Team Meeting 2019: Teambuilding for Remote Teams

From 15th to 20th June 2019, we met in Berlin for the annual Inpsyde team meeting. We spent five great days together, taking time to get to know each other better and try out new strategies for our team development.

Our annual team meeting is one of the most important dates in the calendar of every Inpsyder. No wonder, because once a year we gather all our colleagues worldwide in one place and spend intensive days packed with workshops, team building, and joint activities. What is quite natural for other companies, is extraordinary for us. For more than 13 years, we have been working remotely and without a fixed office – New Work is not a buzzword for us. From June 15th to 20th 2019, we met at the Inpsyde team meeting in Berlin. In this article, we want to share some impressions of the meeting.

The Inpsyde Team Meeting 2019 in Video

What does it feel like when people, who otherwise only meet in a digital office, face each other? In short: It’s a very intense experience. There is so much to tell and to learn! For five days, everything revolved around our team in beautiful Berlin. Our program was a deliberately chosen, balanced mix of outdoor exercise and creative workshops.

Our colleague Pablo captured the most beautiful moments in this video:

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New Work: Working remotely at Inpsyde

At Inpsyde we work remotely for more than 13 years which means that we organize ourselves location-independent and are therefore not tied to an office. This gives us a lot of freedom. Because we can better integrate our work into our everyday life, we are more flexible in planning our working hours and organize our workplace freely according to our wishes and needs. The biggest advantage, however: Remote work enables us to bring together the best minds worldwide in one team.

And we learned one thing for certain: Even the best processes and communication tools cannot replace personal, informal communication. That’s why we hold regular video meetings that give us space for conversations away from work issues and meet in smaller groups at conferences and events. And we also take the time for personal meetings.

One of the most important events is our annual team meeting. Here, we not only get to know our colleagues better, but we have also the possibility to try out new ways of working together and strengthen our team spirit.

Digital Communication

Biggest Learnings of our Team Meeting 2019

Workshops and Talks: Time for new Ideas

The Inpsyde team meeting included two very productive workshop days. Thanks to modern means of communication, we can exchange ideas and organize our daily working routine remotely. Sometimes, however, it is very helpful to be able to discuss complex topics personally. In the run-up to the team meeting, all employees prepared topics together that we worked on intensively in Berlin. The focus in these days was therefore on technical topics.

Interdisciplinary exchange is particularly important to us. That’s why our workshops are organized like bar camps. There is a vote on which topics are set and everyone can decide freely in which workshops they would like to participate.

Workshop at the Inpsyde Team Meeting 2019
Workshop at the Inpsyde Team Meeting 2019

Living Diversity: Openness and Tolerance for a strong team

For a globally working team, with many different cultural backgrounds, it is an ongoing task to promote openness, tolerance and efficient communication. So, of course, these topics were also on our workshop agenda. Communication problems may often arise simply because you are not sitting together in the same room. We have therefore used our time to get to the bottom of possible problems and find solutions.

Tolerance and openness play an important role in our daily work. Because: working time is lifetime. And we simply work better in a team when we are happy.

Preparations for the Group Photo at the Inpsyde Team Meeting 2019 in Berlin
Preparations for the Group Photo at the Inpsyde Team Meeting 2019

Team Exercise: Pursuing common goals

Though the organization and the ambiance in the coworking spaces of the Betahaus and meeetup leave no need unsatisfied: Nobody can and wants to only have workshops for days on end. Balance and relaxation are just as important at a successful team meeting as work topics.

Special highlights were a hike around the picturesque Müggel lake, a bicycle tour through diverse Berlin and an afternoon of team building and with BBQ in the climbing park. At this time, we not only had a lot of time to exchange ideas, but we also shared a lot of success experiences.

Bike Tour through Berlin at the Inpsyde Teammeeting 2019
Bike Tour through Berlin

Conclusion: The pursuit of common goals has a very high value for positive team development. Our experience in Berlin has made this even clearer to us. Exercising in the fresh air gave us a varied and relaxed setting for discussions and playful team building.

Conclusion: We love Inpsyde

No matter where we work, we all love what we do and are a great team both in digital everyday life and on-site. Thus, our annual team event is very important to us which points us to our common roots.

In Berlin, we collected many new ideas and suggestions, met new colleagues and old friends. We could actively work on new possibilities and concepts for an even better and more effective teamwork and had a lot of fun together. We are looking forward to the next time!

By the way: After the team meeting, some of us were also at WordCamp Europe. Our impressions of the event and an insight into the current developments of Gutenberg can be found here.

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If you would like to become a part of our team now, just have a look at our Jobs page. Maybe, you will find what you are looking for!