XING Prototyping Days 2012 Event – Creative, colorful, and loud

What could the future of online business networking look like? What do we need to do to provide the best-possible networking experience? How would XING need to evolve to achieve that goal? These were just some of the questions the 520 employees at XING tackled during the XING Prototyping Days 2012 event.

As was the case last year, every employee–from the customer support through to marketing and product teams–had three days’ time to put aside their usual work and get together with other people to work on developing a specific idea.

Kick-off event in the future XING offices (work in progress)

The XING Prototyping Days kick-off event involved a keynote speech by guest speaker Anne Pascual from the international design and innovation consultancy IDEO in which she presented examples of how she and her colleagues came up with long-term innovation solutions. But it wasn’t just Anne’s speech that was unique, the location was too. In keeping with the motto tabula rasa, the entire company was invited to make the very short journey from our current offices to the new ones in the Metropolishaus building just a couple of doors away for Anne’s keynote speech. The new “offices” were somewhat dusty as they’re currently a work in progress with the big move not scheduled until next spring, but they still proved to be an apt setting for innovation and creativity.
After Anne’s keynote speech, everyone returned to the XING headquarters to put their heads together and come up with great new ideas. The company offered free lunches to make sure that everyone could concentrate on the job at hand, while get-togethers in the evening also provided an opportunity to wind down and exchange ideas after a hard day of innovation.

Presentations and summer party in an idyllic setting

The highlight of the Prototyping Days event took place on the third day at the Leuchtturm in Harburg. After lunch the entire company traveled by bus to the presentation venue next to the Außenmühlenteich lake to present their projects as a team. As was the case last year, several teams stood out thanks to their technical innovations, while others presented clever ideas or came up with extraordinary presentation methods. And rest assured that the results of some of these projects are bound to appear on the XING platform at some point in the future.Sie dürfen gespannt sein!