Deepening connections during sofatutor’s summer event 2023
Following the tradition of all coming together once a year (read more about our very first summer event week here), we spent three work days in Berlin, working, learning and celebrating as an international remote first team.
In this post we share our team’s impressions of sofatutor’s summer event.
What were our team member’s personal highlights, and what was it like to meet everybody offscreen? Also you’ll get to watch the official event video :)
What happened during the sofatutor summer event week 2023?
From different directions and with different lengths of journey most of the team members arrived already on Monday. Official start of sofatutor’s summer event week 2023 was our big team event on Tuesday at the funky event location Haubentaucher in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Rita (Head of People & Culture) and our founder Stephan opened the event by emphasizing the roots of this big summer gathering: striving to connect with work colleagues in real life.
Unfortunately, the weather put a damper on the summer feeling in the great outdoor location. However, there were a few brave people who did not let themselves be deprived of the joy of Haubentaucher’s huge pool ;)
On a joint scavenger hunt, even rain did not stand in the way of team spirit.
Rewarded afterwards with drinks, vegan burgers, dumplings and waffles we celebrated into the night with live music and DJ. A particularly cool surprise this year: Sebastian (Head of Tech) performed with his band and made the team sweat despite the missing summer outside.
Wednesday was a day of rest, which was used for smaller team events, for lunch and working in the Berlin office.
Last event of the gathering was sofatutor’s first un-conference on Thursday.
We will tell you more about it in a later post on the blog, but to give a little teaser: whoever shows up are the right people, whatever happens is the only thing that could have, whenever it starts is the right time, it’s over when it’s over…
With this inspiring last meet up and a last lunch in the office we closed the event week 2023 and will now share some team member’s main takeaways.
How would you describe this year’s summer event week in a few words?
Fran (Product & Tech, Team Orange) knows sofatutor for almost three years now. He’s got Italian roots and works 100% remote as Frontend Developer from Valencia, but before moving to Spain he lived in Berlin and therefore also celebrated an urban reunion when arriving for the summer event. Most importantly to him though was having a great time with his colleagues:
“For me the best thing was to see everyone (again). After so much remote work, it’s really satisfying to spend time with your colleagues in real-life. I got to meet my colleague Floor, who works as Product Manager from the Netherlands, and who I haven’t seen before, even though we’re in the same team. Also I got to talk to people from other areas like marketing and content. It’s very common to get along with colleagues at sofatutor.”
Noemi’s thoughts on her already third summer event at sofatutor go in a similar direction. She’s UX Designer in Team Blue in our Product & Tech area, and just like Fran, she used to live in Berlin for some years, before moving back to her home country Italy.
“The summer week is the event I look forward to the most throughout the year – it’s not only about the fun – which of course plays a big role, but it’s mostly about the excitement of having a connection, creating a memory with colleagues I only get to see through a screen. This week is what makes working 100% remote meaningful to me. Therefore my personal highlight has been playing the tic-tac-toe game in order to initiate a conversation with people who I’ve never talked to – I could shorten the distance between me and colleagues I haven’t had the courage to introduce myself to. Some have such a great energy I’d have never imagined, I am glad I met them!”
Finally we try to collect as many impressions and memories of this week in our official event video. We invite you to watch it yourself and follow us around through a week of fun, learning and teambuilding.
The tradition of spending teamtime offscreen at least once a year arised last year. It is carried by some of our values: “community”, “learning”, “fun”. The excitement of meeting team members, we mostly know from Google Meetings in person, remains as we again experienced the power of being together during this year’s summer event days in Berlin.
At the same time we value the fantastic flexibility of our remote first work setting, which enables us to work independently of location on improving digital education.
If you want to join us on this mission you can apply to open positions at sofatutor via our website. We also look forward to receiving your message via jobs@sofatutor.com.
