Highlights from the 2021 iSPRINT Summer Gathering
At Innovation Sprint, we believe that getting people to come together, bonding, and sharing experiences is vital for an efficient work environment. Working as a team, has proven to be a good recipe for success and therefore, a corporate summer physical meeting is the ideal occasion for employees to come together, see how far the company has come, share knowledge and goals and have fun with extracurricular activities.
The first iSPRINT Summer Gathering was held between 7th – 9th of July in Evia, Greece. We were all excited that after such a difficult period, we managed to unite our team and meet in person, given of course that we were all vaccinated. Early in the morning, we started talking about what we would hear at the presentations, while there was a lot of buzz in the boat about what the extracurricular activities would be.
Reaching the hotel, we were impressed by the view and the first dive in the pool was what we were all thinking. Since we arrived early in the morning, we had some free time until the first workshop, which would start at 5 pm and therefore, we seized the opportunity and went to the beach After this relaxing time, we met in the hotel and discussed about our vision, our strategy, our future goals, while we also talked about new projects and how these will help the company grow.
After a little rest, the whole company went to a nice tavern to eat. There was a lot of talking and bonding over an extraordinary seafood dinner. After that, we had drinks by the pool, where there was much laughing with the joke contest that we played.
The next day was a full day of discussions and meetings. Our team was divided into 2 parallel sessions to analyse and go in-depth in various topics. One session was around technical topics (AI, Virtual Coaching and CI/CD processes) and the other one was a more business-oriented session about Healthentia Solution. These 2 groups worked all day to discuss and address the challenges ahead. In the end, both groups summarized their results in two presentations, so that these could be presented in front of everyone for further discussion in the next morning. After all this work, we were all satisfied with what we had achieved and therefore, it was time for coffee, fruits and swim in the hotel pool, before the dinner. After the dinner, we played the game of “f*ckup nights”, in which most of us presented big failures from the past. In Innovation Sprint, we believe that bringing up past failures is a way to avoid future ones.
The last day found us in a plenary session, in which we presented the results of the previous day and we set our goals for the forthcoming period.
Overall, there were so many things that each iSPRINTER gained from this event, not to mention how important this has been for the company’s technical and commercial goals. We all caught up with so many things that we miss at the everyday scrum, while we shared experiences and knowledge helpful to everyone.
Now we need to work hard to achieve our goals, while targeting the next company gathering, hopefully in September in the Netherlands, during the official launch of the Virtual Coaching Labs (if we avoid the 4th Covid wave).
