Gamesight's Annual All Hands IRL Event: A Seamless Blend of Business and Fun with Retreat

Gamesight's recent All Hands IRL event in Seattle, featuring an interview with Jess Leonard, the Head of People & Operations, highlighted the company's successful use of Retreat for seamless hotel coordination. Jess praised Retreat for simplifying the process and ensuring smooth check-ins. The event, blending business and fun with team mind meld sessions, board games, minigolf, and more, showcased Gamesight's commitment to team connection. Retreat's contribution to the event's success positions it as a valuable partner for future endeavors, reinforcing Gamesight's readiness to bring its unique magic to the forefront in the upcoming year.

Please tell me an overview of your company and describe your role.

I work for Gamesight, a performance marketing company founded in Seattle but now operating fully remotely. We build the unrivaled measurement platform that helps video game publishers around the world make the right marketing decisions. With it, we're mastering the art & science of creator activations to skip empty hype and deliver results for our customers.

I've been with the company for over two years, recently moving from Chief of Staff to Head of People & Operations. My responsibilities involve all things people and HR-adjacent, as well as managing cross-functional projects across the company. As far as off-site events go, I collaborate with our Contracts & Operations Manager, Camille, to ensure the seamless execution of our offsite events. Her help has been invaluable. 

Is your team fully remote?

Yes, we are fully remote. Although Gamesight was initially founded in Seattle, we closed our office when the COVID pandemic began, and we never reopened it. I joined the team after that transition, and we've been operating entirely remotely ever since. We have been very intentional about how we’ve built our remote workspace and culture, and we have no plans to go back to in-office. Currently, our team consists of about 40 members spread across the globe.

So, regarding the planning of company off-sites, what prompted the decision to organize one, and who gave the green light for it?

That's a good question. I can't recall if it was my CEO's idea or if I brought it up to him, but we discussed it extensively, and it was something we both strongly wanted to pursue. We held our first off-site last year, and this year marked our second. It's proven to be extremely valuable, and we intend to make it an annual event. It's been a great experience.

What factors influenced your decision to choose the location and the Hilton Garden Inn Redmond Town Center as your venue?

We selected Seattle as our off-site location because a significant number of our team members are already based there. This decision helps us save on costs associated with flying additional team members to another location. Additionally, we have the option to use our CEO's house to host some events, adding a personal touch to the experience. The Hilton Garden Inn Redmond Town Center location was ideal, offering walkability to some of the activities we had planned, and an in-house restaurant serving breakfast and lunch. Their pricing also aligned with our budget, making it an easy choice for our off-site gathering.

That's great. The event at your CEO's house sounds like a unique and engaging activity you guys have.

Yes, it’s a fan-favorite event. This year we incorporated two activities at his place. First, we had our leadership meeting, which was a new addition for this year. It was a few hours dedicated to discussing our goals for the upcoming year and ensuring alignment on our priorities. The second event at his home is what we call 'closing ceremonies.' As avid fans of 'The Office,' this is where we present our superlative awards which are similar to The Dundies, create content with our marketing team, and play tabletop and video games. We have dinner, celebrate team member anniversaries with bespoke gifts, give out new Gamesight swag and prizes, and this year we even had a birthday party complete with party hats and birthday treats. We weirdly have several former DJs on the team, so we also had a DJing contest. It's essentially a grand finale, a time to just have fun with no work. 

It works well for us because we can utilize both indoor and outdoor spaces at his place; however, given our growing team, I'm not sure how many more years we'll be able to continue doing it there.

What were your KPIs or OKRs for the event?

My CEO's primary concern with the all-hands event is that everyone has fun and spends quality time together - that's legitimately his main goal; however, our CTO suggested having a work-related goal as well. Therefore, our top priority for our off-site was to foster a stronger connection among team members and ensure everyone left with a clear understanding of the goals for the upcoming year such that we’d be able to tackle our projects and problems better & more efficiently than we might have been able to before the off-site. From an operations and logistics stand point, we also wanted to get everyone to the event and home safely, with no travel issues, all while keeping our per person, per night costs at or close to our previous year’s costs. I believe we successfully achieved all of that!

Can you highlight some other notable and successful aspects of the event? Any particular activities or initiatives that stood out?

Definitely. We aimed for a good mix of team bonding and randomization during the event. We organized breakfast groups where I grouped people up - people who might not interact often in their day-to-day roles at the company - and each group chose a restaurant to have breakfast at together. We also had each team choose a group activity to do together. Some made candles, others crafted knives at a blacksmith studio, one team painted pottery, and another visited a cat cafe. This allowed colleagues to spend time with both their everyday team members and others they wouldn't typically talk to. And as a gaming company, it was important we played games together, so we played BINGO, miniature golf, tabletop games and trading card games like Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Exploding Kittens, Coup, and Wavelength.

How did Retreat help you?

Retreat made the hotel booking process so easy. It was fantastic to be able to hand that off to you all and trust that it would get done. I know you worked with April at the hotel to make everything super smooth for check-in, and we really appreciate the service you provide. 

Thank you. It's great to hear that.