This week was our annual Enlivened Design team offsite. This year we decided to meet in the fine city of Dublin.,
On Monday I flew across from Zurich to Dublin.
After checking in to the hotel some of us headed into the city. I took this photo as the statue reminded me of Daisy.
We tried a few different restaurants before finding one that could accommodate 8 people at short notice. We ended up at Daata, one of the best looking South Asian restaurants I've ever been in.
It was great to catch up with folks.
The food was good, too!
On the way back to the hotel I had to take another puppy snap.
The following morning we had lovely weather. A few folks who went running got great shots of the sunrise: I contended myself with a photo from the hotel window.
The Dublin office has genuinely fantastic facilities for a team offsite. Highly recommended for Autodeskers looking to organise a meeting somewhere in Europe!
The room we used had both desks and more casual seating. Here are some random photos from during the offsite. It was a great meeting which really helped establish priorities for the coming year or so.
Some work was even done over breakfast.
Some of our best work, apparently!
Lunches were in the pub area inside the office.
I've always thought that having a Guiness tap in your office is the ultimate sign of sophistication. It wasn't actually working, but still.
Now for the non-work stuff.
Our first proper evening event was an Irish Music Pub Crawl.
It started in the Ha'penny Bridge Inn, where our hosts played several songs with traditional instruments.
Guinness was involved, obviously.
From there we walked to Flannigan's, where the second half of the set was played. It was a surprisingly fun evening. A great craic.
As gifts for the team we'd bought branded umbrellas.
With brand-compliant yellow on the inside.
I was happy we got to test them, but also happy it was only for the walk back from the pub on the one evening.
The following morning I walked 40 minutes up-river to meet my Mum and sister - who by sheer coincidence were visiting Dublin for an overnight stay during my own trip there - for breakfast.
I'd not ended up being able to see them during my trip to the UK for the London Festival of Architecture - the extreme heat was disrupting the rail networks, so I'd had to cancel - which meant this reunion was overdue.
On the second evening the team had a really fun Dublin city scavenger hunt followed by dinner at a Japanese restaurant.
Aside from brollies we also got team hats for a bit of fun.
During the previous evening's pub crawl I'd asked one of the musicians where to get the best pint of Guinness in Dublin. I was told "Mulligans", so we had to test whether it was true.
It was certainly the least touristy place we'd been in Dublin, and the Guinness was indeed very good.
We usually stay just across the bridge from the office in Dublin, which does make for nice photo opportunities.
It's a very colourful part of the city by night.
It was great getting the team together in such an awesome location.
This last year has been a good one for our team, and it we have strong momentum coming out of this meeting. I'm feeling very positive about our direction - you'll hear more about it over the coming months, of course.
Tomas and I left early: Tomas to head back to his family in Bonn, while I headed to Zurich. Strangely I'm not going home just yet: I'm heading to Lausanne to present about our work at an AI-centric event, which I'll post about on Monday.
It's always bittersweet to be heading back to Switzerland.
Many thanks to everyone who made it such a great week: Dagmara, Tomas, Dianne, Esen, Lorenzo, Andres, Mike, Seba, Jeremy, Lily and Brandon. See you all soon!
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