Taking Strava Jams Remote
Strava Jams is more than just a four day hackathon — it’s a cultural grounding point for our company. Laughs are shared over meals, ideas are taken further than before and a lot of code is written. With all non-essential meetings cancelled, everyone participates in Jams in Strava, not just product, design and engineering. We’ve had music videos created, parts of the office reconfigured and game shows designed and presented live. So when it became clear that we would still be working remotely during the first scheduled Jams of the year, the big question was: Can the spirit of Jams live on?
One of the core values at Strava is camaraderie and it’s a major theme during Strava Jams. A group of us, from many different disciplines, met a couple times in advance of Virtual Jams in order to brainstorm how we might continue the thread of camaraderie during the hackathon.
Usually when we are in the office, we have catered lunches each day of Jams and large posters created by our Design Team hung up around the office. We replaced these events with a couple new ideas. Each day of Jams started with the Design Team releasing fun, themed Zoom backgrounds that everyone could download and use. These backgrounds corresponded to that day’s Jam theme. For instance, Thursday was “Fancy Dress Up Day”. The Zoom background was a red, sorry — Strava orange, carpet. Each day also had a series of Zoom rooms at lunch or breakfast so that members of our global team could hang out casually. To facilitate conversation and fun, each Zoom room had a host and a theme. Sometimes the theme was charades, and sometimes it was “show us your pets!”. These small doses of fun throughout the week helped create that sense of camaraderie and excitement around the week that Strava Jams is known for.
Perhaps the most exciting part of Jams is the Friday when everyone presents their final work. Usually we have fancy catered hors d’oeuvres, wine and beer to enjoy while each team goes up on stage. The event is MC’d by two employees and there are many laughs and surprises. I was worried that these magical two hours would be dampened by having all 180 of us on Zoom. In fact, I could not have been more wrong.
Our two MCs, Kate and Tim, prepared content that made light of the awkwardness of Zoom. In fact, in their opening monologue, Tim organized for his kids to rush into the room “interrupting” his speech. With a straight face, Tim turned to his kids and said “Guys, you’re embarrassing me in front of my friends!” The entire company burst out laughing and the Zoom chat exploded with responses. It was in these first 90 seconds that I realized these Jams presentations were going to be as fun and goofy as ever.
Zoom chat allowed the whole company to participate in banter while each group presented. There were immediate responses of “wow this idea is so cool”, to the favorite chant of “ship it, ship it!” One of the loudest pieces of feedback we got was that we need to keep a form of live chat for all future Jams.
Surprisingly, we had thirty teams sign up to present (the most ever for Jams). Remote presenting did not deter people. We had also cut presentation lengths from 5 minutes to 3 minutes, and had 5 minutes breaks every 25 minutes. These changes helped keep everyone engaged and we finished the whole event in just over two hours.
One of my favorite parts of Jams is the hour after presentations when the energy persists and everyone hangs out, reveling in the culmination of an awesome week. For this Strava Jams, that energy and banter persisted and found its way to Slack. Instead of people closing their laptops and starting their weekends, the conversation continued. I knew in that moment that despite these unprecedented times, Strava Jams: Remote Edition, had been a success.
Your Remote Strava Jams Captain (on behalf of a lot of amazing people!),
Jason (aka json) van der Merwe
