On May 17th, we kicked off our highly anticipated CodeScience All Hands 2018 Event!

If you don’t know, CodeScience is a mostly remote company headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. With employees across the U.S., the All Hands Meeting is a week of fun, learning, and adventure. Since our last All Hands Meeting, we have nearly doubled in size so there were lots of new faces to meet in person.

Mike Witherspoon welcoming the CodeScience Team to All Hands 2018

Mike Witherspoon welcoming the CodeScience Team to All Hands 2018

 

Each event gets bigger and better, and this year was no different. Here is a slideshow from all the week’s activities. This year, our theme was “Stories to Legends,” and we focused on Storytelling and connection.

Learn

Learning takes on many forms. Yes, we do spend some time sitting in presentations led by our Leadership. It’s always insightful to see and learn why we have chosen this path, what influenced the decisions, and the plans for the future. Exciting things are coming soon, and all of us are rallying and ready to go!

And, we also have tons of fun activities!

For our first session, we were treated to a very special guest speaker — Matthew Luhn! Matthew is an amazing storyteller who built his career on being able to create characters and tell a story that connects to audiences of all kinds. He began his work on The Simpsons and quickly moved to Pixar to create animated films.

Matthew Luhn – Storytelling for Business

Matthew Luhn – Storytelling for Business

His method of telling stories starts with capturing the audience’s attention by understanding emotion and concludes with the power of the moral of the story (or how having a main concluding point helps the audience know what to remember). Yet, ultimately, my takeaway was that he shared his method of how to connect with others that you may never see face-to-face.

How do you connect with someone you can’t see (someone watching your film), or someone you don’t know very well (possibly a client), or someone that you only see on videos (our remote family)? We can do this by sharing a story that contains a small part of ourselves!

Avoid being contrived or using empty words. Your audience will be able to see right through this. Instead, be authentic and true. For many, this is not easy — yet the reward is worth it in the end! Connection can run very deep.

One of our afternoons was spent with an improv group — Dad’s Garage! When I first heard whispers of an “improv activity,” I was definitely hesitant and, let’s face it, anxious. I did not want to get up on stage and act. It turns out, this was not the plan at all.

Instead, we broke into groups and played these games that challenged your brain to think quickly and take action. In a way, we were “on stage” because the group was focused on you, but it didn’t feel that way because as an active participant, you were more focused on what was coming and how to pass it along, rather than on all of the eyes that were watching. Everything about the group was so fun, and really, I was laughing so hard that I could barely manage to keep the game moving!

An Improv Session with Dad’s Garage

An Improv Session with Dad’s Garage

Another afternoon was spent running around town on a hunt with GoGame! I won’t spoil it for you — you must experience this greatness for yourself!

We capped the weekend by giving back to the local Atlanta community. We worked with Hands On Atlanta and put together snack packs for a local Title 1 school. It felt really good to know we were making a difference that very day because the packs we put together would be immediately taken to the school and handed out that afternoon.

We love to play!

We cannot have a CodeScience All Hands without parties!

CodeScience loves costumes, so of course, our Welcome Reception is a big costume party! This year, the theme was Come as Your Favorite Legends. Yes, define that as you see fit! We had everything from Abba to Ferris Bueller to Obi-Wan Kenobe to Left Shark of Katy Perry’s Superbowl performance to Bob Ross to the Crow. Here is the slideshow again to check out photos from all the week’s activities.

It was so fun to see everyone and have a chance to catch up with those folks that live in other parts of the country. The amazing part was meeting so many people for the first time face-to-face!

We see each other on video calls, yet when you meet in person, there is a different feeling and connection — not to mention the usual surprise at just how tall that person is! Video calls can be deceiving. Our CodeScientists may not always look it on video, but so many of us are more than 6ft tall!

CodeScience Welcome Reception

CodeScience Welcome Reception

I played oversized-Jenga for the first time in my life. Krisha put it well, “so there is one loser and everyone else is a winner?” After that, it was almost team Jenga! Everyone was rooting each other on, helping to choose a piece that could be removed easily (with the exception of the audience that was heckling us and trying to lead us astray!) — it was the most fun game of Jenga ever!

Who doesn’t love giant Jenga?

Who doesn’t love giant Jenga?

The last evening of our All Hands Meeting is spent celebrating each other and enjoying a nice meal. Prior to the All Hands event, we fill out a survey and cast votes for various categories.

Of course, we have our team awards, while others are company-wide, such as “Can Do” or “Magician.” Awards are presented to each individual and we have tons of cheering and love. This year, we introduced something new — an open floor for “Lightning Props.” This was allotted for about 15 minutes for folks to come up and share a “thank you” to anyone they would like to mention. These “Lightning Props” quickly turned into an hour of CodeScientists standing up in front of everyone and sharing their heartfelt words to their team or mentors. It was such a beautiful thing to see all the love fill the room as we were able to celebrate together!

A few photos from our Awards Dinner

A few photos from our Awards Dinner

Returning Home

Going home and returning back to real life can be rough, but getting together and building foundational relationships outside of our normal workplace is immeasurable. I had a fantastic time at All Hands and can’t wait until next year!


Jealous of all the fun we had at this year’s All Hands celebration? We’re hiring! Check out our opportunities and you could be joining us next year!