Imagine this:
A guy you’ve never met sidles up next to you wearing striped swim shorts. He tells you his name and you suddenly recall his skype ID and profile picture. You squint a little and, yea, that’s him alright. But you’ve never met him before in real life. And then Matthias from Takondi asks….No, he insists… That you do a backflip into the pool. That just takes the business relationship to a whole other level.
Even though we love our work, all work and no play makes Bytebrand a dull company. Luckily our partners at Takondi share the sentiment. We’d been partnered up with Takondi for about 10 months when they decided that it was time to dispense with the email, skype meetings and occasional phone call and get the teams together for some real-life bonding.
Takondi isn’t the kind of company to do things the “usual” way, so they crafted the most innovative invitations we’ve ever seen. The invitation had the usual date, time, location details, but it also came with a hidden secret. They went the extra mile to hide a message in augmented reality. Once we fired up the app we were treated to 3 Swiss guys doing their best to invite us in Ukranian. The effort they went through just to invite us was a preview of how awesome the party would be!
The party took a month to organize. Since it was in Ukraine, Bytebrand handled a lot of the nitty gritty details. Once they finally arrived, it was like we were long lost friends! The party was full of excitement, food, conversation, food, drinks, swimming, water polo, and more food.
And then there were the backflips into the pool. He insisted… I refused…. He offered to teach me exactly how. He showed me again, and again. But still, I didn’t figure an injury would be good for company morale, so we settled on a simple dive into the pool.
Eventually, the sun went down…but instead of shutting down the party, we got dressed and moved the party to a club for a night of dancing. We aren’t going to share those pictures.
Let’s just say, when we think back to the party, we know that we don’t just have business partners. Now they’re friends that we like, and trust. We’re truly connected to on a deeper level. We know the real people behind the computer monitor, what their personality is like, and whether they can do a backflip into a pool or not. That makes work a whole lot more interesting!
