The Axelerant Retreat 2019 in Pictures

Team Axelerant went to beautiful Goa, India for a few days this February for our annual company retreat. It was a fantastic gathering, full of warmth, energy and incredible vibes.

Day One

Not all of us have the option to come together physically across the organization. Some of us met for the first time, even though we’ve been working together for months!

A huge thank you to everyone who helped coordinate and set up this fantastic event.

While we usually have our Happy Hours, an internal hour of fun, every third Friday, the retreat is our one chance to have Happy Hours with everyone in the same room. It's our time to bond over shared meals, drinks, and lots of warmth and friendly conversation.

Our People Ops team put together a fun icebreaker activity, allowing team members to start the retreat off on a light note and learn more about their teammates.

After that, we all participated in some team building activities.

Day Two

Day two saw us all come together for presentations on "The State of Axelerant." Department heads spoke about each department’s vision and objectives for the coming year, giving team members the opportunity to ask questions, raise concerns, and make sure we're all in alignment.

This was followed by a team building activity designed around agile methodology. Participants were divided into groups; each group was required to design and build a paper plane, and this process followed the typical phases of the development lifecycle. These prototypes were then tested by "clients" and any learnings identified by the team for their next iteration.

This gave team members the opportunity to work together towards a shared goal, correlate their learnings to their actual experiences on projects for clients, and see things from a fresh perspective.

 
Next, team members split into groups for detailed discussions on our current policies, and call attention to any changes that they felt needed to be made to bonuses, incentives, salary appraisals, etc. Each group got to list their concerns on a sheet of paper, allowing everyone to feel equally heard. Our People Ops team will take all this feedback into consideration while reviewing and updating policies. 

 
And then we went out for an evening of great food, drinks, laughter, and a lot of dancing at Go With The Flow—what a time!

Day Three

It began early, with people teaming up to play cricket and football (soccer). 

 
Later, some of us went out on a city tour, while others took the chance to go shopping.

 
And all of us were given some cool swag to take home.

 
All-in-all, this was a fantastic experience. We loved being here and can't wait to come back.

Thank you, Axelerant!