Every year the team at Phiture likes to decamp to a different location to take stock of the achievements of the previous year and spend more time together outside of our Berlin office. Previous destinations have included various cities in Europe, but this January, in a bid to beat the winter blues, we packed our laptops and snorkels and headed off to the beautiful island of Gran Canaria for a serious vitamin D injection and some poolside brainstorms.
After an early start on Monday morning we headed straight out to sea to blow away the cobwebs, enjoy a cold beer and reconnect after the end-of-year holidays. Having shared a traditional Canarian lunch onboard some of us dared to take a dip in the turquoise waters before heading back to our hotel next to the Maspalomas sand dunes.
On the second day, we were joined by long-time friend and collaborator of the company, Thomas Petit, who gave a hilariously frank and thought-provoking talk about the current state of mobile growth and a look into the future.
A new location certainly has the ability to inspire new ideas so we took advantage of the balmier climes to break off into groups and indulge in some blue-sky thinking. The aim was for each group to flesh out a growth opportunity outside of their current day-to-day work that they were passionate about. This should be pitched to the other groups and then conceptualized over the next 6 months. Animated conversations continued over team dinner that evening.
We kicked off the last day of workshops with a retrospective of our accomplishments in 2019 and a look ahead to the goals for Phiture in 2020. Each team dedicated time to defining their own OKRs for the upcoming quarter, integrating the most popular blue-sky projects into their goals for the next few months.
We spent the final evening making the most of the stunning location by walking across the dunes to the beach, hitting the hotel sauna and sampling some of the local nightlife (and dubiously named cocktails).
We all left the island feeling fully recharged by not only the sunshine and cervezas but also the exchanging of creative ideas and all round excellent company.
