From Bricks to Bonds: Celebrating Camp COLAB 2024
It’s been a busy few weeks as we’ve wrapped up Q2 and have been setting the stage for the second half of the year.
We hosted Camp COLAB 2024, our exciting summer team retreat, earlier this month. It brought team members together from across the globe (we consider ourselves global thanks to our Account Director’s transplant to France). This event was a celebration of our collective accomplishments and an opportunity to set the stage for the upcoming year.
Team members flew in from various locations to balmy Richmond, Virginia. The enthusiasm and camaraderie during the retreat were palpable, reflecting the strong bonds we’ve built over time. It was a pleasure to see so many familiar faces come together to share this experience.
Theme for the Year: Lego!
One of the highlights of Camp COLAB was unveiling our internal theme for the next year: Lego! This theme resonates perfectly with our company’s values of creativity, collaboration, and building something remarkable together. Just like Lego pieces, each team member plays a crucial role in constructing our success. Now you know why we make websites, not movies:
Activities
- Training: We had a fantastic training by The Nova Collective centered around building a stronger and more inclusive company culture. The team workshop and discussions were so very insightful as always.
- Team Building: We gave out team-captain built Lego Minifigs to everyone, reviewed the past 12 months in a dramatic Lego movie montage, and conducted various brick-based challenges focusing on creativity and teamwork. The first day, we ended with dinner and bingo (for the competitive folks) at the ballpark with the Flying Squirrels.
- Professional Development: Our Chief of Staff, Albert, ran an insightful workshop using the Working Genius framework, helping each of us uncover new insights into our unique talents.
- Community Service: We bundled up water/hydration pouches for community fridges for the heatwave and are distributing them this week.
- SWAG: Camp COLAB isn’t complete without some sweet new COLAB gear.
Takeaways
Even though we have a physical office, everyone is rarely in the same place at the same time. It’s always great to see everyone in person instead of just on Zoom or Google Meet.
Team Code Krakens was declared the winner of our weekend competitions. John, our Web Development Lead, took the crown for “Most Competitive” from our 2023 winner, Director of Product Delivery, Ana. Congratulations to our winners!
Camp COLAB was a resounding success, filled with learning, bonding, and setting the course for an even more exciting future. We are grateful to everyone who could attend and contributed to making it such a memorable event. Before you know it, we’ll be together again for our winter celebration.
As we move forward with our Lego theme, we’re inspired to build, innovate, and succeed together, brick by brick, pixel by pixel.
