InDay: Culture from across the globe

Once a month, we set aside a Friday for employees to focus on investing in themselves and their community. It’s a day to spend time outside their daily task list. The theme for November's InDay was Culture. Check out other InDay posts here. – Ed.

We kicked off the day with our first cultural Top Chef competition. For the first round, ten fearless competitors created a dish related to their secret ingredient which was the culture from which they culled the recipe for their dish.  They were randomly assigned either Italian, Spanish, German, Brazilian, or Japanese as their culture and had 48 hours to prepare a dish.

The LinkedIn International team judged this first round and name three finalists, Amy Bowers, Nithya Selvaraj, and Ursula Huang, who moved on to the second round; an impromptu challenge of creating a dish using only ingredients found in the LinkedIn kitchens. Judges Kevin Scott, Jeff Weiner and Top Chef Season 4 Competitor, Erik Hopfinger announced Amy as the winner of the LinkedIn Top Chef Competition.

The Linkedin employee band, Next Play, invited coworkers for a jam session and beer bash in the music room. George Sleiman, Michael Olivier, Michael Scheinholtz, Peter Frueh, Timothy Lynn, and Caitlin Crump rocked out in the garage. Yes, LinkedIn's very own Garage Band. Sasha Ovsankin even featured his jazz guitar skills on a couple of tracks.  We’re looking forward to hearing more music from Next Play and other musicians soon!

Last but not least, the inDay ended with a fitting tribute to the Indian cultural diaspora, one of our larger employee communities here at LinkedIn, through a local Diwali (the Indian festival of lights) celebration. There were Bollywood dances, songs and skits performed by employees to the beats of the Indian drum, Dhol. It was amazing to see everyone from our Mountain View office in Indian attire, celebrating the festival together. It felt like an extended family where everyone respects, enjoys and actively participates in each other’s cultural activities. I feel blessed to be working here with fun, loving, and awesome people around.

Check out more pics from the event on our Flickr page