Ever wondered why everyone else seems to be getting all the attention on their profile, and you’re left twiddling your thumbs? Now there’s something you can do to turn things around. XING members who need a helping hand can get one from networking experts Dr. Andreas Lutz and Joachim Rumohr, who are now officially licensed by XING.

Master licensees Joachim Rumohr and Dr. Andreas Lutz are in charge of setting up and organizing the seminars. They also make sure the local seminars and workshops are only held by selected and qualified XING trainers. Here at XING, we also check courses periodically and interview participants to ensure that Official Seminars meet high standards of quality.

At an Official XING Seminar, a trainer shows participants tricks on how to boost contacts and strengthen existing relationships, and how to make the most of the XING experience. These networking gurus show participants how to put XING to work for you to set up a professional network of clients, employers, employees or suppliers. Click here for more information on the seminars.

Marta is Junior Manager Member Relations for XING Spain. She works in Barcelona and today she shares her “Piece of XING”. (click on the image to enlarge)

Meet Hong Xu – a XING member we got to know at the “Business People Cheer On the Olympics” online event held by XING China. This young man can look back on an impressive curriculum vitae that sees its culmination at this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing.

Having started his journey as an Olympic volunteer way back in 2007, he is a graduate student of RenMin University and teaches at the Humanistic Olympic Studies Center at the university. Now all the preparation, hard work and research over 11 years have paid off – as two of his dreams have come true at these Olympic Games in Beijing:

As well as being involved in proofreading the series of manuals published as training guides for all the volunteers at the Beijing Olympic Games, he was also selected as a volunteer for the China-Japan Friendship Hospital – the only medical institution designated to treating athletes, coaches and sports experts during the Games.

The highlight for him though was his honoured selection as a torchbearers, at the torch relay in Kashi in the Xinjiang province on June 18, 2008. We asked him how he felt at the time: “Although my part of the relay race was quite short, every pace I took felt like a glorious moment.” Congratulations from the XING team on receiving this honour!

To keep pace with ever-improving XING features and services we’ve decided it’s time to give the XING homepage a make-over.

Here’s a sneak preview:

Clearly structured, the new start page highlights the essential benefits of XING and offers valuable information for (first-time) visitors. The “People Finder”, brand new XING for partners section and the new flashy guided tour may offer information that even die-hard XING fans were not aware of. As always, this will be available in 16 different languages. The new home page will go live this Friday during the course of the day.

It is now 2 o’clock in the morning. The lobby of Swissotel is getting quiet, I have time to write something. I’m an Olympic volunteer for the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing. My job is to provide transport, translation and information services to the media guests visiting the games. In the hotel I’m in charge of media people from the EBU (European Broadcasting Union), mainly employees of ARD and ZDF. I was surprised at how many media people came to Beijing: ARD and ZDF together sent more than 700(!) reporters, moderators, technical staff, editors, cameramen and managers to Beijing. This is much more than all the German athletes taking part in the games (439).

It is not easy to be selected as a volunteer. I was told that only one in seven will be given the chance. Why was I chosen? I think it is very simple: on the one hand the organisers believe that with my background I can give professional services to the guests, and on the other hand due the reason I gave them for why I want to be an Olympic volunteer.

Why I want to be an volunteer? Very simple: I lived in Germany for more than 16 years and got lots of help from my German professors, friends, and colleages. I want to give back something to the German guests and help where I can, especially in this special moment. And I’m proud of my country and I’m proud to show our guests the changes that my country has undergone over the past 30 years.

You may think the daily work of a volunteer is very interesting. Yes, sometimes. We saw people like IOC Chairman Mr. Rogge who hold an IOC party the day before the opening in our hotel, for instance, or the Chairman of Hong Kong Special Zone, Mr. Zheng Yingquan who came to Beijing (like the other 80-90 leaders of the world) to see the opening ceremony.

But most of the time we have to deal with less exciting questions like: How can I get to the IBC (the working place of journalists)? How can I get to Houhai (the famous night bar street)? How can I get to Xiusui (the famous shopping street)? or How can I visit the Great Wall? On the other hand, I’m a volunteer – we are here to help and not (only) to have fun. We’ll do our best even if it’s not challenging.

A guest is coming and I have to finish my writing. A last word. The most asked question is not any of the above mentioned ones. It is the following: Where can I buy the T-shirt that the volunteers wear? The answer is no-where: the clothes we wear are sponsored by Adidas, and they have only been made for the 100,000 volunteers.

There are certain moments when you stop to consider

just how skilled and intelligent some people are
that you work with every day. Versed in a whole range of different fields, many of them look back of distinguished careers. Several members of our team like Lars Neumann and Stephanie Busch have even published books in their respective fields.
Matthias Häsel, who now works as Technical Product Manager at XING, also contributed to and edited a book last year together with a colleague entitled “Web 2.0” which I read just recently. The book elucidates trends and technologies on today’s web,
dealing with a variety of different topics such as social software, mashups, Ajax,

Web services and the Semantic Web. Both editors derived a number of conclusions from the various chapters regarding business opportunities and risks for Internet companies.
The book has already become a well-known Web 2.0 reference work.

Matthias is currently working on his next book. In his PhD thesis he did research on what skills IT professionals require in Internet start-up companies, providing an ostensive insight into why technical expertise alone is not enough. The book will be published beginning of next year.
Watch out for it!

August 8, at 8:00 p.m. in 2008 marks an incredibly exciting moment for the Chinese people: it is the time that the opening ceremony for the 29th Olympics Games starts, and the very first Olympics ever to be hosted in China. To celebrate this historical event, XING China and the Beijing Community have co-organized an official “Business People Cheer On the Olympics” online event in the Beijing Community. Members throughout the whole of China were invited to join three serial events together to share the happiness of host country.
Over 20 Chinese communities have already joined in the “Cheer on the China team on behalf of your community” online competition, where members can post their best wishes in the forum under their community threads to be in with a chance of winning one of the top 10 cheering on communities awards.
Many members have already posted their predictions in the “Guess the number and rank of gold medals won by the China team” forum before the opening of the Olympics. Some members have decided to wait till the event is about to close to have a better chance of winning. One member Mr. Lei Bin humorously predicted that China would be “ranked no. 1 as a warm host country, ranked no. 2 for gold medals”.
Another online forum called “Share your Olympic stories” also opened to encourage members to share their experience of the Games. Olympics volunteers, torch carriers, service providers, and spectators were all invited to share their stories. With the start of Olympics, we believe Chinese members will now have even more exciting topics to share with one other. Cheer on the Olympics! Cheer on China!

Our second Annual Report has just won the ARC Award in New York, the world’s largest competition for Annual Reports – for the second year in a row. The report for the financial year 2007 won bronze in the so-called “Overall” category, giving us a ranking as the third best annual report – worldwide. 2,100 reports from 27 countries were judged in total. A big thanks to everyone involved  for their great dedication and teamwork!

For many people, the word triathlon is automatically associated with the famous Ironman contest on Hawaii. Its little brother-less well known, but just as challenging is the Ostseeman on the Baltic coast, where all the same distances have to be accomplished. Ultra-athletic types come together to compete in three disciplines: running (42 km), cycling (180 km) and swimming (3.9 km). Having already made their mark at several other sports competitions in the past, often walking away with a trophy, the XING team also participated in the Ostseeman triathlon. They took to the start line in the mixed relay.

Ably supported by Katharina Hubert- a XING member who joined in at the last minute to take on the swimming stage – Timo Möbius (running) and Timo Hoppe (cycling) came an excellent fifth place in the company ranking.

Congrats guys, we’re all very proud of you!

Today deutsche startups.de announced that Lars has been voted “Deutschlands wichtigster Webgründer” (Germany’s most important web founder). The whole team here is really proud of this achievement! A jury of 30, including such well-known names as Robert Basic and Cem Basman, and readers of deutsche startups.de judged the 80 shortlisted names based on categories like success (who provides excellent results?), technology (who is innovative and drives Germany’s technological standards forward?), character (who is a nice guy with a great personality?) or originality (who has an idea and concept that is most inspiring?) Lars made No. 1 in six out of 10 categories. We’ll be able to find out in which categories exactly when deutsche startups.de publishes all the detailed ranking lists this week.  Meanwhile you can watch the video interview with Lars.