Team Building, Geek Style
Whidbey bug fixing is going well, so yesterday the Visual C++ team took a breather by engaging in some team building activities. Being a team unabashedly composed mostly of hard-core geeks, it's safe to say that our team building exercises didn't involve holding hands and singing "Kumba Ya" around the campfire, falling backward with closed eyes into the loving arms of teammates, or anything involving sharing our innermost (or even outermost, for that matter) feelings. For without silicon, there can be no geek team building.
Bearing this immutable fact in mind, the product unit was divided into several teams of 11 or 12 folks, and each team was issued baseball caps of their team color (I mentioned that we're geeks, didn't I?), two walkie talkies, a handheld GPS receiver, and a set of coordinates to the first clue. And with that, VC++ geocaching day was on. The challenge: each clue provides coordinates to the next clue along with a piece of a riddle that can be solved after all 10 clues have been discovered.
As I looked over the cheesy little map-less handheld GPS, wondering if Columbus may have used such an unsophisticated device in his discovery of the new world, my immediate recommendation to the team was to cheat. "My car," I explained, "has a GPS nav system... we can just plug in the coordinates and get driving directions to each clue." My proposal for blatant cheating was very popular among the team members, and with that we split into two vehicles and took off. Unfortunately, it was pretty much downhill from there for Team Green (yes, we were the ones in the green baseball caps). A comedy of typographical errors on clues, mis-copied clues, and one clueless Jack In The Box employee (long story), made the day a long one. The final destination, which revealed itself after completing the day's gauntlet, was a barbeque at the home of David Burggraaf, our Product Unit Manager.
Team Green arrived at the barbeque about when everyone else was finishing their meal. Not only did our supposed deviousness with the in-vehicle GPS navigation system do us no good, but we discovered that we were hopelessly out-cheated by the winning team. The winning team, we learned, had a hunch the event would end up at David's house. So they called David's home and spoke to his wife, explaining that they needed the address because they had some items to deliver for the party. Address in hand, the victorious team put their walkie talkies and GPS back in the bag and drove immediately to the day's goal in triumph.
We were one of only 3 teams that actually had the gumption to visit all 10 sites, so we took some pride in that. We also received lovely gifts for being the best of the losers. And the mission of getting to know one another better was certainly accomplished for Team Green. At any rate, the life lessons pertaining to cheating gleaned from yesterday's event probably aren't the kind of thing you'll find in an ABC After School Special, but we did enjoy the day with the help of that geeky team building lubricant, silicon.
Comments
Anonymous
September 26, 2006
For any organization to succeed it must have good employees to power it, but employees can’t do it all by themselves, they need help. Employees today come from all types of diverse backgrounds with different types of education and experience. When you bring these different types of backgrounds and experience together as a team it can have a profound impact on the success of your organization.Anonymous
June 08, 2009
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June 08, 2009
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