If you’ve been following the CodeScience blog for a while now, then you know every year we bring together as many people in our company as possible for a celebration called All Hands. This year was no exception.
For All Hands 2019, we had 116 attendees from across the US and the dedicated Slack channel burst with over 600 messages of jokes, videos, and photos. Because this was our biggest and best All Hands yet, we’re making this a three-part series to be released in the coming weeks. We’re covering the perspective from both new CodeScientists who were seeing All Hands for the first time and the perspectives from long-time CodeScientists who have watched this company grow over the past 11 years, and sharing the reflections and insights from our special-guest speaker.
While a picture can say a 1,000 words, one dedicated CodeScientist, Chris Shatrov, compiled over two hours of video into a five-minute supercut of the week’s activities.
For now, I’m recapping each day’s activities and sharing some photos — each taken and shared by a CodeScientist.
Thursday — Welcome Celebration and Give Back
Because CodeScience has grown so much in the last year, we thought it was important for everyone to have name tags to help put names to faces. But a simple, “Hello my name {Blank}” name tag wouldn’t suffice for CodeScience.
Inspired by her recent trip with the family to Legoland, Molly Walsh, Director of Marketing at CodeScience, came up with the idea for each employee to create their own custom name badge with a character that can sit with them.
This year’s theme was focused on teamwork, and to highlight this, our costume party kick-off theme centered around teams. We had teams spanning from Harry Potter to Semi-Pro, RGB colors to QR codes. What was special this year is our welcome celebration was combined with our annual give-back initiative.
CodeScience partnered with United Way of Buncombe County to create 720 STEM kits for local 4th-grade students. Moving in an assembly line fashion, each CodeScientist assembled six packets, which included a personalized note, a map of the area, a protractor, and other fun goodies to provide a day of learning and fun.
By being a distributed company around the US, some of our friends on the West Coast had never had the experience of eating at a Waffle House, so after our welcome party concluded, a group of CodeScientist made their way to Waffle House to wrap up their evening.
Friday — Kick-off, Soccer Super Stars, and Scavenger Hunts
After seeing each other in costume and having a chance to give back to the community, the main portion of our All Hands event took place on Friday. Brian led our keynote by showcasing how, as a team, we’ve managed to grow, crush our goals, and maintain the culture that makes CodeScience what it is.
To not be outdone by last year’s presentation from Matthew Luhn, we were joined by Brandi Chastain, two-time FIFA Women’s World Cup champion, two-time Olympic gold-medalist, and honorary CodeScientist.
Brandi gave us a motivating and heart-warming presentation of the 6 Cs of teamwork and success (Competition, Courage, Consistency, Community, Communication, and Challenge). Brandi shared some of the highs and lows that shaped her career and provided us her perspective of what it is like to win and pave the way for women’s soccer across the globe.
The next highlight of the day was a multi-team scavenger hunt that spanned the entire downtown area of Asheville. Detours Asheville provided us with an opportunity to taste, explore, and laugh our way around town. Each location had a unique activity and challenge associated with it. And, because most at CodeScience are a bit competitive, there was a challenge between teams that involved thumb wrestling.
Of course, no Asheville adventure would be complete without stumbling onto a popup drum circle or a sampling of the local brews.
Saturday — Mastering our Craft, More Asheville Adventures, and the Awards Gala
As we headed into our final day of All Hands, our presentations were focused on mastering our craft (one of CodeScience’s core values). The morning sessions explored how to hone our consulting skills and improve our communication skills with our clients.
After wrapping up the sessions with a final sign off, we were back out into Asheville in 5 different group activities: Zipline Adventures, Glass Blowing, a Comedy Tour around Asheville, a virtual reality exploration, and unique look at 3d printing and water-cutting machinery.
After everyone had the chance to clean up, we were off to our awards gala. The awards gala is the highlight of All Hands. It is the time we come together and celebrate the things that make us awesome. More than that, we take the time to acknowledge and recognize the people around us who have shaped our company for the better in some way.
Do you want to join in on the fun? Do you want to build products that shape the trajectory of the force.com platform?If so, check out our careers page to see our current openings.
