How we spent the day at Veeam
So the New Year holidays and winter holidays are over, the round dances around Christmas trees are over, fireworks have died down. I admit, I want to extend this slightly frivolous, carefree, romantic mood, so today my post will not be about new solutions and technologies, but about an unusual day that we arranged for the children of our employees - Veeam Kids Day, Children's Day at Veeam.
If your children also periodically pester you with questions about who the tester is, what you do at work, and why you should definitely go there every day, welcome to the cat - perhaps some ideas will be useful to you too.
The idea was born quite a long time ago, back in the days when a branch of a well-known equipment and communications equipment company flourished in St. Petersburg. The employee who came to our team then was very surprised that we did not have Christmas trees (and indeed events) for the children of the employees. Perhaps it was because in those distant years very few employees could boast of having children :).
However, over time, the situation radically changed, and colleagues from Russian and foreign companies realized that inviting children (as well as grandchildren, wives, husbands, and parents) of employees to the Open Days of Days is a very grateful thing. Even if the child is still small, he most likely asked the father or mother the question why they go to work every day and what are they doing in this job? And the specifics of the IT industry is such that not everyone can tell about it in an accessible form to a 3-5 year old kid. After all, the story about the work of parents should be clear, interesting, to form a respectful attitude to the professions and - and why not? - for someone to become a “guiding star” for choosing your own path. Do you have any acquaintances among, say, a dynasty of programmers? I think this is very cool.
')
To begin with, we voiced our idea at the Breakfast with Meaning - every month in Veeam there are such meetings with the guys from HR, where anyone caneat some goodies to voice their ideas about what events can be held for employees (for example, Donor Day ), what kind of associations to create (travelers club or running club), and so on. Received welcome (thanks including vhuman ), began to collect ideas and plan dates.
Then they stumbled upon an article in the Prodlenka blog about how they, together with the guys from Mosigra, told the children who the programmer was. “Wow! Excellent motions! Such a valuable experience is a sin not to use! ”- my colleague Loxmatiymamont thought . But our offices have such a configuration that the idea of ​​not lecturing in a large hall, but running around the buildings with a map in their hands, that is (yes, yes!), Quit themselves. The omniscient internet didn’t let down here either - it turned out that at Peter-Service, the guys prepared and conducted a quest for high school students in IT professions on their own. “So after all, we probably will be able to do that,” we reasoned and, rolling up our sleeves, set about.
To begin with, they decided to launch an online questionnaire at both sites in order to understand how many participants we will have, from what age groups, and which parent is ready to take part in the preparation and conduct. It turned out that on the site where the departments of sales, marketing and internal systems are located, most of all parents are preschoolers. For them, they decided to play an animated show with cartoon characters who would introduce the kids to the “Veeam Universe”, showed where the jobs of moms and dads, played outdoor games, had creative tasks and presented gifts. Our wonderful Ksyusha from the Veeam team E-learning found excellent animators who brilliantly reincarnated in all their favorite Fixikov, as well as the guys who wrote the script of the game-quest based on the story about Veeam. Still, younger children require professional supervision, so it was decided to choose such assistants.
On the second platform where developers, testers, system administrators and technical support live, the parents of junior high school students turned out to be the most. (Frankly, it was good for us - for high school students we would first have to break our heads over tasks, and this takes time and brain efforts. This will also happen, but a little later.) And an initiative group of children from different departments organized were ready to help. in developing.
And this is true - our engineers, accountants, techrayrati and administrators were surprisingly creative, friendly, responsible, and in general event-organizers at least where.
In the concept of the game, we decided to go “from the product”: to show, so to speak, the subject area and the people whose work our products are designed to facilitate, then acquaint children with those who develop, test and support Veeam solutions. So we got 4 professions and, accordingly, 4 stations for our IT “Fort-Boyard” - IT administrators, programmers, testers and technical support.
The idea was this: the children along with the facilitator walk the route through the office complex, at each station the parents working in this department show their workplace, tell what they are doing, and then give the children tasks in this specialty. For successful performance, children receive honestly earned money - “vimchiki”, so that at the end of the game they can buy something of their choice in the Veeam Market. And if the whole team shows itself to be friendly, ready to help in a difficult task, then everyone is waiting for the final bonus (yes, everything is like in adults).
I would especially like to note that all the colleagues themselves made up a story about their specialty, moreover they had to meet the time allotted for the station.
Here is the station "IT administrators" - this is the possession of Ilya, Dima and two Alekseev.
Surprisingly: it turns out, you can tell children of 7-10 years old in simple words about how everything is arranged here, and our guys coped with it brilliantly. And, of course, their children were also delighted - the fathers set a difficult task for them and gave them real tools, wires and hardware for the solution! I must say that the girls managed with hardware no worse than boys.
Hurray, the server is assembled and ready to go! Meanwhile, the second team uses one of the dozen workers to find one working wire among the dozen, connects the laptop to the switch and successfully “writes a message to the Internet” (one of the smallest participants said, answering the question what his dad does at work :)).
The first money earned, run on! With running around it turned out a little ridiculous, because the presenter had never been in the server room before and got a little lost in our intricate corridors - a quest, after all.
We got acquainted with the subject area, now let's see who is coming up with these programs? These are our developers - Kostya, Dima and Julia. They hold a quiz on IT topics "Answer in 100 seconds" (thanks to the guys from "Rendered" for the idea). Then the task is more difficult - you need to create an algorithm for cooking dishes. One team gets the pasta, and the other dumplings. Although the insidious presenters tried to confuse the participants by cramming extra steps into the blocks, the children quickly discovered the catch and did an excellent job with the task.
Next was the Testing station. The situation in the department of our testers is very conducive to intellectual work: palm trees, bin-begi, light and spacious. The children rated it: “I liked the most where I could sit on the bags and I had to look for bugs!” Said the youngest of the participants.
It should be noted that on this day (and it was during the autumn holidays) Halloween was celebrated in the offices, so there was no shortage of marmalade “bugs”. However, our children have shown that they do not eat their marmaladebread for good reason. The guys learned the story of the first bug, solved all the logical puzzles posed by Denis and Dima, and found all the errors in the picture and in the story “confusion” (and the number of errors in the text and in the picture coincided!). We received another pack of “vimchikov” as a reward and ran to our new building, where now the technical support team Veeam is located.
Here they were waited by a new portion of ingenious mysteries, this time from Eugenia. It must be said that the children of our colleagues are very observant, they learn foreign languages ​​and are well acquainted with the map of the world. Not every adult knows what language they speak, for example, in Switzerland, or can quickly figure out, looking at such a picture, who the owner of these things works with:
(One girl said: “This is a physical education teacher who loves to play drums!”)
Zhenya admitted that she was amazed when the children asked whether it was time to drink tea, or if they wanted to puzzle more riddles, in unison, “Riddles! Riddles! ”Such a shift is growing. Then, of course, they took the guys to the technical support rooms, greeted them in all sorts of different languages, gave them a photo taken against the background of the flags they liked, and Timothy and Denis - at workplaces with their dads. The boys shone with joy and pride.
Finally received the last money, you can go to the Veeam Market and lunch. What do you think are most children like IT kids? Of course, pizza!
One more testimonial from the participant: “At first I thought that they would be boring about telling something. But when I came and saw that there was Halloween and all the fun, I realized that everything would be great! So it was! ”
If your children also periodically pester you with questions about who the tester is, what you do at work, and why you should definitely go there every day, welcome to the cat - perhaps some ideas will be useful to you too.
How it all began
The idea was born quite a long time ago, back in the days when a branch of a well-known equipment and communications equipment company flourished in St. Petersburg. The employee who came to our team then was very surprised that we did not have Christmas trees (and indeed events) for the children of the employees. Perhaps it was because in those distant years very few employees could boast of having children :).
However, over time, the situation radically changed, and colleagues from Russian and foreign companies realized that inviting children (as well as grandchildren, wives, husbands, and parents) of employees to the Open Days of Days is a very grateful thing. Even if the child is still small, he most likely asked the father or mother the question why they go to work every day and what are they doing in this job? And the specifics of the IT industry is such that not everyone can tell about it in an accessible form to a 3-5 year old kid. After all, the story about the work of parents should be clear, interesting, to form a respectful attitude to the professions and - and why not? - for someone to become a “guiding star” for choosing your own path. Do you have any acquaintances among, say, a dynasty of programmers? I think this is very cool.
')
To begin with, we voiced our idea at the Breakfast with Meaning - every month in Veeam there are such meetings with the guys from HR, where anyone can
Then they stumbled upon an article in the Prodlenka blog about how they, together with the guys from Mosigra, told the children who the programmer was. “Wow! Excellent motions! Such a valuable experience is a sin not to use! ”- my colleague Loxmatiymamont thought . But our offices have such a configuration that the idea of ​​not lecturing in a large hall, but running around the buildings with a map in their hands, that is (yes, yes!), Quit themselves. The omniscient internet didn’t let down here either - it turned out that at Peter-Service, the guys prepared and conducted a quest for high school students in IT professions on their own. “So after all, we probably will be able to do that,” we reasoned and, rolling up our sleeves, set about.
"Mom, he counted me!"
To begin with, they decided to launch an online questionnaire at both sites in order to understand how many participants we will have, from what age groups, and which parent is ready to take part in the preparation and conduct. It turned out that on the site where the departments of sales, marketing and internal systems are located, most of all parents are preschoolers. For them, they decided to play an animated show with cartoon characters who would introduce the kids to the “Veeam Universe”, showed where the jobs of moms and dads, played outdoor games, had creative tasks and presented gifts. Our wonderful Ksyusha from the Veeam team E-learning found excellent animators who brilliantly reincarnated in all their favorite Fixikov, as well as the guys who wrote the script of the game-quest based on the story about Veeam. Still, younger children require professional supervision, so it was decided to choose such assistants.
On the second platform where developers, testers, system administrators and technical support live, the parents of junior high school students turned out to be the most. (Frankly, it was good for us - for high school students we would first have to break our heads over tasks, and this takes time and brain efforts. This will also happen, but a little later.) And an initiative group of children from different departments organized were ready to help. in developing.
“Cadres decide everything!”
And this is true - our engineers, accountants, techrayrati and administrators were surprisingly creative, friendly, responsible, and in general event-organizers at least where.
In the concept of the game, we decided to go “from the product”: to show, so to speak, the subject area and the people whose work our products are designed to facilitate, then acquaint children with those who develop, test and support Veeam solutions. So we got 4 professions and, accordingly, 4 stations for our IT “Fort-Boyard” - IT administrators, programmers, testers and technical support.
The idea was this: the children along with the facilitator walk the route through the office complex, at each station the parents working in this department show their workplace, tell what they are doing, and then give the children tasks in this specialty. For successful performance, children receive honestly earned money - “vimchiki”, so that at the end of the game they can buy something of their choice in the Veeam Market. And if the whole team shows itself to be friendly, ready to help in a difficult task, then everyone is waiting for the final bonus (yes, everything is like in adults).
I would especially like to note that all the colleagues themselves made up a story about their specialty, moreover they had to meet the time allotted for the station.
Here is the station "IT administrators" - this is the possession of Ilya, Dima and two Alekseev.
Surprisingly: it turns out, you can tell children of 7-10 years old in simple words about how everything is arranged here, and our guys coped with it brilliantly. And, of course, their children were also delighted - the fathers set a difficult task for them and gave them real tools, wires and hardware for the solution! I must say that the girls managed with hardware no worse than boys.
Hurray, the server is assembled and ready to go! Meanwhile, the second team uses one of the dozen workers to find one working wire among the dozen, connects the laptop to the switch and successfully “writes a message to the Internet” (one of the smallest participants said, answering the question what his dad does at work :)).
The first money earned, run on! With running around it turned out a little ridiculous, because the presenter had never been in the server room before and got a little lost in our intricate corridors - a quest, after all.
We got acquainted with the subject area, now let's see who is coming up with these programs? These are our developers - Kostya, Dima and Julia. They hold a quiz on IT topics "Answer in 100 seconds" (thanks to the guys from "Rendered" for the idea). Then the task is more difficult - you need to create an algorithm for cooking dishes. One team gets the pasta, and the other dumplings. Although the insidious presenters tried to confuse the participants by cramming extra steps into the blocks, the children quickly discovered the catch and did an excellent job with the task.
Next was the Testing station. The situation in the department of our testers is very conducive to intellectual work: palm trees, bin-begi, light and spacious. The children rated it: “I liked the most where I could sit on the bags and I had to look for bugs!” Said the youngest of the participants.
It should be noted that on this day (and it was during the autumn holidays) Halloween was celebrated in the offices, so there was no shortage of marmalade “bugs”. However, our children have shown that they do not eat their marmalade
Here they were waited by a new portion of ingenious mysteries, this time from Eugenia. It must be said that the children of our colleagues are very observant, they learn foreign languages ​​and are well acquainted with the map of the world. Not every adult knows what language they speak, for example, in Switzerland, or can quickly figure out, looking at such a picture, who the owner of these things works with:
(One girl said: “This is a physical education teacher who loves to play drums!”)
Zhenya admitted that she was amazed when the children asked whether it was time to drink tea, or if they wanted to puzzle more riddles, in unison, “Riddles! Riddles! ”Such a shift is growing. Then, of course, they took the guys to the technical support rooms, greeted them in all sorts of different languages, gave them a photo taken against the background of the flags they liked, and Timothy and Denis - at workplaces with their dads. The boys shone with joy and pride.
Finally received the last money, you can go to the Veeam Market and lunch. What do you think are most children like IT kids? Of course, pizza!
One more testimonial from the participant: “At first I thought that they would be boring about telling something. But when I came and saw that there was Halloween and all the fun, I realized that everything would be great! So it was! ”
Some useful tips
- Convenient to carry out such activities in the days of school holidays. Children are usually at home anyway, and dad (mom) at work - let them meet.
- If you are planning on taking photos, please be sure that you have written consent from the parents to take pictures of their children (and, if necessary, to non-commercial use of the photographs obtained, for example, in the illustrations for this article). You can print photos on paper and give them to children immediately after the event.
- We also recorded small videos at the stations and short interviews with the participants. Then you can write to disk and donate.
- If there are any souvenirs with the company's logo (for example, badges, flags), they will be useful.
- If children and their accompanying adults (not the company's employees, but the aunt's grandmother-brother) need to be coordinated with the administration, take care of this in advance, as this usually takes time. Remind adults (grandmother-brothers-aunts) to take a passport with you to enter the office.
- For each participant a corporate badge was prepared so that the guys would be “like adults”. Distributed them before the start of the game, and then left as a keepsake (like a trifle,
and for the children ran proud and contented). - For younger children, try to meet in 2-2.5 hours. Do not be lazy and make a run with time measurement.
- Do not slip into the format of "lecture". The story should be interspersed with questions to the audience and not take more than half of the time allotted for the location (and preferably no more than one third).
- And, of course, even if the parents themselves do not participate in the interactive program, they will be happy to take a picture with their child at the workplace, take care of this.
- As for the budget, on our site it turned out to be minimal - it was a treat (pizza, pie, juice), badges, souvenirs and office, for one participant (there were 18 people) less than 500 rubles. Of course, due to the fact that everything was done on their own.
Satisfied boys and girls left the Veeam office with their mothers and fathers, carrying away prizes and gifts, new experiences and the joy of interacting with adults and peers. Our children's day was a great success, for which many thanks to both adults and children.
PS Special thanks to Alexey bw3d for the photo, and also AlexeySushkov for the provided contacts.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/346750/
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