How Edge is building a strong sense of community through virtual traditions
One of our goals at Edge Analytics is to have a team of people who feel a sense of community beyond work. Being primarily a remote company, we came up with strategies for fostering a real community, virtually. We’ve had success in bringing the team closer together through two new virtual traditions: Icebreakers and Claims. These are simple additions to our weekly team meetings that have paid huge dividends.
We’ve had success in bringing the team closer together through two new virtual traditions: Icebreakers and Claims.
How Edge developed these traditions
When Edge came into existence in 2019, we were a group of five engineers located in the Bay Area and working together in person. In March 2020, all in person contact ended as the world went into lockdown. At Edge, we were fortunate to keep growing throughout the pandemic and hired fantastic engineers from all over, including Texas, North Carolina, and Ukraine. We more than doubled in size but this new growth also presented challenge: we didn’t really know one another deeper than what you see on the surface… of a computer screen.
We resolved to find ways for the entire team to bond given the virtual constraints of the organization, without feeling like the effort created additional burden. Icebreakers and Claims were the answer to this need. These dedicated time slots during weekly team meetings give individuals the chance to share personal and professional updates in an informal environment. We’ve been practicing both for over a year, and they are moments the whole team looks forward to.
Icebreakers
We begin every team meeting with Icebreakers. During Icebreakers, we share a prompt, and each team members takes the floor to answer. The Icebreakers are typically fun prompts to get to know each other better. What do you typically eat for breakfast? As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? We sometimes do small activities, like sketch a drawing of your workspace and share it in 60 seconds. We’ve learned so much about one another from Icebreakers: one team member made a custom template for buzzing his own mohawk; another makes sketches suspiciously similar to XKCD; and three of us love cooking pierogis from scratch. I strongly believe Icebreakers are making us a stronger company.
Claims
We finish every team meeting with Claims, which were inspired by our client Cionic who shares the same tradition. Claims are a chance for individuals to volunteer to share recent professional successes. It was important for Claims to not feel like updates — that’s not their purpose. Claims are truly a chance to celebrate wins, large and small. The goal is to celebrate success while minimizing overhead, so we typically limit each Claim to five minutes with simple visuals. At the end of each Claim, we have a tradition to clap as a way to acknowledge the sharer’s success. Claims are especially important for us to build a sense of shared ownership, since as a consultancy, it’s challenging for each member to stay fully up-to-date on all client work across the organization. Claims often lead into interesting group discussions and provide fertile ground for new idea sharing. Some of the amazing claims we’ve seen include novel algorithms, new client tools like interactive Jupyter notebooks, and patent applications.
Over the past year, Edge has successfully built a remote company. In the process of building a great engineering team, we recognized that we also needed to create virtual traditions to make the team feel more connected. Icebreakers and Claims are two easy-to-implement traditions that have helped us achieve those goals as the team has grown.
Edge Analytics is a consulting company that specializes in data science, machine learning, and algorithm development both on the edge and in the cloud. We partner with our clients, who range from Fortune 500 companies to innovative startups, to turn their ideas into reality. Have a hard problem in mind? Get in touch at info@edgeanalytics.io.
