Dataedo is a 100% remote company. We work from various places in Poland and the USA, so we connect online every day. The first workation took place last year in September and we felt that we need more opportunities to see each other not only virtually but also to have a chance to make bonds offline. That’s how the idea of the bi-yearly company workation came up and we gave it a final shape at our first official „Dataedo Majówka” in Gdańsk!

Work & play together in Gdańsk

At our workation, we wanted to combine two areas. Firstly, working, brainstorming and discussing important company topics. Secondly, simply having fun while spending some time together.

We’ve planned 5 days in the beautiful city of Gdansk – the place where Dataedo was founded. We operate remotely now, but our official address is still Gdańsk so we went back to the roots and organized a workation in the city of the company’s origin.

The plans were quite ambitious. Two knowledge-sharing events and team-building activities. Before, we asked our team to share their preferences trying to catch a balance between all work and fun.

Data Dojo

„Know the challenges our clients face every day” – that was the main goal of the Data Dojo workshop conducted by our CEO, Piotr. The idea was simple yet the tasks turned out to be quite a challenge for a team.

Imagine that you need to find the list of company products in the database. Looks like a simple task? Well, without any context and hints it seems to be a job for a Sherlock. And trying to point out report errors was even a bigger challenge.

Starting without documentation isn’t easy. But that’s the reality for many of Dataedo users. The data dictionary and business glossary that our product provides were very handy and everything started to look more clear with them. At the workshop, we dived deeper into the everyday problems of our clients and also had a chance to take a look at our product from a different perspective. Now we know why our clients love it :)

Let’s take a look at what our team said after the workshop:

„It was great to see what challenges are clients face every day and how our product helps them.”

„Great experience! I used data dojo tasks to show my family what exactly our product does.”

„The opportunity to understand the problem we solve and how Dataedo approaches it. Problems with data cataloging isn’t easy to understand without commercial experience with big amounts of data.”

„A lot of people without database experience mentioned after the workshop what now they see greater sense in our application.”

Dataedo Innovation Day

Backlog tasks make our Development Team busy every day. What about dream features, unresolved problems, and improvements that aren’t priorities? Innovation Day was introduced to focus on all the things we wanted to do but they didn’t get a green light before.

Like our Head of Development, Łukasz said:

„ At last, we could bring to the table all our dreamed improvements and upgrades. The main idea was to work on projects that make our work or the life of our clients easier. It could actually be anything with one simple condition: It should be shipped in 24 hours.”

The project teams started at 12:00 PM the first day and needed to finish at 12:00 PM the next day. Time was both our enemy and the biggest ally. And we were all positively surprised with the outcome. 13 great, in most cases ready to be implemented solutions, projects, and improvements.

Our project list was quite a long one :D

Turn frustration into innovation. And we really did!

The winning project was „ Changes in UI desktop + chart/statistics” by Rafał Komorowski and Michał Psyk from our Development Team.

In 24 hours winners managed to: - add a button to hide the navigation on the left so that the whole screen is available for displaying data; - introduce a possibility to move tabs in tables, views, procedures, etc. and place them like forms in Windows; - add a new tab to the database view with statistics and charts.

Michał and Rafał proudly carried the trophy – an IT person statue.

„ It was super energetic event. I was impressed by the numerous ideas team has presented and created in a very short time.”

„Possibility to work on something that will bring value to a product was amazing. The managers approach of supporting projects to be polished and implemented in real-life was also great. It brings sense of empowerment.”

And that is how it looks when you can vote with chocolate candies ;) 

After hours

Workation wasn’t all about work. The fun part was equally important for us. Knowing that we cannot meet so often, we planned team activities ahead. We enjoyed bowling evening and dinner at a local brewery. And it seems like we really enjoy the time spent together a lot!

Next is yet to come

What’s next? We have plans for the second 2022 workation edition in September. This time we will get together with our US Team and we can’t wait to make this event happen. We’re full of new ideas – another city in Poland, a cozy retreat outside town, or even a vineyard in Bulgaria. We try to find the best option that will make our team connected!