Organizing an offsite for a distributed company

Atwix is a distributed company. But once a year we break all our rules… Well, almost all :). For the whole year Atwix heroes work hard and from anywhere they want, except during one summer weekend when we all take a break together at the annual offsite meeting. This is an informal event that brings all our teammates, no matter where they are located, together for a long weekend – to spend time together and communicate face-to-face. Last year we had a pilot offsite, and since then we are committed to doing it annually.

This year, we wanted to improve our experience, and came up with some basic principles for holding a successful offsite.

Commitment to being a distributed company brings many opportunities of growth. Still you have to remember, that a successful distributed team needs to have well established means of communication, and a set of online tools will never fulfill the lack of face-to-face talks among your coworkers. This year, we decided to bring all of our employees usually working from 5 different locations to a company offsite in the Carpathian mountains.