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Stepping into Tomorrow—Reflecting on Index All Hands 2021

Last week, we celebrated our eighth Index All Hands, an annual gathering of Indexers from across the globe to reflect on the past year and look forward to what’s to come. 

A time-honored tradition, Index All Hands is typically held in our founding city, Toronto. Being unable to join together in person surfaced a number of challenges, including delivering company-wide presentations, managing breakout sessions, and bringing people together for social activities. We approached these challenges in stride and the end result was something we all could be proud of. 

This year’s event theme was “Step Into Tomorrow,” with Indexers encouraged to celebrate success, inspire possibility, and build the future. It means looking beyond what is right in front of us and going further than we’ve ever gone before as we continue to build products that drive the ad tech industry forward.  

How did we recreate a 500 strong in-person event virtually? Two words: Index Crews.

To emulate the feeling of connecting with colleagues in person, every Indexer was placed in one of 34 Index Crews. Index Crews met throughout the days to discuss and reflect on this year’s programming and, ultimately, to stay connected despite not being in the same physical space. Index Crews also served as watch parties for the mainstage programming, which included strategic vision updates from our executive leadership team

We also announced of our new partnership with non-profit Good Today during this year’s event. Good Today makes giving to charitable causes easy and meaningful through daily donations in small amounts. Via a simple Slack integration, Indexers are now presented every morning with two charitable causes to which Index Exchange will donate. The partnership with Good Today allows Indexers to give to causes that are important to us year-round, and we could not be prouder to work with such an innovative organization. 

To round out this year’s event, we welcomed Colonel Chris Hadfield, a former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot and commander of the International Space Station. Colonel Hadfield shared his inspiring journey with Indexers, from growing up on a farm in rural Ontario to being the first Canadian to walk in space. His story is important and reflects what we as a company want to achieve. After all, launching is fun but ultimately, it’s the landing that counts. He also generously answered questions from Indexers, sharing his thoughts about how life in space makes one profoundly recognize the shared human experience and how being so far away from our planet is, in reality, anything but lonely.  

Overall, we could not be prouder of what we achieved at this year’s Index All Hands. While we were separated physically, Indexers joined together collectively in their shared goals to celebrate success, inspire possibility, and build the future.  

Interested in joining our team? Visit our careers page to view our open roles.

Index Editor

Index Editor

This post was published by the Index Exchange editorial team.

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