Creative team presentations, team building activities, workshops and lots of fun: last weeks’ activities and corridor talks at ePages all revolved around the ePages annual company event: the YOU. The YOU is a formal, annual company event which all ePages employees are required to attend. This sounds really tough. But it’s not. Over the two day’s the YOU requires hard work and long hours, but is an incredibly fun event.
Main goal of the event:
- get to know each other better
- unite colleagues from all company locations
- exchange ideas among colleagues, departments and countries.
Event task force
Long before the actual date of the YOU, the event task force start preparing activities for the two awesome days. To make it a big surprise for everyone, the agenda was kept a secret for a long time. However, leading up to the YOU we were given teasers for the event which kept us all excited.
Prepare for action
Every team was asked to prepare a 1-minute video that presents their departments. To make it short: that was a hell of a lot of fun! To keep it interesting, the team presentations had some restrictions: 12-minutes only for the presentation and then 12-minutes for a Q&A session. That was definitely a challenge and required time for a careful preparation.
Patience required
There were rumors that we would go for an outdoor activity. Before long you could hear colleagues whisper and chatter in the corridors about what that might be. Climbing? Geocaching? City walk? No chance to find that out. Staying patient was required.
Kick-off at the beach
Finally the YOU started in a beach club above the city roofs of Hamburg. We enjoyed a beautiful view across the city, along with food and drinks, a relaxed atmosphere and lots of fun. Incidentally, we also had the chance to observe a beautiful sunset!
Opening YOU
The next day we all convened at the Hamburg University to spend the first day watching funny and awesome team videos and listening to well-prepared team presentations.
Exciting: the team that was going to present was drawn right before the presentation, so every team had to be prepared at all times!
Dragon boat race
In the afternoon, the secret was finally revealed as to what our outdoor activity would be. We were taken to a small dock at a branch of the Alster to spend the afternoon competing in dragon boat races.
This outdoor activity was simply spectacular! There was so much enthusiasm and ambition amongst the colleagues learning the skills, performing the strokes in sync, being one effective entity to win the race - with a good battle cry, of course.
Being rewarded
We finished the day chilling out at a restaurant with cocktails and burgers. The composition of the tables was chosen at random. Again, helping everyone get pushed out of their comfort zones to get to know new colleagues from other locations.
Prepare for the coming day
Just one (short) night to recover from the current events and then it was time to jump right into the next. We briefly wrapped up the first day and continued with creative team videos and presentations. Next to this, we had a speaker presenting future company events as well as a lecture sharing knowledge on our merchants.
Workshops & wrap-up
The afternoon was packed with workshops.
The groups were again chosen at random and worked on the following topics:
- How to become a focused person?
- Different personalities in teams
- Responsible acting
- Ways to give feedback
- How to make a project successful
- Ways of communication
At the end of the day, the management wrapped up the event and we ended with a Q&A session.
Rapturous applause
It has been an awesome event and we all look forward for the next YOU to come!
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