XebiaLabs R&D meetup

Every now and then, working in a distributed software development environment can feel disjointed. Especially when some of your colleagues are located on the other side of the globe, it is difficult to build the kind of relationship that you would if you were able to simply hang out and have a beer.

 At the beginning of November, we decided to use the excuse of the release of the 6.0 version of our tools to plan a two-day, all-hands R&D team get together. We brought everyone to our office in the Netherlands to celebrate our accomplishments and look ahead at the plans for XL 7.0. Oh and hang out and have those beers, of course.

 Our colleagues from the US, India and Croatia descended on Hilversum and met up in our brand-new office which added a nice festive touch.

After a morning program consisting of various presentations and workshops, we traveled to Amsterdam for our afternoon activity: a GPS hunt! We split up into teams and searched the city for a missing briefcase to stop a virus from attacking our nation’s capital. Quite a challenge, given that it was quite cold and half the afternoon it was pouring rain! Our teams soldiered on where possible and retreated to pubs when necessary but we managed to save the day in the end. We capped off the day with some well-deserved drinks and dinner at a nice restaurant.

 The second day we got input from our customers and consultants working with our products. The afternoon was spent by the teams doing a deep dive into the functionality for our new release, brainstorming solutions and approaches, all things best done in person. Finally, we capped off the day and the event with drinks and dinner.

 All in all, it was great having our entire technical team together to celebrate and for invaluable face-time! This is one tradition we will have to keep alive!