Alumni Network

The Institute for Marketing & Innovation offers its graduates the opportunity to exchange ideas on current topics in agricultural, food and timber marketing through the Alumni Network.

The Alumni M&I Network has set itself the following goals:

• To be a humus and breeding ground for informal relationship and network building
• To become a community of agri-food and timber marketing professionals sharing ideas on sustainability and innovation issues
• To be a signal to future graduates of the wide range of opportunities offered by an agricultural and wood marketing degree at BOKU
• To present current research activities of the M&I Institute

Concrete activities of the Alumni M&I Network are:

• Guest lectures by alumni at the institute/BOKU in the course of lectures and talks
• Invitations to events such as M&I Research Talks or the M&I Summer Party
• Hub for finding project partners, focus groups or the assignment of master thesis topics

This year's alumni network meeting of BOKU marketing took place on June 5, 2024. After an exciting lecture by Dr. Christoph Wall on "Equans Energie - energy services as a driver of decarbonization" the 40 participants were able to get to know and appreciate each other in personal discussions at a buffet. The diversity of sectors represented ranged from plant engineering (Zeta Holding, Equans Energie), primary sector (Danubia Wood), government (Federal Ministry, LKÖ), umbrella marketing (AMA), raw material processing (Agrana, Goodmill), management consulting (Conevo), research (Austrian Institute of Technology) to market research (key quest), to name just a few. We would like to thank you very much for the stimulating discussions and look forward to the next network meeting in 2025.

On May 31, 2023, the second Alumni Network Meeting of the graduates of the Institute for Marketing & Innovation at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna took place at the Ilse Wallentin Haus. Rainer Haas opened the event by giving an introduction of the institute and a short lecture about the importance of social relations from a scientific point of view. Then, DI Christoph Opancar presented BioBalkan, which is the company he co-founded. His presentation spanned from the beginnings of the startup to the challenges of branding. The involvement of local women in Serbia in the processing of the products provided a fine example of social responsibility in action. During the subsequent tasting of BioBalkan's products, the graduates were able to see for themselves how good the Balkan can taste. The evening ended with informal conversations of the 30 participants over food and drinks. We are already looking forward to the next alumni network meeting in 2024, which will probably take place in June again. The exact date will be announced at the beginning of 2024.