Making Digital Transformation Tangible in a Virtual 3D World
Digital literacy is essential in today’s world. In an age of algorithms, hyperconnectivity, and rapidly advancing technology, people are increasingly challenged to learn and adapt their skills. Through initiatives like the Digital Days, Porsche makes digitization visible, supports its employees, and equips them with the relevant digital skills they need. A recap from this year’s event.
How do we make digitization tangible in our own company? How do we demonstrate which data we can turn into insights and which future technology we are currently exploring? How do we teach digital skills and share our knowledge about data analysis, cloud computing and e-mobility? How do we create transparency about ongoing projects, their challenges and learnings? In addition, how do we do all this in times of a global pandemic?
These are the questions that I and some great colleagues have been racking our brains over the last few months. Two weeks ago, we were able to present our results: the Porsche Digital Days 2020.
In the truest sense of the word “digital”
The aim of the Digital Days is to provide an overview of the digitization projects and activities within Porsche and to show where we currently stand on our joint journey towards a digitally enabled company. As this year’s event was not possible with a “real-life” expo in Stuttgart as initially planned, we decided to live up to the name of the event and organize it digitally.
We involved various colleagues from different departments of the company in order to cover as wide a range of topics as possible, thought about innovative formats and an exciting remote solution for the Digital Days 2020 — and finally gave all employees, whether at home, remote, or in the office, the opportunity to experience digitization at Porsche live.
13 expert talks and a virtual Porsche Center
The results were 13 exciting lectures, a panel discussion that covered all core topics of “Mission D”, our digitization strategy: from AI and data analysis to digitally networked production, customer centricity and the digital workplace at Porsche. Our highlight was the virtual 3D exhibition.
We built a 3D world in the look of a Porsche Center, where employees could move freely through the virtual “Porsche Spaces” with their own avatar, just like in a computer game, and inform themselves about various projects, activities, and players of our digitization initiatives. The exhibition consisted of seven theme rooms, which were filled with digital artifacts and multimedia offerings. For example, you could sit in a Porsche Taycan with your avatar and watch apps or videos on the infotainment system.
All presentations were not only streamed live but also recorded and are now available on-demand for all colleagues who were unable to attend the live event.
The recipe for success: cross-functional and cross-departmental collaboration
I am particularly proud of the virtual exhibit hall, not only because it offered our colleagues a more interactive, immersive, and engaging experience, but also because of the cross-departmental collaboration that made this digital event possible. Coming from different departments and teams, we joined forces to deliver the first-ever virtual 3D Digital Days. Special thanks go to our colleagues from the After Sales team, who introduced us to the idea of a virtual exhibit hall. Florian Dongus and his team are currently working on a pilot project together with TriCAT spaces, which forms the basis of our virtual 3D world, too. Thank you!
2,100 registrations and more than 5,000 downloads
The Digital Days 2020 were a great success, with about 2,100 registrations for our keynote presentations and more than 5,000 downloads of the software for the virtual exhibit. One major goal of the Digital Days 2020 was to further enhance the digital knowledge of our colleagues in an engaging and fun way. The positive feedback from participants tells us that our efforts have been worthwhile. Until the end of the year, employees can visit the virtual Porsche Center with their own avatar — and discover how we at Porsche are already living digitization today.
Thanks to the core team Bastian Scholl, Matthias Görtz, Jessica Himmer and Sascha Tittelwitz as well as the colleagues of our learning initiative “Fit for Digital”, who all worked tirelessly behind the scenes on organizing the five-day event. Many thanks also to Mattias Ulbrich, Jochen Breckner, Johannes Hinsch and Jan Burchhard, who supported us and made this event possible. It was a huge pleasure to work on this project and I look forward to the next Digital Porsche Days.
Johanna Godde is Specialist Change and Communication Management at Porsche AG.
About this publication: Where innovation meets tradition. There’s more to Porsche than sports cars — we’re tackling new challenges, develop digital products and think digital with a focus on the customer. On our Medium blog, we tell these stories. It’s about our #nextvisions, smart technologies and the people that drive our digital journey. Please follow us on Twitter (Porsche Digital, Next Visions), Instagram (Porsche Digital, Next Visions, Porsche Newsroom) and LinkedIn (Porsche AG, Porsche Digital) for more.
