Virtual Connection at Our Company Conference

A few weeks ago, we held our first Virtual Payara Day of 2022. This is our quarterly online conference, and has evolved from business updates to a way of forging connections in a remote, global team.

Mycah wrote about the evolution of Virtual Payara Day in a previous blog. Read here.

In a Nutshell

For this event, we started with a meditation session.

Payarans were then invited to listen to addresses from the leadership team, getting a higher-level perspective on our business journey.

We also heard from guest speaker Jay Abbasi, who taught us about time management, productivity and adaptability.

We shared pictures from our phone camera rolls on our team lunch to answer a series of prompts, and joined a creative connection session, where we were paired with other Payarans to draw each other!

We rounded off the day with a Payaran Pop Quiz, answering questions about and trying to identify baby photos of our fellow Payarans – as well as announcing the winners of our photo competition, as we had snapped ourselves in Payara merchandise. Check out one of the adorable results in Patrik’s image, the header image for this article, with one of our smaller (honorary!) Payarans.

Paint Me Like One of Your Payarans!

To connect across continents, our Engagement Lead Mycah and Graphic Designer Denisa joined forces with a fun “Creative Connection” challenge.

Payarans were paired up and invited to draw pictures of each other, through the screen – chatting all the while and learning about team members they might not work with directly.

We then had to guess which picture was of which Payaran! It was a great way to have some fun and get to know new team members better. Here are some of the results:

 

Feedback From The Team

We always make sure to gather feedback from the team, to make sure our Virtual Payara Day format is working for all! This takes the form of an anonymous survey, but here we also caught up with some team members to dive a little deeper:

Denisa, Graphic Designer 

“My absolute favourite session is, just like every time, the good old Payaran Quiz. It’s always really fun to be grouped up with people you normally don’t work with and get to know them a bit more.

I also really enjoyed our external speaker session by Jay Abassi, it’s nice to see that even as a well-functioning team we can always learn something new from these sessions.

My favourite thing about VPD is people getting together and sharing information from their team! Being able to get such a wide view of everything that’s going in the organization is incredibly useful!”

Shubham, Service Engineer

“In the leadership stand-ups, it was great to hear from leadership what they are strategizing for in the current quarter and contemplate what we have achieved as a team in the last one.

I enjoyed team building activities and guest speaker sessions.

In three words, Virtual Payara Day Is:

Reflective, Strategic, Exuberant.”

Rebekah, People Team Assistant

“I wasn’t sure what to expect of my first VPD, but I was promised business information combined with fun activities and it did not disappoint! It was a great way to meet other people in the company during my first week with Payara.

The Payaran pop quiz was my favourite session because I was able to learn fun and interesting things about the people I work with.

I enjoyed being able to meet new colleagues and hear all the business updates.

In three words? Virtual Payara day is fun, interesting, and engaging.”

Want to join our global team – and get your chance to be at our next Virtual Payara Day? Check out our open opportunities, we currently have vacancies:

– Sales Development Representative
– Software Support Engineer
– Lead DevOps Engineer
– Talent Acquisition Coordinator

Find them here:

Topics: Fish Food, Giving BackTagged Community, culture, event, events, Payara Community, People Team, Virtual Payara Day

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