Sharing fun times and Knowledge: Beer n’ Tech at 360Learning

A little bit of honesty to start: I have not invented this principle, quite the opposite. In one of my previous experiences, this was a usual thing: people would book one hour to present a technical subject of their choosing, with beers, chips, and sodas to share. In an R&D of 600 persons, this was a monthly, or bimonthly opportunity to present the result of a project, or sometimes a good book or conference. I fell in love with the concept with one specific occurrence, where a Data Scientist came and went completely unexpected, by presenting one of her previous lives, where she was an astronomer. That was a breath of fresh air, learning about black holes and the life of those scientists, working around the world, looking for stars and credits.

When I joined 360Learning, I was delighted to see that this was already kind of a thing: every other week, we had an engineering all-hands spot where one squad would share with the whole team whatever they wanted. Sadly, I discovered that the focus was very much restricted to the status of the OKR, and the hardcoded rhythm meant that you had to present when it was your turn and wait almost a year when it was not. There was room for a Beer n’ Tech concept, but would people be interested, or would I sit alone in a room with M&Ms and a mic?

One year after the first edition, I’m glad to be able to say that it worked. We now have a monthly team session with 2 different sets of speakers and a packed room every time. How did we get there, and why should you as well invest in your own version of the concept?

Finding Speakers

The most important part of the Beer n’ Tech. People are busy, people are shy, people (think they) don’t have anything interesting to talk about. I rarely have spontaneous applications to present. When I do, it’s from teammates with experiences talking at conferences or meet-ups (think data scientists and ML engineers, team leaders, or C-level). Therefore, I hunt for speakers.

I try to make it clear what the expectations are: We are not dealing with career-threatening presentations. Speakers should spend only a few hours on their presentations with light slides (the audience came to listen, not to read). We propose a rehearsal session a few days before the date, with immediate feedback and a chance to improve the slides and evacuate the stress.

Having a good time

360Learning is a remote-first company, but with a nice office in Paris where 20 to 30 360Learners can easily meet up. Bringing food is not a high budget (think 60€ per event) and it works. The talks end at 6 PM, but the party goes on while there is still something to drink, with a chance of further prolongation at the closest bar. It’s less fun for the folks who hear us remotely, but that’s a blessing in disguise: we often see teams using their monthly team-building budget to spend the day together and cap it by the BnT session.

Making it Special

All of our sessions have a special place in my heart, but there are some occurrences where we did something different :

• After joining our company, G traveled from California to spend a few days talking with executives. We took this opportunity to have him at a Beer n’ Tech present himself and his career in a very chill way. Sharing drinks and fun anecdotes was a great way to break any intimidation his impressive career could have given at first sight.
• When we acquired eLamp, we first welcomed our dozen new teammates with a bunch of friendly emotes on Slack — but the next BnT was the real opportunity to both know their journey and product and know them personally.
• Through some random opportunities, I found out that two of my teammates had wine-producing families. Just before Christmas, they took the stage to mix presenting their teams and have us taste their production (ie the day we did a Wine n’ Tech).

Here’s a sample of the diversity of other subjects that were addressed in this year’s Beer n’ Tech :

• Pure technical presentations (introducing KraphQL or Kotlin and a 2 parts on the benefits and dangers of a microservice architecture)
• End of projects celebration (QGen and Dashboard)
• Slice of life (Maxime is a former client of 360Learning, now part of the team and Rapha gave us a hilarious tell of his life in the Middle East)

While I hope hosting a Beer n’ Tech will never be mandatory, I’m glad to see that it is now rewarded. Management has added a soft skill in the career path to recognize folks who go out of their way to do a Beer n’ Tech and share with their peers. After all, we are the Collaborative Learning company, Collaborative Teaching should be in our DNA.

Do you have a similar experience at work? Interested in launching such an initiative? Let’s share some tips 🍻!