Epoch’s Team Series will introduce you to the team members of Epoch to get to know them a little better. Since our team is located in different cities across North America, having a strong workplace culture (virtually) is extremely important to us. It helps to boost our team’s morale at the end of each workweek and improves team collaboration. We don’t let distance get in the way of having a connected team.
The Team Series will follow each team member’s event to engage the entire team virtually, using the Epoch platform. On Fridays, a different team member hosts an event to bring the whole team together for some laughs and a good time through the screen. It will also introduce you to some exciting events ideas and best practices of using Epoch to create events for your team for improving workplace culture.
Meet James! James is on the Engineering team and is on his winter co-op term at Epoch. Learn all about how James hosted jstris a Tetris event for the Epoch team - using Epoch!
About the Event
Intro to James’ Event ✍️
For this week's Team Series, the event I hosted for the Epoch team was an Tetris competition between the whole company!
For this game, each player is given their own screen to play Tetris, that is visible to all players. Each round everyone must play simultaneously until there is one person standing! I chose to host this event for the Epoch team because Jade, Mike and myself played it once and had so much fun, so I thought it would be so cool if I could gather the entire team to play! I also felt that an event like this would attract the company as Tetris is a well-known game, and who hasn’t played Tetris at least once!
Event Creation & Preparing Attendees 🗓
While using Epoch’s platform, I was able to write an enticing event description by saying “all skill levels”, allowing everyone to feel comfortable in participating.
I was also able to effectively present this event by clearly highlighting the date and time the event was taking place and adding an exciting title and cover photo that would definitely get the team intrigued!
I was also able to host this event virtually and link to a platform that our company uses every day, Teamflow! Here at Epoch, we use Teamflow for all of our company meetings as it is our virtual office.
Epoch's Features that Best Supported the Event 📝
The features on Epoch that I believed best supported my event were the promotions! They helped tremendously, and because I do not regularly talk to the other teams (CX, Product, Sales), it's hard to communicate with them and let them know of the events. The promotions feature definitely made it easier to inform all teams of my upcoming event!
Another feature that best supported my event was the invitee feature as it ensured I invited all team members into the event while also automatically sending them a calendar invite. This feature also allowed me to see who was confirmed into the event and who hadn't responded yet!
Learnings from Hosting the Event 🌟
From hosting this event, a challenge I experienced was that the participation count could sometimes be inaccurate as some people may come out to the event last minute without confirming first. However, this was not an issue as I wanted more people to participate. I did get slightly afraid that the site could not allow everyone to play, but the extra users ended up being harmless. Thus I learned it's always good to assume that there may be some additional people who show up to your event to be able to prepare for that.
As for best practices, I was able to ensure there was enough time in between the event promotion being sent out to all employees and the actual day of the event. This ensured that all attendees had enough time to prepare for the event and work around their meetings and it also gave me enough time to prepare to host the event!
Event Feedback ✅
After my event took place, the feedback that I got from my team was all around positive, I believe everyone enjoyed the game despite not everyone being able to win. We all discovered that we have a Tetris expert on our team (Angelina 😉) who won almost every game!
My team also recommended that I create another Tetris event before the end of my term, but as a tournament style for a more competitive feel. I would love to host this type of Tetris event again!
What it’s like to Create & Host an Event using Epoch (as an Epoch Team Member) 🎉
The experience of creating and hosting an event using our own platform was really great! I definitely enjoyed being able to create and host an event for 16-17 people using Epoch. I’m not normally the person in charge of creating events but it was a great first time doing so and I wouldn’t change a thing as Epoch’s features were extremely simple and straightforward to follow and overall, met my expectations and all of my needs!
About Epoch’s Remote Culture
Do you feel that working at Epoch is different from working at other companies?
Personally, I have only worked at one other company other than Epoch, but I could immediately tell the difference between the two companies. The work environment at Epoch is like night and day compared to the company I previously worked at!
While my previous company had no group/team events and here at Epoch, I’ve already been to 1 event each month since I’ve started working. I can only imagine that Epoch’s environment would be even more engaging and enjoyable if we were able to work in-person.
Has Epoch’s Team Series helped you understand your team better?
Epoch's Team Series definitely helped me understand my team better as I was able to spend time with my team members on a more personal level and build friendly relationships with them, rather than seeing them as just co-workers.
I believe that if we were working in-person we would all be able to make even more progress in building our friendships, and we would be able to understand each other to a deeper extent.
Do you think engaging with your coworkers socially improves collaboration?
Definitely! It allows us to get to know each other’s personalities and interests better, allowing us to develop into more than just co-workers.
How has the experience affected your motivation and engagement with your work?
The experience has positively affected my motivation and engagement with work, as every time I see an event at the end of the week, I get excited all throughout the week, allowing me to do my work more effortlessly.
I also believe that these fun team events allow us to take a well-deserved break from work which boosts our work flow and motivation once the event is over, and it’s time to transition back into work.
