Office Relocation 2024: a week in Athens

For us, Office Relocation means the office moves for a week, and it moves completely. Nobody holds the fort in Bern. Client projects carry on, meetings take place, only the view from the window is different. In 2024 it was Athens: 18 people, a hotel in the centre, one workroom for everyone.

The Office Relocation has been part of cloudtec since the early days; here on the blog it appears from 2021: first Robion in Provence, then Sevid in Croatia and a finca near Valencia. What operations need for a week like this is in the 2021 post.

The rhythm

Work runs from 8:00 to 16:00. After that it is the city’s turn, and Friday belongs entirely to the team, without laptops. We make up the hours this costs over the course of the year. For clients the week goes unnoticed: the same contacts, the same response times. For us it is something other than working from home with a view, because everyone sits in the same room, including people who otherwise only pass each other in the office corridor.

The workshop

One hour on Monday morning belonged to our CMS. All 18 of us built pages, moved content around and noted where things got stuck. People who develop a content management system rarely use it day to day the way an editorial team does. The user test with the whole team exposed friction points that would otherwise only come to light in a client project. At the end of the hour there was a list: a few bugs nobody had noticed in everyday use, and several places where using it ground to a halt. The second part was about features the CMS did not yet have: collecting wishes, rating them, adding them to the backlog. What came of that is now in Stack CMS.

Athens outside the hotel

On the first day the Acropolis, before the working week began. Later Lycabettus at sunset, with a view over the whole city to the sea.

We ate together, several times on a roof terrace above the rooftops of the city.

And a boat trip from Alimos Marina, with a barbecue on board.

‘Athens gave us a warm welcome, at least the graffiti saying “Tourists not welcome” did. On the beach we were nibbled by man-eating fish (“Hesch du mir itz grad a Scheiche gstüpft?”). The only thing that gave us a fright at BOO!, on the other hand, was how good the cocktails were, above all the “Hard Mystical Mai Tai” (insider). And while other people walk off with bathrobes from hotels, we actually left something behind: a passport.’

Patrick Wäger, Senior Solution Architect

Next year again. Where to, we decide together. If you want to be there next time: open positions.