Building Relationships with RedCabin

What does the name RedCabin mean to you? #innovation? #networking? Great industry events hosted by movers and shakers like Delta Air Lines and Deutsche Bahn , chaired by leaders such as Kirsty Dias with PriestmanGoode ? To me it means all that and more… especially #collaboration and building #relationships.

As background, I’ve attended every RedCabin aviation and rail event except for the first – either in person or virtually during the pandemic. All that aside, the real purpose of this article is to share the value of the relationships one builds through RedCabin and to recognize Christiane Bausback , the Managing Director at N+P Innovation Design GmbH , for her amazing support at the recent RedCabin Railway Interiors Innovation Summit.

I first met Chris during RedCabin’s inaugural rail summit, which was held virtually in December 2020. Participating from my home in Tempe, Arizona at 2 a.m., I felt a deep, global pandemic-fostered connection with the other participants, most of whom were in Germany. I think they were surprised and amazed at my level of commitment (and ability to keep my eyes open.) For me, it was a tremendous way to network as I got to see everyone’s face and name on my screen and hear all their comments in the breakout sessions. Many of us connected via LinkedIn shortly afterwards and have stayed in touch since.

Andreas Ponco Wibowo with RedCabin – a master at connecting people – recommended early on that I contact Chris as he felt it would be beneficial for both of us. I owe Andreas a huge debt of gratitude for this suggestion! Although our material has been used for years in the North American rail market, we were just entering the European rail market with the launch of our EN-45545 certified material and wanted to learn more about opportunities in the market. Chris was generous with her knowledge and advice, and open to collaborating with us.

Having seen N + P’s work for Hitachi’s customizable train interior on the design firm’s website, I asked Chris if we could interpret their designs in thermoplastics to display at our APTA booth in Orlando in November 2021. Chris secured Hitachi’s approval and we worked closely with Julian Grote on her team to bring several of the Hitachi Rail renderings and one of N + P’s self-initiated projects to life. Images of that body of work have since been featured in Railway Interiors International as well as some of our social media posts. ???

We truly value our relationships with designers and the benefit of those connections became vastly apparent at the recent RedCabin Railway Interiors Innovation Summit.

My colleague, Ruben Bake , and I were scheduled to facilitate a workshop Wednesday, November 9th, about ways to achieve speed to market by fostering early collaboration in CMF design. I wanted to introduce an ambitious new concept – playing a game loosely based on a highly popular rail board game – to ensure that participants had a fun and interactive experience, while providing the opportunity to have substantive discussions about the topic with other rail stakeholders. Our marketing team supported the initiative by designing and shipping 21 beautiful sets of customized game boards and colour-coded cards. They also ordered tiny colour-coded train cars that teams would use to track their progress on each segment of the “route” as they brainstormed responses to CMF-related questions.

Where is this all going, you may ask? Well, on Monday afternoon, we learned that our materials for Next Stop: Innovation! were still held up in Customs, despite our marketing team’s heroic efforts over several days to get them released.

Enter Christiane Bausback to the rescue! With no obvious resources in Germany, I turned to Munich-based Chris to see if she knew of a reputable printer in Frankfurt who could reprint and mount all our complicated materials in one day. The Rail Gods were with me because Chris responded that her user experience designer, Ana Rita O. , had relocated to Frankfurt and was working for N + P remotely. Calling from the late afternoon DB ICE train between Munich and Frankfurt, Chris asked Ana Rita to call around to find a local printer who could do the job. I arranged for our marketing team (six hours behind in Pennsylvania) to send our digital files and details about the quantities and paper stock to Ana Rita who took it all from there.

Tuesday, the first day of the summit, was fraught with anxiety as we waited for an update. Ana Rita confirmed she had a printer who could complete the work in time. Chris kept finding me during the summit to provide updates, regardless of her need to network and attend meetings with attendees. Late in the day, we called Ana Rita and provided marketing’s credit card information so she could pay the printer and get our materials released. Ana Rita personally drove all the way across Frankfurt in rush hour traffic to pick everything up, then turned around and brought our materials back to Deutsche Bahn’s Ideas Train Hall by 6:30 p.m. As the evening cocktail networking session swirled 25 feet away, Ana Rita and Chris helped us sort and collate all the colour-coded Gaps, Impact, Solutions, and Chance cards to get them ready for our workshop the next day.

That night I fell asleep sending positive thoughts Chris and Ana Rita’s way, then sat straight up in bed when I realized that we still needed a replacement for the colour-coded 3D train cars! Wracking my brain to come up with something, I remembered I had plenty of my plastic business cards with me (RedCabin always hosts a speed networking event.) The next day, I laughingly explained our FedEx/Customs mishap to our workshop participants and told them they would need to use my business cards in lieu of train cars to track their progress on their game boards. It all worked out fine as some attendees took my cards and I had to set out more on the game boards!

We received great feedback from many of the workshop participants. In addition to fostering in-depth conversations about innovative CMF solutions, I believe we achieved one of my other goals: to create a greater sense of community within the rail industry and willingness to collaborate with one another. On behalf of SEKISUI KYDEX , I can attest to the value of the collaborative relationships that we have built through RedCabin. Thank you, Christiane, and Ana Rita, for all your support and ensuring that our workshop was a success!

Side note: Andreas Wibowo very kindly hand-carried our rush-printed materials back to Berlin with him on the train. I’d like to ensure they don’t go to waste, so if any of you in Europe who missed our workshop would like to play Next Stop: Innovation! with your colleagues and clients, I’ll be happy to work with him to get a set sent to you. (Warning - he might ask you to sign up for the next rail summit in Vienna, but I’ll be happy to explain how to play the game or even facilitate!) After all, building relationships and collaborating to move the industry forward is what it’s all about.

See you at the next RedCabin summit!