ePages YOU - Our annual gathering of ePagees

Our colleagues from ePages offices across the world got together last week for our two-day annual company event: The YOU. This is an excellent opportunity for our colleagues to catch up with everyone in the company, attend interesting sessions, get creative, and have lots of fun!

As in the case of every YOU, we’ve had a series of stimulating presentations, icebreakers and several workshops, followed by a fun team event. During our team event this year, we went sailing on the Alster, a beautiful tributary of the Elbe river.

What makes it a great event?

Before the YOU, we have exchanged ideas and planned the activities in subgroups, so that we could decide collectively what we will do, and how we will do it. Long preparations and internal exchanges definitely pay off as we get to boost our creativity and productivity, while networking and sharing a laugh together.

Day One: Brace yourselves for innovation, and new ideas!

The YOU kicked off on Thursday with a keynote presentation by the CEO of ePages, during which he talked about the product projections, financial goals, growth perspective, and organizational changes.

We then had an icebreaker, in which we competed in teams and guessed the names of other colleagues by looking at their childhood photo and their secret talent. It was a lot of fun!

Afterwards, we had two external design thinking experts who hosted a session on the “Science of Happiness” and “Omnichannel shopping journey.” They presented the design thinking methodology, and got us brainstorming before their workshop session in the afternoon.

During the afternoon, we’ve all attended the workshops of our choice, mixing with colleagues from different teams. Workshop topics were as follows:

• Design Thinking Workshop on Omnichannel Ecommerce
• Scrum Framework Applied with LEGO
• How to ensure merchant satisfaction
• Flat hierarchies & company culture
• How to improve internal communication

When time was up for the workshop sessions, we of course had to share with the rest of the ePagees how creative we have been in our workshop! So, we proceeded back to the conference hall to make short presentations of our workshop results.

Team Event: Sailing on the Alster

Having conquered the world with sessions packed with productivity, we were ready to get some fresh air and have some fun! Our team event this year was a sailing competition on the Alster. Some of us have never been sailing, while some ePagees are certified skippers. Just as we were preparing to take off for the sailing school, our CEO spontaneously got on stage to give us all a briefing about the most important rules in sailing, and we were ready to race!

We arrived at the sailing school, where we were split into groups and got on our sailing boats. It was lots of fun and the weather was excellent (at least for most of us)!

After enjoying a couple of beers at the dock of the sailing school, we’ve proceeded to our dinner location, where we had some delicious burgers, and enjoyed cocktails, while catching up with others.

Day Two: It’s the Product!

Time went by and before we knew it, it was the second day of the YOU. The coffee addicts grabbed their coffee, and we started our day with some informative presentations. Our Product Owners presented the latest updates and functionalities of their respective product.

The Sales Team took the floor to present their latest news and progress with our partners. Last but not least, we were inspired by a presentation of the adventures of ePages merchants, whereby successful ePages merchants with exceptional business ideas were featured.

We wrapped up the day with a Q&A session, and it was already lunch time! We went to one of the many delicious neighborhood restaurants to eat some Asian food and to say goodbye to colleagues before they departed Hamburg!

A big thank YOU!

Is it too early to already look forward to the next YOU? Well, we do it either way! It has been a great time! See you next September!