It’s January — time for the “IRL”, our biannual in-person get-together. Summer IRLs happen in (around) Slovenia since that means short travel for the majority of the team plus it’s hard to find a more beautiful place in those early summer months.
That said, come winter, Europe gets, well, uncomfortably cold. And most of us want to escape somewhere warm. This year we’ve chosen Thailand! Why Thailand? Good climate (read: flip-flops) in January and it’s about half-way between Europe and the Philippines making travel times relatively equal for everyone.
After the initial clusterf*ck of almost getting scammed into booking a non-existing venue, we got lucky in the end and got an absolutely perfect place for our event: two houses with rooms, with a covered patio in between and a pool. The covered patio meant we could be outside for the majority of our sessions. And the 15 minute breaks in-between meant we got to use the pool a lot. To top it off, billiards in the evenings!
We are a remote company and IRLs such as this one give us an opportunity to finally meet some of our coworkers in person. Due to EU visa requirements some of us finally, after years of working together, got to meet the people behind the Slack handles in real life. It’s so good to paint a face over all those interactions we had.
The week ended in a flash, we came up with great ideas for the future and set ambitious goals for 2017. Next stop: Ljubljana in July 2017!
