Axonista Team Week 2022

Axonista, a leading global video commerce company and proud remote-first company, understands the importance of bringing our people together to build relationships and long lasting partnerships, and are proud of the connections we’ve built with each other.

In March 2020 when the pandemic hit, we continued to grow our team throughout this time, from 24 to 48 people and turned our connections into remote, online communities. When restrictions were lifted just over 2 years later, we knew that we had to do something monumental that would enable long-time Axonistas to catch up and reconnect as well as give new team members the opportunity to have in-person conversations for the first time .

So, for Axonista’s Annual Team Week in October 2022 we brought our team together in Dublin, Ireland, for a week of collaboration, fun and laughter!

The Preparation for Team Week 2022

The theme for Team Week 2022 was “Collaboration”, it’s part of everything we do here at Axonista and is one of our 3 values. By collaborating as a team, we learn more from each other, so bringing that to our team week was essential. 

Our overarching goal in organising Team Week was to foster an environment of safety, enabling each and everyone to bring their authentic selves to the week ahead when interacting in person. With that in mind, our incredible (and award-winning!) Operations team organised team building activities that were educational, fun and collaborative. 

And, of course, we couldn’t send our team home without goodie bags to remember the wonderful week we had, so we provided our team with Axonista swag bags and notebooks.

Highlights from our awesome Team Week 2022

Day 1: Welcome reception at The Irish Film Institute 

In celebration of our theme of collaboration, we had a welcome reception at the home of one of Axonsita’s customers, the Irish Film Institute (IFI). We heard from their Director, Ross Keane, about the strong history of collaboration between the IFI and Axonista, and the importance of Axonista’s technology in delivering the IFI Player Archive suite of apps. We ate, drank and chatted throughout the evening getting acquainted and reacquainted with our people. This set the tone for how incredible Team Week 2022 would be!

Day 2: Presentations, Art and a Tour of the Guinness Storehouse

We spent day two at the beautiful Airfield Estate in Dundrum. We chose this location as it offered the perfect mix of environments to both work and play in, with fully equipped spaces for presentations and discussions, to a breathtaking farm and gardens to explore during downtime.

Axonista Mission and Strategy 

We started our morning with presentations and discussions from Axonista’s Co-Founders and Senior Leadership team. Having our team together was the perfect opportunity to reinforce Axonista’s mission and goals with the team.

Team-Building activities 

In the afternoon, we partnered with Alternative Dublin to paint a masterpiece, the only catch – it was split into smaller individual pieces so everyone had their own piece to complete. When we were finished with our individual elements we had to work together to figure out where each piece went, to create one large Axonista masterpiece. This was a great event to chat with team members we usually wouldn’t see during our daily work. 

“The Big Picture event was so much fun! It was great working together with fellow team members to create an image that had something from everyone from Axonista, even our remote attendees! It was a wonderful showcase of teamwork and run fabulously by the Alternative Dublin team.” Michaela, Operations, Ireland.
Tour of the Guinness Storehouse 

Axonista is a multicultural team, so to finish the day, we brought our team to the iconic location that is the Guinness Storehouse! We discovered the 250 year old story of Guinness and even had our selfies printed on the head of a pint of Guinness. 

“This was my first visit to the Guinness Storehouse, and it was amazing. I learned new and cool stuff, the brewing process and history of Guinness. Everyone was so friendly, and our faces on foam and funny quotes under the fish on the bicycle is something I won’t forget!” Sandra, QA, Croatia.

Day 3: Lab Day and Karaoke

We couldn’t bring our team together in-person without running  one of our famous Lab Days! 

Lab Days are a chance for our team to use our technology, learn more about our customers’ needs, and have fun. This Lab Day was extra special because it was the first time we ran it in person since 2019! We spent the day in our favourite coworking space Huckletree. We competed in teams to produce four livestream shopping shows using our own video commerce platform. This was a personal highlight for some Axonistas as it provided the opportunity to connect and collaborate with colleagues from different departments.

To wrap up a fantastic Team Week 2022, we went to dinner at Maneki and finished the night with some top notch karaoke!

We are so pleased to bring our Axonistas together once more. We laughed a lot, built connections, collaborated and, most importantly, got to spend quality in-person time with our team mates! The connections we made in just a week were magical! Team week 2022 was so much fun, and we are already looking forward to the next one!

“Team week was a terrific opportunity to meet all my previously-virtual colleagues and do tons of fun games, drinks, singing and even being in front of the camera for the first time in my life. I will repeat it next year without a doubt!” Alex, Design, Spain.

Check out the video below to get a visual of how Axonista Team Week 2022 went!