Our Florida Trip: Work and the Live! 360 Conference
If you follow our blog you might have seen something like this post before, but let us tell you that this is not a duplicated post.
This past November we – Kelvyn and Steban, Software Engineers at Poatek – had the chance to travel to Florida to visit one of our clients in Clearwater and work from there for a few days, engaging and having face-to-face meetings with our team. After that experience, we attended a conference in Orlando.
The team together
In 2019, working remotely is as usual as working in an office, especially for those people who work with technology, but having face-to-face meetings is still essential to build and improve trust and communication and to have some fun together, too. We can say that this trip changed the perspective we see things and provided a very productive and amazing experience.
Even having a daily meeting/talking every day – since we work in an Agile environment –, it is different when you can call your teammates to come to your desk and discuss something or simply have lunch together to hear different points of views about culture, lifestyle or even to talk about work in an informal atmosphere. That also made us feel welcomed and part of the team.
It’s not just work. Having almost all the team in the same room, experiencing a cozy environment, drinking good coffee, meeting the people who make things happen every day, hearing a face-to-face feedback, it’s all about creating a connection and if you work in a distributed team and have a chance to get together, we strongly recommend it.
Last but not least, in our free time we had the opportunity to visit Clearwater’s beaches, trying some good local beers and the traditional American barbecue, and also hanging out in Tampa, visiting amazing places and playing some arcade games. And most of this, thanks to our teammates that we personally met for the first time in this trip.
The conference
We mentioned that one of our goals was to attend a conference. The conference we were talking about is the Live! 360.
The event happened in a resort at Universal, in Orlando, so after work we had to say good-bye to the rest of the team and face a two-hour drive from Clearwater to Orlando.
Getting there, the idea was “Divide and Conquer”. The event had a large variety of panels, each one covering a different topic. Our schedule was tight, and it was impossible to watch all the panels, so we had to program ourselves beforehand to watch those who interested us the most.
Once you were there, the event was open, so if you changed your mind and decided to attend a panel for a different track (e.g. you had subscribed to VS Live but decided afterwards to move to SQL Server Live), that was totally possible. In fact, that was encouraging!
The way we see it, the conference had two main goals. One was the technical talks, where they exposed new tendencies and what we can expect in the future. The other goal was the interaction, bringing people with similar interests together to discuss and share experiences.
It was amazing to see well known people – especially for the technology community – giving speeches and spreading knowledge. There was even an opportunity to have lunch with some of them. Of course, during lunch, we had a more informal talk.
Experience we brought with us
For sure, we could talk a lot about every single panel we watched in the conference. But what we brought with us can’t be summed up in so easily. This was our first time in the USA, and we were able to accomplish so much: we could meet the team that we work with day-by-day, experience the American culture in that amazing country. We left inspired by the conference and pleased to meet our teammates. The time we spent there was short, but the experience was great, and we are looking forward for the next time.
About the author
Kelvyn Risso is a Software Engineer at Poatek