BNB Homecoming
Exploring our backyard!
September 12, 2024
Many moons ago, before Brand New Box transitioned to a remote team, we would take a break from staring at computers to do something to celebrate achievements over the past month. These Final Friday celebrations turned into multi-day retreats every few months to accomodate our remote team.
Once a year, we make that trip happen in BNB's hometown of Lawrence, KS. The theme of this year's homecoming retreat was around our core value of "Curiosity".
Day 1
We met up in the morning at a fly-fishing shop, that also serves coffee. Many lattes were purchased, but no fishing supplies.
Once everyone was sufficiently caffeinated, we spent a few hours in a conference room showing. Instead of our usual team-building retreat activities, everyone prepared a 5-minute presentation about something they spend time thinking about outside of work.
We are all interesting people, and we do interesting things. We are also curious, and enjoy learning from each other. Here's what each of us talked about:
- Ian showed off some self-recorded pop punk music
- Matt taught us about stone carving
- Ted showcased his homeschool app
- Jace got really nerdy with home automation
- Vika showed us an amazing dress she made for her sister-in-law's rehearsal dinner
- Will demo'd his custom Mac app that manages his GitHub notifications
- Nate walked us through his DIY home solar setup
- Ashley talked about a rails app she built for her brother's business
After presentations and lunch, we met up with Dr. Bob to get a walking tour of BNB's old neighborhood in East Lawrence. We learned about the history of Lawrence, and got to see some of the oldest homes in the area. Even the locals learned a thing or two!
After the tour we did a breakout room. Historically, we are very good at these, and this time was no exception. Even with a few technical difficulties, we successfully escaped in under an hour, which means we made our dinner reservation on time!
Dinner that night was at a local restaurant called "Bon Bon". We enjoyed some great food and even better company!
Day 2
Friday morning we met early for coffee and then headed into Kansas City for a tour of Dimensional Innovations
We got a tour of their entire facility and were blown away by the projects they work on.
Post-tour we played 20-questions and a lightbulb game that got us all thinking about how to be curious and identify the "right" questions to ask.
After fueling up with burnt ends and brisket, we made our final stop of the trip to visit one of our local clients, SeenMerch. They gave us a tour of their operations.
This trip felt like 5 Final Fridays in two days, and we all had a blast. We're looking forward to the next one!
