Towards the end of last month, SemanticBits hosted its first ever all-company retreat in the heart of Virginia’s wine country. It seemed only appropriate that, in this year of growth, we should bring the whole company together to build relationships, strengthen everyone’s understanding of our company culture, and give folks a chance to sit down with their project teams.
Timely Get-Together
One of the main motivators in hosting this retreat was the fact that we have experienced a period of growth. With so many new faces on board it was a real treat to get to meet people face-to-face. It seemed only fitting that our first retreat coincided with the revealing of our new SemanticBits logo! Not only did we get to meet each other for the first time, but we also got presented with the new face of our company. (a pretty nice face-lift, I might add)
Nice to Meet You
As one can only guess, the event started off with some light-hearted ice breakers. During dinner, we set the stage for fun by announcing this year’s superlative awards. The winner of “The Jargon Head” award made sure we were all sufficiently comfortable with one another to begin a productive retreat. Perhaps the joke was on him?
A bit of History
One of the most valuable talks during the retreat was CEO Ram Chilukuri’s discussion of our Corporate Vision. In this talk we learned details on the history of the company, our current projects, and our future goals. Serving as a bookend to this discussion, co founder and COO Vinay Kumar gave a heartfelt speech on his journey with SemanticBits and took a moment to formally recognize some key players in our company.
SemanticBits Mission
Key players spoke to us about where we are headed in terms of technology, design, and data science and we were given a chance to showcase some really important project work being done by our team. Apart from these formal meetings, we set aside time for project-based sessions that prompted some great discussions and left us all excited to get back to work.
SemanticBits Team
But don’t be fooled! We made sure to set aside plenty of time for fun and team-building through formalized activities like Top Golf and Casino Night as well as impromptu gatherings around the fire pit. We even had time to crown the first ever SemanticBits Ping-Pong Champion. Perhaps this will be the beginning of new traditions.
And despite the rapid decline of our imaginary but fun SemanticBitcoins, all in all, I believe we can mark this first SemanticBits retreat as a great success and we are all looking forward to the next get-together!