people may well remember those times. “Wetten, dass..?” – just as, for example, “Tatort” (Crime Scene) – provided topics of discussions for days and sometimes even for weeks, enabling the “elderly” and the “young” equally to join in the conversation and discussion. These “old-fashioned” communication channels and levels get somehow lost in the course of individualization and digitalization of today’s world. The BetonTage congress, however, is able to maintain a communication structure, which is nowadays often mistaken for being no longer up-to-date and antiquated, in a positive sense year by year. Time and again, the organizers succeed in initiating intensive professional discussions on all matters relating to concrete construction encompassing all its facets, thus making an essential contribution to increasing knowledge and the retention of knowledge even over generations.
Three days, 13 panels, 160 exhibitors and 2,000 attendees, these are self-explanatory figures. With this in mind, I wish all attendees interesting insights through the traditional communication methods and the organizers every success in running the event.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Schnell
Chairman of the German Committee for Structural Concrete
