The XING team is gearing up for the Euro 2008 football tournament and has a separate contest all of its own going on: Which patriotic team member has the most impressive desk decorations in support of their home country’s football team? Take a look at some of our fan gear:

The orange lamp decoration is cheering on the Netherlands, by the way. Spot the odd one out: Which of the countries shown doesn’t have a team competing in Euro 2008?

Cindy just broke the news that we’ve won the prestigious ChinICT Rising Star award. XING Country Manager Dr. Song attended the summit in Beijing last week and introduced XING with a short presentation. The expert committee has selected the companies upon four criteria: market adequacy, profit model, financial backing, innovation in terms of technology and market approach. Congrats from all of us in Hamburg, Barcelona and Istanbul to the entire XING China team!

PS: The conference ChinICT is the largest meeting centered around the most innovative and fastest-growing IT rising stars in Asia.

Introducing yet another new addition to the XING family. This time round, Elizabeth our market development manager for UK & Ireland, tells us about her first few weeks at XING:

Elizabeth, Market Development: My first weeks at XING were sugar sweet – literally! On my first day my desk was completely covered with sweets and ever since I have been bombarded by cakes – there seems to be a birthday to celebrate every other day.
One of the other things that stood out was everyone’s willingness to speak with me in English; the team is very international and showed great interest in my Australian background. A fellow Aussie had left little Koala’s on the pot plants in our ‘block’ which made me feel at home . Sweets and Koala’s aside, I am very impressed with the calibre of people I am surrounded with; everyone does their job with passion and positivity. In additional there is a real feeling of camaraderie which is exemplified by the fact that our CEO is sitting in the open office with us.
Before XING, I was working in the digital space in strategy and project management. I have had my eye on XING since I first arrived in Germany and am now very happy to be involved with such a great business. As market development manager for the UK and Ireland, I have the exciting task of working with the other XING departments to grow our member base in these regions. Watch out – here we come!

Would you like to work for us? We’re hiring professionals who are passionate about what they do, whether it be market development or programming, and everything in between. Have a look here at our 35 current job listings.

Our Marketing team has come up with yet another not-to-be-missed promotion for the next few weeks. From today until June 1st, ALL members in Germany and Austria will be able take advantage of the BestOffers bonus program – usually only available to XING Premium Members – where they can benefit from special offers and uniquely low rates from our partner companies. Make sure you make the most of all these offers over the next ten days!

And as an extra bonus: We’ll also be giving away 25 great prizes, including iPhones, laptops and beamers, to selected members. Click here to take part in the competition.

Good luck!

Yesterday saw the second AGM take place in the history of our company. The meeting was held at the exhibition hall convention center in the Schnelsen district of Hamburg, here in Germany. The turn-out at the event was very pleasing, with shareholders accounting for a total of over 67% of the share capital attending. Here’s a quick overview of all the motions covered on yesterday’s agenda, and the percentage of votes in favour:

Ratification of the acts of the Executive Board – 99.99 %
Ratification of the acts of the Supervisory Board – 99.99 %
Appointment of auditors – 99.99 %
Authorization to acquire own shares – 99.99 %
Resolution on the creation of new authorized capital – 97.08 %
Resolution on the creation of contingent capital – 99.26 %

Lars twittered hourly status reports, becoming the first CEO of a public company to twitter directly from an AGM.
Here’s the XING team hard at work in the AGM back office:

Click here to find all information concerning the AGM, including the speech by our CEO.

This week, we organized two networking events in Madrid and Barcelona on Tuesday and Wednesday. We wanted to stage these evenings as a way of thanking the Spanish group moderators, Ambassadors and all XING members in Spain for their support, as well as sending out a clear message to the Spanish market – From here on in, the temperature is only going to rise, with XING intensifying its focus even more on driving the Spanish market forward. And we reckon this summer at XING Spain is going to be a real scorcher!

Firmly in the spotlight of the national media, CEO Lars Hinrichs and the Spain Country Manager Lutz Emmerich announced the launch of yet more activities in the Spanish market, and introduced the Barcelona-based XING Spain team to the public.

The roundabout 150 guests attending took Lars up on his advice to try and make at least two new contacts at each event, and started growing their network right away. Curious to find out more? You can view more photos of the events here.

Now it´s Ralf´s turn to introduce his department. (click on the image to enlarge)

After completing the migration, we packed up our PCs, tables and chairs, locked the old office doors one last time and went purposefully to The new XING office in Barcelona.

Several weeks have already passed since we moved to this sunny
and well located office. There are still some boxes to unpack, but we are

already working hard to improve our workspace. Step by step we have everything we need to get going, so now it’s time for us to share our adventure with all of you.

The good news is: we now have a faster Internet connection, the wooden technical floor is now covered by a

pretty gray carpet and the coffee machine is steaming. I might say that some of us have waited anxiously for this basic device! Needless to say, beginnings have never been easy, but we have overcome it with a lot of enthusiasm.

We love being here and we invite you all to visit us: our door is open!