smartclip Offsite 2026

At the end of June, smartclippers from across Europe gathered in Bremerhaven for three days of learning, collaboration, and the occasional healthy dose of competition. Now in its fifth year, our annual offsite remains one of the few opportunities for colleagues from across the company and RTL AdAlliance to come together in person.

For an organisation spread across multiple countries and time zones, these few days are about much more than presentations and workshops. They’re a chance to reconnect with familiar faces, properly welcome new colleagues, swap ideas over coffee instead of video calls, and strengthen the relationships that make day-to-day collaboration easier long after everyone heads home.

Where We Are, & Where We’re Going 

The programme was designed around a simple idea: every person at smartclip brings valuable expertise, and the offsite should create more opportunities to learn from one another.

Gloria Eichler, Chief Product Officer, and Christian Osterhues, VP People & Culture, opened the event by welcoming colleagues and introducing the goals behind this year’s programme. Thomas Servatius, Co-CEO, provided a company update, reflecting on recent developments, key priorities for the future, and the journey that has brought smartclip to where it is today. Dr. Oliver Vesper, Co-CEO at smartclip and Deputy CEO – CDO at RTL AdAlliance, then provided an update from RTL AdAlliance, highlighting how the relationship between our two organisations continues to grow and why close collaboration between technology and commercial teams remains essential as the media landscape continues to evolve.

The focus then shifted from our own organisations to the wider ecosystem we operate in. In “5 Facts Our Clients Want You to Know,” hosted by Tanja Schmitz, Senior Manager, Key Partnerships, Mick van Grinsven, Head of Client Solutions EMEA at RTL AdAlliance, shared insights into the priorities, challenges and perspectives shaping our clients’ work — helping colleagues better understand the audiences and partners we support every day.

Continuing this market perspective, Frank Plähn, VP Data Products, and Cecilia Tanasoiu, Growth Product Manager, explored one of the industry’s biggest challenges in “Convergent Net Reach — Our Roads Towards the Holy Grail of Measurement.” The session highlighted how smartclip is contributing to the future of cross-platform measurement and the role our technology plays in helping bridge the gap between linear and digital advertising.

Strengthening How We Work Together

Another key theme throughout the offsite was that effective collaboration starts with understanding ourselves and the people around us.

In the session, “The Human Architecture,” Mirjam Naves, VP Projects & Processes, explored how communication styles shape and influence the way we work together. smartclippers were tasked with identifying their colleagues’ styles as well as their own style with the goal of understanding themselves and team members better. During “Decision Predators & Corporate Prey — Your Wild Hunt Survival Arena,” Ekaterina Beck, Senior Business Product Manager – Supply Products and MaiVy Nguyen Ngoc, Business Product Manager – Supply Products, guided participants through a corporate safari to identify the “decision predators” that quietly derail projects. And in “Say It Right: Train Your Tone to Defuse Conflicts,” Martin Voss, Head of Technical Product Consulting and Miriam Blockhaus, Manager Learning, Development & Culture, offered practical strategies for navigating difficult conversations and conflicts.

Exploring AI From Every Angle

With AI rapidly becoming part of how we work, another major focus of this year’s offsite was creating a shared understanding of what it means for smartclip — across roles, teams, and levels of technical experience.

Rather than approaching AI as a topic for only one group, the sessions explored AI from several perspectives: how we build with it, how we use it in our everyday work, and how we make sure we do so responsibly.

For colleagues looking to better understand how AI can support their daily work, “AI and Me @smartclip: Mindset, Biases, & Strategies for Everyday AI Use,” explored the human side of AI adoption. Sonja Schuster, Head of Training & Development, Nikola Chakalov, Technical Project Manager – Addressable TV, and Miriam Blockhaus looked at the mindset, assumptions and practical strategies needed to use AI effectively while recognising the role that human judgement continues to play.

The hands-on “Vibe Coding for Non-Coders” session hosted by Lukas Senicourt, Data Engineer, gave colleagues the opportunity to experience AI-assisted development for themselves, showing how new tools can help turn ideas into working solutions — even without a traditional coding background.

For more technical smartclippers, Head of Data & Science, Sven Teresniak’s session “From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering” explored what happens beyond initial experimentation: how teams can move from AI-powered prototypes towards scalable, production-ready solutions and what this means for the future of engineering.

The “security@smartclip” session, hosted by Maurice Funke, Director System Operations and Security, Chris Hillje, DevOps Engineer, and Ricardo Band, DevOps Engineer, demonstrated how our teams are approaching security in an AI-enabled world, including practical examples of tools and approaches being developed to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.

Finally, the session “Knowledge Agent 101: The Ultimate Shortcut” showed how we are already applying AI internally to make knowledge more accessible across the company. Mariana Berezin, Head of Product Education, Aurélie Bombrun, Senior Manager Product Education, and Danielle Petway, Senior e-Learning & Product Communications Manager, demonstrated how the Knowledge Agent — an in-house AI platform built by smartclip for smartclip — can help navigate documentation, answer questions, and make it easier for our teams to find the internal information needed to solve everyday problems.

Collaboration Meets Competition

Of course, no smartclip offsite would be complete without bringing everyone together for something a little less serious.

Day two opened with “All Hands on Deck”, a company-wide team challenge that mixed colleagues from different departments to solve problems together in unexpected ways. It was competitive enough to spark plenty of friendly rivalry while reinforcing exactly what the challenge was designed to encourage: collaboration beyond our usual teams.

Day three continued the lighter mood with a company-wide game of Family Feud, proving once again that asking smartclippers to guess what their colleagues are thinking often produces answers nobody sees coming.

Between workshops, coffee breaks, and shared meals, the biggest conversations often happened away from the presentation slides — whether catching up with long-time colleagues or meeting teammates in person for the very first time.

Logging Off & Linking Up

Learning may have filled the agenda, but connection remained at the heart of the offsite.

Outside of sessions, smartclippers explored Bremerhaven through a range of activities. The history enthusiasts among us stepped into the past at the German Emigration Centre and a local legends walking tour, while the curious explorers discovered different climates at the Klimahaus. Those looking for even more friendly competition tested their aim at an archery cinema, while daredevils took things to new heights — quite literally — swinging above the harbour from the top of the hotel. 

Each day ended by bringing everyone back together over shared meals, creating the perfect setting for conversations that continued long after the sessions wrapped up. And, in true smartclip fashion, the final evening called for a proper celebration. smartclippers gathered in the Captain’s Lounge on the nineteenth floor to enjoy music, dancing, and panoramic views of the city.

Moments like these have become one of the defining parts of the offsite. They’re where cross-functional conversations continue naturally, new friendships form, and Slack profile pictures finally become real people.

Looking Ahead

This year’s event challenged us to think differently about collaboration, sharpen our understanding of AI, and learn from the expertise that already exists across our company. More importantly, it reminded us that while technology continues to evolve rapidly, our greatest advantage remains the people building it together.