The usual corporate team building catalogue fell short. Escape rooms, treasure hunts, group cooking: closed activities whose script the Fluendo team deciphers in fifteen minutes. Engineers accustomed to debugging video pipelines do not engage with a cardboard puzzle. Management had tried this in previous years and the conclusion was always the same: the team participated out of obligation, not interest.
The second challenge was one of mixing. A day had to be designed where a senior engineer from Brno and a Barcelona-based sales rep competed on equal terms, with language, hierarchy, or seniority having no bearing on the outcome — where the winner would be a surprise to everyone, including themselves.
The third challenge was time. Fluendo could not spare two days away. The day had to fit within a long afternoon, travel included, and return the team home before the last commuter train. Everything beyond that clock came at the cost of Monday's productivity.











