The Birds Fly away!

At first, it was just a simple team-building trip with less than ten participants. However, it became a tradition and year after year, more birds joined our nest and the trip grew bigger. After sharing stories and legends of previous years, both new joiners and veterans were waiting for the D-Day of this year’s famous trip: “THE OFFSITE”.

As in previous years, the destination was known only by NVISO’s mama birds (a.k.a. the leadership team), but as the day approached, there were more clues that appeared in emails or even during the monthly afternoon presentation.

One person even managed to find the destination before everyone else by using a nice (or should we say sneaky?) trick.

Sasja : ” Using a “CanaryToken by Thinkst”, we were able to retrieve the IP address from our HR colleague, who was on-site arranging everything. We generated a 1×1 image called “Custom Image Web bug”, which can be embedded in an HTML-formatted e-mail. Most companies block loading images from external addresses, but this web token was sent in a legitimate internal e-mail to our HR colleague. Simply opening the e-mail resulted in the token being triggered and the source IP being logged. A quick IP lookup pointed in the direction of Malta! When the token creator dropped the fact that they like the candy Maltesers to management, all hands were on deck and our HR colleague was instructed to only open e-mails from management while at the off-site location.”

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After a few posts on Twitter and the arrival of the offsite T-shirts at the office, this year’s destination was known to all the birds: MALTA!

Once in Malta, we hit the floor running and activities began. We started with a guided walk to discover the city of Valleta. After a local meal on the terrace that allowed us to regain energy, we resumed our visit and quickly learned not everyone would survive this trip: this year’s offsite would be the stage for a company-wide “Murder Game” that would span the entire stay in Malta:

• Some people in the firm were “murderers” that aimed to kill the other people in the game. Their goal was to kill everyone else to remain a sole survivor
• Some people in the firm could protect others (but they needed to be convinced to do so…)
• All other people were just trying to survive AND score points by identifying the “murderers”

In order to understand who’s who, you need to talk to others (and try to get hints from the game organisers). Needless to say, this resulted in an interesting dilemma: “Who do you trust?…”

After our first acquaintance with Malta and unpacking at the hotel, the birds could rest and enjoy the rooftop pool to cool off before their little evening out with some unusual taxis:

Of course, it’s not just fun and games, so the next morning had some more serious items on the agenda. After the presentation that reminded NVISO’s birds of the values we live by (We care; We are proud, We break barriers and No BS), it was time for our yearly innovation workshop: the Shark Tank. The goal of the Shark Tank is to work together as a team to come up with innovative ideas that would help NVISO move forward and ensure we stay on top of our game!

At NVISO we like challenges, so for this year’s edition of the Shark Tank, we had a small tournament between 8 teams! Each team would focus on one of NVISO’s key pilars: Customer, People, Structure and Innovation. The idea was to put yourself in the shoes of a competitor who would like to outperform NVISO in one of these areas. The expected result was a way of “hardening” NVISO to stay ahead!

All the ideas had potential and showed areas where we can still grow and improve as a company. The winning teams received budget to continue working on their ideas throughout the remainder of 2019 – we are curious to see what will come out of this! (maybe some more blog posts incoming, who knows :p)

It should not be forgotten that the purpose of the trip was also to enjoy the good times and the sun with colleagues. With several more activities such as a speed boat trip to the island of Gozo, jeep riding, and cruising back on a catamaran, everyone had a great time! Some daredevils even dove off the boat into the clear blue (but cold!) waters surrounding Malta. And what better way to end an incredible journey than with an NVISO PARTY! Here’s some more fun pictures:

With all those fun-packed activities, you’d almost forget about the offsite game. One person however did not, since she managed to find all killers in one afternoon.

Annika: “During the entire offsite, there would be multiple voting rounds where normal players had to identify the murderers, and the murderers had to choose people to eliminate from the game. I was a normal player, so my goal was to find the killers as soon as possible without dying. Clues could be gathered by asking someone from the management team, who would happily tell us what we wanted to hear in exchange for a small assignment (singing a song, doing a dance, confessing our eternal love for a colleague, reenacting the famous titanic scene on the catamaran, …).

After gathering the first clues, I could use them to trade information with other colleagues. Of course, I knew I couldn’t trust anyone, so which information was correct and which wasn’t? Before the first submission round I was able to find all the killers. Although at that time, two of them were calculated guesses. Double-checking was an important step, since I knew we have some very competitive colleagues as well and false information was dropped continuously. Since I was correct from the beginning, I had earned the most points and won the game! But the great part is that even though people were lying to my face, and I was backstabbed multiple times, I still know I can count on my colleagues the other 363 days of the year. 😊“

To finish off, we can conclude that the offsite once again managed to live up to our (very high) expectations: the main NVISO team building event brought us all together and motivates us for another year of NVISO awesomeness! Watch out world: NVISO birds on the move!