Media Information

Virtual place, 04.05.2020. Together with the Cologne event agency KLUBHAUS, Detecon, the digital consultancy of the Deutsche Telekom Group, launched the CIXX event format. CIXX stands for Cross Industry Xchange and Xperience and creates a new dimension of digital co-creation and networked thinking. The format dispenses with front-line PA and tedious webinar methods and focuses from the outset on dialog and learning with and from one another.

The premiere of the virtual event CIXX took place on April 23, 2020 - the participants faced their economic challenges of today in an open dialogue and intensively exchanged ideas both in plenary sessions and in topic-specific breakout sessions on what concrete solution approaches of tomorrow might look like.

Ralf Pichler, CEO of Detecon, on the idea of CIXX: "The current crisis makes it clear in a very drastic way that proven scripts and recipes are losing their validity. That is why we are bringing together experts from different industries and with similar problems and promoting the exchange of knowledge and best practices. Because right now we need to share: Ideas, successes, but also failures. We need to be courageous together and break new ground. And that only works across company and industry boundaries."

Oliver Malat, CEO of event agency KLUBHAUS, adds, "With CIXX, we wanted to create an online event as a live platform - away from classic one-way communication and towards a participatory conference across all industries and functions. The consistently positive response from participants confirms our intention."

At the beginning of the event, participants were asked to imagine themselves in the year 2021 and define in a plenary session which factors were decisive in successfully mastering the current challenges. Among the most frequently mentioned aspects were

• Expanding partnerships and ecosystems
• Encouraging a spirit of innovation and the joy of experimentation
• Finding the work and leadership mode of the future
• Successfully shaping the customer interface
• Reducing digitalization backlogs

In the next step, participants were able to select the topics relevant to them from the previously developed content - at the organizational level, with a view to the market and customers, and from a technological perspective. In subsequent break-out sessions, the participants discussed their corresponding topic focus in small groups and developed initial solution approaches. Back in the joint closing plenary session, all findings and results were condensed in a practical manner.

More than 50 experts from all industries and company sizes took part in the exclusive kick-off event, and together they set out to find initial answers for a new present. Alexander Hildenbrand, Head of Business Applications at the globally operating German chemical company Wacker Chemie, describes his event experience: "CIXX is a super new format. We wandered through interesting topics at high speed and yet there was still time for intensive interaction with the participants at different levels."

Detecon and KLUBHAUS are already working on a continuation of the format and the expansion of the CIXX community. Volker Rieger, co-initiator of the event and Managing Partner at Detecon, summarizes: "We are convinced that the 'Next Normal' for which we are all searching today has long been here. And the new normal is called change. We live in a time of constant radical change and disruption of the familiar. Only together can we get through the current crisis and prepare ourselves for the challenges ahead. CIXX was just the beginning here."