Instances

Previous events:

• 2025 - ?
• 2024 - Sicily, Italy
• 2023 - Phuket, Thailand
• 2023 - Chamonix, France
• 2022 - Tenerife, Spain
• 2021 - Lisbon, Portugal

Why

It’s quite amazing that we can have somebody join the team and work with her/him effectively for several months without ever meeting in person. However, there are magical things that happen when we meet in person that we can’t reproduce over Slack, GitHub notifications, or Google Meet:

• Knowing my peers at a more human level. It’s an opportunity to strengthen relationships, where it can sometimes feel quite transactional with async communications.
• It’s an opportunity to work differently. Retreats are not vacations though we aim to spend 50% of the time on fun bonding activities. We can do things that are uniquely tailored for in-person collaboration: hackathons, live presentations, brainstorming, unconference, etc.

Key elements

• Frequency: Every 8 months.
• Work vs. bonding time tradeoff: 50/50%.
• Being optional is key. You should not feel that you need to do something just because the group is doing it, e.g. coming to the retreat is optional**.**
• Duration: 5 days: Monday → Friday. Two designated travel days and three full days at the offsite is a good amount of time to get work done and to get to know each other better.
• Location: It should be:
  • easy to access:
    • no out-of-the-way places with limited flight options.
    • ideally, be less than 1 hour from the airport as some people are coming from far.
    • no strong visa requirement https://www.ivisa.com/
  • with “great” weather: https://weatherspark.com/.
  • safe enough: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/.
• Accommodation: Above average/high-end. We don't pay for offices so no reason to bargain. Introverts need a single room to recharge. The buyout of a venue is preferable.
• Budget maximum: $2,800/person.