Dock Team Retreat in Tulum, Mexico
Earlier last year, the Dock team spent an incredible week in Tulum, Mexico for our first annual team retreat. As a distributed company across 4 continents and 8 countries, many of us had been working together for years without ever meeting face-to-face. Bringing the team together in this way has been a long-term goal of ours, and we were very excited to finally make this goal a reality.
With a mission as bold and important as ours, we know that having a unified team is one of the key components on our road to success. This retreat gave our team an opportunity to connect on a human level, deepen our relationships and create shared memories that have strengthened our team’s culture. Somewhere in between spontaneous pool parties, tasting new foods and living in the same house for a week, our team returned home with a stronger sense of solidarity and appreciation for one another.
During our last dinner together, each of us took the time to share our favorite moments from the trip. We repeatedly heard that simply “meeting each other” and “spending time together” were the top highlights of the entire experience.
Location
The first item we had to decide was our location for the retreat. There were a number of factors that we took into account when selecting the location. Our requirements were:
- Warm weather (!)
- Reasonable flight times for most team members
- Manageable visa requirements
- Ability to rent a large villa that fit everyone
- Within our set budget
After many hours of research and taking the above requirements into account, we decided to travel to Tulum, Mexico. We rented a large mansion right on the beach that had its own pool, direct beach access, a personal chef and staff, and enough rooms to comfortably fit all of our team. This was our home for the week where we spent most of our time playing and working together.
We set a reasonable budget for the trip and tried to minimize costs as much as possible. We used credit card points to pay for most of the flights and selected a location that was close to a significant portion of the team to reduce the cost of flights. Mexico did not require visas for the majority of the team, which can get expensive for certain countries. We also had all of our meals at the house so we saved significantly on not having to pay for restaurants or catering.
Activities
When planning the retreat we wanted a good balance of time spent on work topics, team bonding, and just having fun. We allocated time in the mornings to attend to work and for teams to get face-to-face time to have important discussions that aren’t as easy to do on video calls.
We also planned a few fun activities throughout the week:
Team Hackathon: We challenged the team to think of creative ideas for a product feature that demonstrated the value of Dock to an app user and could be built by our team in 2–4 weeks. The group was divided into cross-departmental teams that matched people who don’t normally work together, and each team was given time to brainstorm a solution. At the end of the week, the teams presented their solution and we had a panel of judges who chose the winner. We heard some very creative ideas and were impressed with how well the diverse teams collaborated together.
Beach competition: To get the competitive juices flowing, we had a beach competition that consisted of an obstacle course race and a sand castle building contest. Although both teams gave it their all, the orange pirates won with their creative sandcastle and quick moves on the obstacle course.
Visit to Xcarat: In addition to giving team members free time to explore Tulum, we organized a trip together to the eco park Xcarat where we swam through an underground river, saw all kinds of animals, and watched a show about Mexico’s history.
Takeaways
As a team that’s passionate about working remote, we know that productive day-to-day work doesn’t need to be done in person, but we also understand that there are certain interactions that just aren’t the same on a video call. The opportunity to spend quality time together, making memories and celebrating our successes strengthened our bond as a team. We have no doubt that we will have many more team retreats in the future and look forward to many more adventures together.
