In March 2022, we had the pleasure of hosting one of our team building Techathons for the Visma Nmbrs tech team.
So, what is a Techathon?
A Techathon is a virtual team building event that is especially designed for your tech teams. Your tech team comes together and is assigned to smaller teams where they work together on a particular project over two working days. What they work on can be anything.
For example, they can work on solving a particular problem together, or they can design and develop a new game together. Anything is possible, depending on the company and the tech team. The purpose is to have your tech teams work together in a new way as a team building exercise, getting them out of their usual workflow to build on their connections with one another. We want to help you deliver an impactful team building experience for your team, leaving them feeling appreciated, challenged and excited to work for your company.
What did the Visma Nmbrs Techathon look like?
For the Nmbrs Techathon, they worked together to develop a game from scratch: any game of their choosing. It can be an existing game (such as PONG), a completely new game, or they can adapt a game they know and love (we saw a brilliant mesh of Wordle and Squid Game). They then pitch their game to the entire company, who then have a week to play all the games and vote for their favourite.
The Nmbrs tech teams are located in both Portugal and Amsterdam. While they relish the opportunities they have to gather in person twice a year, their leadership team wanted to provide them with a remote event that would build on these connections. Something fun and challenging, something that would mix up the team dynamics and something that will give them the chance to show off their skills to the rest of the company.
Locus Quest worked closely together with the team at Numbrs to create a schedule that would ensure that the Nmbrs tech teams would have the time and space to really enjoy this event.
Day One
Our Locus Quest day host, Phil, introduced the Techathon and explained the objectives of the challenge: Get to know your colleagues better, work together to create a game you love and, most of all, have fun. Then they went off into their allocated teams to begin brainstorming and building their games.
Day Two
Again, the day was launched by LQ day host Phil. As the teams all gathered in the main room, they were excited and energetic, throwing jokes back and forth, ready to share what they had already accomplished. To kick things off, the teams played an energizer game: The Locus Quest Mazerace, customised with Nmbrs branding and puzzles created especially for the day.
The tech teams had until the afternoon to prepare to present their games in the company-wide meeting. If they wished, they had the opportunity to do a practice run with Phil, who could provide feedback to help with the preparation.
The Company Meeting
Each Techathon team presented their games to the entire company. What did we see? Five clever, creative and totally different games had been created. Each team had a completely unique take on the challenge, and most worked some company inside jokes or references into their games.
One team made a version of Wordle that can be played in Slack, another a Squid Game themed Wordle, another a payroll collection game and another a number guessing game. The winning team created a, ‘This is How We Payroll’ a rolicking 90’s style game where a car jumped across obstacles to collect records.
