Surf Office

❗Don't wait until the beginning of the year to book your 2025 offsite❗ Anyone in the event biz will tell you that Jan/Feb is a feeding frenzy for bookings. This means less availability & less room for negotiating rates 📈 Now - EOY is the golden moment to get first dibs on your perfect venue for your 2025 event. Surf Office will lock in the your ideal venue (big or small) and keep you within budget. It's never too soon to get the ball rolling - reach out and we can queue up some options for you ahead of the pack 🚀

93 workations in 2024... We are a fully remote company, and everyone can work from wherever they want. For the client-facing roles, we require a couple of hours of overlap with Europe/the US. I shared an empty Google Sheet on our Slack asking everyone to share their workation locations in 2024. Places where they stayed for a couple of weeks or months while working. There are 93 locations now across a team of 32. The survey was anonymous, I don't know how many people filled it out. Probably not everyone. The most popular locations in our team: Lisbon, Chiang Mai and Mexico City My personal tips for workations: 1️⃣ Ask your Airbnb host for a speed test before you book 2️⃣ Make sure you have a great laptop stand (I love Roost), keyboard and a mouse 3️⃣ Plan vacation days during your workation (I prefer long weekends with Mondays off) so you don't have travel fomo 4️⃣ Add your location to a Slack status 5️⃣ Treat your work like usual and create a routine from the first days 6️⃣ 2 weeks is an absolute minimum, ideal is 1+ month Map of the workations of the Surf Office team:

Ever heard of Steve Jobs’ "Top 100" retreats? (No, he wasn’t pumping out ‘listicles’...) Instead of just inviting executives to his annual retreats, he brought together 100 key contributors: designers, engineers, product leads—anyone making an impact. The aim was to gather the best minds, regardless of titles. Now, imagine that for your team retreat: a chance to break down the silos and create space for real innovation. Surf Office can help you craft a retreat that brings everyone together. Ready to make it happen?

About 6% of companies that contact us don't want to fly to their offsite but instead use a train 🚂 It's a small number, but I see this number growing year by year. Companies want to be more sustainable and minimize air travel. So many requests are like, "We are 50 people with offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris, and we want to meet somewhere in the middle" Somewhere in the middle... It was quite challenging to find a perfect location and venue for these clients, but our magician Ricardo built an internal tool that solves this problem with a few clicks: 1️⃣ Pick your office locations 2️⃣ See the railway map with *direct* connections 3️⃣ Find a location where they overlap 4️⃣ Show the Surf Office-approved venues/hotels nearby So much fun playing with it! If you are considering organizing an offsite in Europe and gathering by train, you should talk to one of our venue advisors.

While the rest of the world is preparing for the annual freeze, Gran Canaria is still serving up sunshine and warm vibes. It’s the perfect excuse to chase the sun and escape to an island where you and your team can relax and recharge. Think beachside brainstorms, team building in the sun, and maybe a cocktail or s̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ two. Just a heads-up, though: these spots are booking fast for the winter, so grab your place before it's too late.

Another Checkly #retreat wrapped up! This time we went to Crete 🇬🇷 and tried out a new format: co-working style retreat. We had one 30 minute kick-off presentation and then let the team do their thing the rest of the week. The flexible schedule gave the team the space and time to 1. work together on what they thought makes the most sense and highest impact 2. connect with each other It was great to see people connect across teams and departments, and then self-organize ad hoc workshops and sessions on different topics. 👩🎓 Sometimes less really is more.

What if we told you there's a way to channel your team's inner Banksy without the legal repercussions? Yep, a spray-painting workshop! Creativity✔️ Collaboration✔️ A newfound respect for shoe cleaners- Double ✔️ No need to brainstorm offsite workshop activities, we've got you covered with this one 😉

No one cares about your brand, BUT, Everyone experiences your brand. And that leaves an impression to form an opinion with, which eventually leads to a judgment about you. We've been thinking a lot about our Float.com brand, specifically how we create (and deliver) a consistently distinctive and meaningful experience—across every touchpoint. More to come on that later... For now, I want to share some of the brand work we recently did for our company meetup. To be honest, this year's venue was so stunning that it would be easy to think all we had to do was show up. But that's not how we do things 😉 We wanted everyone to feel fully immersed in a quintessentially Float meetup experience. We kicked things off by aligning with our Director of People & Ops, Georgie Roberts, on the goals of what we wanted to inspire this year—creativity and collaboration. Our Visual Designer, Mariana Gonzalez Vega, with the guidance of our Director of Design, Cameron Rickersey, then crafted a visual identity that reflected our environment (Piemonte, Italy), captured our Float values and style, and embodied the theme of a modern renaissance. From collateral to swag, these designs brought our meetup brand to life. But brand isn't just about aesthetics. It's curating a distinctive, intentional, and consistent experience. Our ops team took this year’s theme, goals, and style (in other words, our meetup brand) and wove this into the entire itinerary. From co-working sessions to interactive workshops and creative activities like pasta making (to feed 70+ people!), every moment was purposeful and tied back to why we were there—to connect, be creatively inspired, and collaborate. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity of these meetups and the wonderful folks I get to work with 🫶 And I'm also veryyyy chuffed that this year's meet has become our internal example of why, as cliche as it sounds, brand building is a team effort 😉

The IMEX conference in Las Vegas is a fantastic place to meet new hotel and destination partners from North and Central America. Excited to be here!

 It was the night before the first day of your retreat. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mou— Actually, scratch that. Half your team is still up, making the most of the free bar at the 'welcome party.' Say goodbye to a productive first day of team-building! 🙈 Hear Peter Fabor's thoughts on avoiding this common retreat agenda mistake in our latest webinar!