hellas bueno
Every year, we bring the whole gang together on an on/offsite, which usually turns out to be more "off" than "on". This year's travel destination: Greece.
The on/offsite is one of our most cherished rituals as a digital product studio. It's not always easy to be empathic (or as we call it, “em, pathetic”) and build relationships with people when you just know them as a dangling small video frame on your screen.
The last few years we organized our get togethers in cities: Berlin, Belgrade, Vienna. Not only made this travel planning easier, but also ensured we had nice, accessible accommodation options for the team and plenty of ways to keep ourselves entertained. But this year we decided to shake things up a bit and rent a Villa in a small town in Koskinou, Rhodes, Greece.
Nice, huh? The plan was to actually spend time together without the constant distractions of city life: no museum visits, no fine dining experience, no escape rooms. Shit, this was basically a social experiment: can we hang for 6 days straight?
Spoiler: we can. And we did. Especially the Prosecco Prince.
Besides shit talking, our number one priority, professionally and personally, we also spent quite some time in the kitchen. Enjoying a good meal together was an everyday staple for us, Vlad was definitely our MVP – when not sunbathing, he was for sure preparing something for the group. Did we awkwardly hold hands and say grace in a weak moment? Maybe. Probably. Wasn't even on the Top 10 list of weird moments though.
We kept work light to four hours a day and the agenda was, well, pre-planned, but quickly abandoned. Workshops got cancelled for a visit to the beach. The planned yoga session never happened because of, em, pathetic, hang overs. Probably.
Between everything else, we still made time for a few workshops. Or actually one incredibly long "The Bear" themed workshop about the meta level of work and how everything's a kitchen. How fitting. Don’t ask us how, but we actually made some real progress between bites of tzatziki and poolside banter.
They say sleep is the cousin of death and we may have taken that too literal in the evenings. From Tarot sessions and soul-crushing debate tournaments to fun at the local arcade and midnight kitchen parties, anything could happen. We just let the universe guide us.
In the end, we left with plenty of inside jokes, a few new cooking skills, and somehow, even stronger team vibes. Here’s to mixing work with a little chaos and a lot of laughter with tzatziki.
