Keeping a Remote Team Connected with Echobind’s 2022 Summit

Our annual summit allows our team to build on our foundation of community and provides opportunities for new, shared experiences. We find our summit to be invaluable for a few reasons. We get to reflect on the work we have been doing and align on where we want to iterate. We get to deepen our connections as teammates and colleagues in person. With our refreshed alignment and strengthened connections, we elevate our collective skills as a team. This year, we focused on communication and problem-solving skills, which are crucial for our remote team of software engineers, designers, and strategists.

After a two-year hiatus from our summit, we were ready to make up for lost time. We set out from all over the U.S. to gather at C Lazy U Dude Ranch in Granby, CO. We had a blast doing all the ranch things, but the magic really sparked during our workshops where we got to dive deeper into communication and problem-solving. The discussions we had and the challenges we shared created invaluable takeaways to bring home to our daily work life. We went beyond just getting to know each other and learned how to support each other better at work.

Our team had the chance to participate in activities like horseback riding, hiking, archery, scavenger hunt, and (a crowd favorite) our murder mystery dinner while also meeting our colleagues - some of us for the first time. The ranch provided a really fun setting for us to get out of our everyday routines and comfort zones and try new things. Some of us rode a horse for the first time and some of us learned that ax throwing is wildly therapeutic.

Our annual summit is one of the largest investments Echobind makes. While much of the ROI is intangible, we survey our team to measure their satisfaction and were thrilled to see 100% responded that our annual retreat was valuable and achieved the goal of fostering stronger relationships among colleagues. We can say with confidence that the experiences we had as a team were priceless. Our hope is that the magic stays palpable throughout the year.