Three questions to Pierre-Yves Oehrli, Communications Officer

Pierre-Yves Oehrli, Communications Officer at GGBa, shares how the pandemic has affected his personal and professional life, and provides insights into his role as a 360-degree content creator. How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your daily life and job? One of my main missions for the GGBa being to communicate on the dynamism and innovation […]

Pierre-Yves Oehrli, Communications Officer at GGBa, shares how the pandemic has affected his personal and professional life, and provides insights into his role as a 360-degree content creator.

How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your daily life and job?

One of my main missions for the GGBa being to communicate on the dynamism and innovation potential of the Western Switzerland region, I am fortunate enough to say that the pandemic hasn’t too negatively impacted my work. Much effort was put in from local companies and organizations towards Covid-19 relief, leaving me with plenty of positive news to communicate on. On a more personal level, along with working from home came the usual challenges: keeping up a routine, maintaining self-discipline and staying positive. To this end, the GGBa central office would (virtually) meet once a week to exchange on various topics, which, much akin to the necessary sharpening of one’s culinary skills during the lockdown to keep a healthy body and mind, proved beneficial for productivity and overcoming odds in these uncertain times.

What is the coronavirus situation like in Switzerland at the moment?

The number of new cases in Switzerland is slowly, albeit not necessarily steadily, decreasing every week. The Swiss Confederation has set some restrictions nationwide, and each canton is free to set stricter rules if needed. Only time will tell if more freedom or more restrictions are needed, although the population has adapted to a “new (masked) normal” way on living once outside of the house. Although the end of the year celebrations and gatherings remain an element of concern, the prospect of a vaccine coming as early as January 2021 leaves hope that the coming year will be made of less uncertainty.

In normal times, your job involves attending and filming large-scale events, and conducting interviews with C-level executives. How has this changed during the pandemic?

With the pandemic came the cancellation of all major events in Switzerland, hence impacting our video content output this year. This was however an opportunity for us to fully embrace digital technologies and launch a new type of content: webinars. This allowed us to delve deeper into some topics with experts from the field, something that we couldn’t typically do with the usual shorter duration of our videos. Now that we’ve familiarized ourselves with these new digital tools, and thanks to the success of the sessions we’ve organized so far, webinars are here to stay. Additionally, if all goes well, major events are already set to be (physically) happening in 2021, which means we’ll also soon be able to produce and share new video content showcasing our beautiful region, free of some of the limitations set by the ongoing sanitary crisis.