At least for us. While the movie Roma didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we still felt like winners during our 2019 Kickoff in… Rome (or as native Italian speakers pronounce it, “Roma”). Ok, Roma isn’t a movie about Italy, but you see the correlation here… :)
Here at Nuxeo, we find that being together as a team is what sparks joy for us (wink wink here about my colleague’s recent blog post about Konmari method applied to DAM). We’re proud to have kept a friendly atmosphere at work, even though the company has grown a lot in recent years. We believe it’s this supportive and fun environment that has led to Nuxeo being recognized by Inc. as a “Best Workplace” and by Forbes as “one of the best cloud companies to work for.” Maintaining a positive and collaborative company culture is very important to us, and with a globally distributed team, we take a proactive approach to help ensure we’re supporting human connections and an environment of friendliness.
The Nuxeo Annual Company Kick-Off
We decided to run a little experiment three years ago. Bring the entire company together early each year in one location to connect, collaborate. And as they say, A Star Is Born.
We held our first annual kick-off in Lisbon, Portugal, since we had recently opened an office there. It was a good event, but we felt we needed to “up our game” and make the 2018 annual kick-off truly one to remember. The next year, we were heading to Reykjavik (Iceland). In the time between the Lisbon and Iceland events, the number of Nuxeo employees had doubled, and many new US and European team members had never had the opportunity to interact in person. I’m happy to report that the Reykjavik was a success, and after these two successful kick-off events, it was clear that a tradition had been created. So in early February of this year, we went to Rome for the third edition of the Nuxeo Kickoff.
As part of the team that organized our annual kick-off, I can tell it’s always hard to pull an event like this. Picture this: 145 worldwide employees, 4 days, a remote destination, and lots of content to create.
- We started the kickoff with a team building activity where our staff had the opportunity to sample local Italian wines and food. More importantly, people got to connect with each other.
- The next day, our executive team provided an overview of our 2018 (amazing) results and outlined our goals for 2019. People were inspired.
- The last day was meant to be a little different than usual. Allow me to explain. Nuxeo is an open and transparent company (we have an Open Kitchen philosophy) – this is a key aspect of our culture. So we wanted everyone to be able to talk and work in areas that they don’t usually work with, with people that they usually don’t have the opportunity to connect with. We organized the very first Nuxeo Un-conference, and it was a big hit (Not as big as Bohemian Rhapsody but still, it was big). Everyone’s voice was valued. People were empowered.
We’re very happy with the outcomes of our third annual company kick-off. And we’re already looking forward to our 2020 annual kick-off! See you there maybe?
