How did ABBYY employees compete in throwing gadgets, or a little about a staff rally

We rarely write in a blog about the internal life of our company, but a recent event, perhaps, deserves attention.

So, on the right you see an employee of ABBYY, who is going to throw the keyboard far, far away. The further the better. This employee is not alone in his desire, because he is going to throw the keyboard not just like that, but with the aim of winning the throwing competition of gadgets, and there are a lot of people who want to win. After all, the winner will get the opportunity to throw away a real laptop. Gadgets for throwing prepared a variety of: mobile phones, mice, keyboards, etc., and all this happens at the staff rally - a large corporate exit company ABBYY.

What else did these people do there?
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So, first things first. In early June, we had a staff rally. A staff meeting at ABBYY is not just the departure of all employees to nature with all the ensuing consequences. As a rule, a big game takes place at a staff rally, which starts in the office a couple of months before the event itself. This time we came up with the project "Magic Wand" - a game based on the book Arkady and Boris Strugatsky "Monday begins on Saturday." Why such a topic? It so happened that many of our employees love this book and our company is a bit like NIICHAVO. The last argument for us was the fact that in the hotel, which we chose for a staff rally, the movie “Wizards” was shot (it was shot based on the book “Monday Starts on Saturday”).

The game was attended by 5 teams (or about 100 employees). Some approached the process so seriously that they even created their own websites. Here is the site of the team of young employees Geek's Magic . So that the teams would not be bored preparing for a staff rally, we came up with several tasks for them that they had to do in the office. First we asked them to find answers to some of our questions in the book (well, this is for everyone to read it, if someone else doesn’t), draw a floor plan NIELEVO, write a quatrain about a structural linguist (we have many linguists in the company, which turned out in the end, were good). In addition, we planned to make a film on the basis of the event, and within each team small film studios were created. And what kind of film studio without a name, logo and screensaver? Screensavers turned out funny. Here is the iGrusha Labs Team Screensaver



But the most important task for the teams was to organize master classes in six laboratories “based on” the Strugatsky books: “Creative magic”, “Eternal youth”, “Power of thought”, “Absolute knowledge”, “Team”, “ Laboratory of children's laughter. Teams were carefully prepared for them, we allowed them to conduct an advertising campaign in the office, which they used.



So, day X came, and we went. They decided to go by train to go around Friday traffic jams, and the train was special - ABBYY Express. It was painted in red and gray - these are the colors of ABBYY.



We also made tickets. Like these ones.



Everything was possible on this train: no one grumbled that in the next compartment they were playing guitars and even drums. Here you could play cards and make noise in the vestibule.





In Suzdal we lived in a tourist center with the original name "Suzdal". It was here that filmed some episodes of the movie "Wizards". It was on this roof that the Sataneans got when they wished to "be on a horse."



Flags of the teams participating in the Magic Wand project.



On the first evening, we were waited by master classes on mafia, poker, tarot cards and mahjong, the intellectual “Playing the Dictionary”, training on tying sea knots and a master class on modern dances Let's Rock This Party (the latter came in very handy before the disco).



But the most popular were three events. The first is cockroach race. According to estimates of the organizing team, about 170 people looked at the races. Passions were running high - whose cockroach will come to the finish first?



The second is a master class on the manipulation of objects, which ended with a colorful fire-show.



The third one is the stunning iGrushchnaya jam-session where everyone could learn to play what was on hand, learn something useful about the musical composition and participate together with colleagues in musical improvisation.



And then there were traditional evening get-togethers for interests: board games, mafia, poker, guitar. And, of course, the disco, which opened the cover-band "Lost Girl". After the disco, just in case, we clarified - not one of our girls was lost.



Saturday morning began sports workshops on yoga, taekwondo and capoeira. I must say, of the fifty who signed up, they were visited by a dozen and a half - but the most athletic. And then there were two excursions in Suzdal - bus and bicycle (the historian who was already familiar to our cyclists, organizer of large-scale bicycle excursions to different cities of the world, Sergey Nikitin ( www.moskultprog.ru ) led the author’s route through Suzdal led the last). Already 80 people went to the bike tour - for our company it was, perhaps, the largest cycling trip.



After lunch, a series of master classes continued. Unfortunately, the format of the article does not allow us to tell about all (and there were more than 40 of them!), Let's dwell only on the brightest ones. Master classes “Magic words” were very popular, where you could learn to write good business texts, and “Do-it-yourself Tourism”, where they talked about how cheap and easy it is to organize an interesting journey of any complexity on their own. And now a little photo.

This is a telekinesis workshop. You can control a variety of objects using the remote control.



This is a master class for children “Big soap bubbles” - the name speaks for itself.



And here is the recipe for happiness.



After the master class, the floor in the disco hall was washed out of three garden leeches by a whole detachment of cleaners - and could not wash it to the end. Hopefully nobody slipped at the Sunday disco.

Master classes were always popular, where you could cook and immediately drink (or eat) something tasty with your own hands.

Nitrogen Cream - delicious ice cream can be made using liquid nitrogen.



Art workshops were not ignored. Master class in Chinese painting. The brushes are sharpened and ready for battle.





Everyone who wanted was finally able to find out what kumihimo is. This is such a Japanese lace.



And they do it somehow.



And here is a photo from the gadget throwing championship, which we wrote about at the beginning.

Phones and computer mice were thrown at accuracy.



Keyboards - at a distance.



And laptops - just like that

- Dad, can we not throw this laptop?
- We will, son, we will!



As you can see, we do not like standard corporate parties :)

Sveta Luzgina,

Corporate Communications Service