I joined Emma in September 2021, and since then, I haven't been able to meet everyone in person, mainly due to COVID restrictions. I also know that most new joiners never met anyone from their team in real life! These past few years have taken a toll on people, remote working is comfortable for most engineers, but meeting in person is still something we treasure, even if it's only once every blue moon.
I want to share my version of this journey of setting up a presential Tech Gathering at Emma.
The organization
We decided to organize our first Tech Gathering at Emma in the first week of May 2022. We started thinking about it around March, and the first decision we made was to choose the overall goal of this event: to promote an atmosphere that encourages bonding between technology team members
The activities
As an agile and transparent company, we shared our plan from the very beginning so people could prepare their travel plans and accommodations. At the same time, we shouted out for volunteers to be part of the organization. Each activity had a group of volunteers responsible for planning, purchasing items, and choosing the time and locations.
We drafted a plan to have 3 main activities over 2 days:
1) Agile Run: understand how the agile mindset can make us better professionals (and individuals).
2) Feed the Tech Emmies: an offsite dinner with a lot of food and drinks J.
3) Give Back Day: a day to support philanthropic causes and aid the community.
The Agile Run: don't be fooled by the naming. It is not a marathon or an athletic challenge. We wanted to help people understand some Agile Principles and why we use them. We divided the group into 5 random teams. Each team had 5 games to play in the middle of the forest. It was incredible!
The group initially planned for the games to be indoors, but when the other group chose the place for Feed the Tech Emmies, they switched the location to the forest surrounding the restaurant. Like this, we could walk to the restaurant after the Agile Run with ease and we would be outdoors in nature.
Give Back Day: we wanted to give something back to the community. We contacted various organizations, and we learned it was challenging to offer almost 70 people to help around in the city. Fortunately, CleanFFM was incredible and guided us as we collected trash by the river Main near our office.
Yes, we even picked up a broken 65-inch TV and >100 kg of trash!
After collecting and deposing the trash, we sat by the river and had a nice picnic on this beautiful early summer day. Some Emmies brought blankets, a sound system, and games. Some played, and others chilled in the sun as they chitchatted with teammates, they met in person for the very first time.
On both days we managed to keep the atmosphere very relaxed. There was genuine curiosity in the air, and people were asking questions and sharing stories with big smiles on their faces. It felt like we were all together for the same reasons.
Learnings
I do take some interesting learnings from this experience. Things went exceptionally well even though we took quite a few risks. Deciding to do most of the activities outdoors was one of those risks (although there were fallback indoor plans).
In the end, all went well. Even the weather helped, which was surprising. The weather forecast was constantly changing, it didn't rain until we ended all our activities, as if it was waiting for us to finish first.
Organizing an event of this nature is complex. You need all the help you can get, and there are a lot of details you need to plan that take time – start early, a month or even two before you think is reasonable to start planning. Providing an easy-to-read agenda is hard to achieve but is essential for people not to feel lost.
What's the most precious thing I take from this Tech Gathering?
It's not how well you plan things or how much money you spend on them or how fine the weather is. An event is only successful if the people who participate make it a success – it was an enormous success - a big kudos to you all who participated!
I guess it’s in our Emma DNA. We are one team, one dream!
PS: To the others who couldn’t make it, don’t worry, we’ll probably have another one... probably where good weather is more stable, e.g., in Lisbon/Portugal 😊
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