Microsoft and Netflix Teambuilding
Microsoft and Netflix Studios Teambuilding events, both at the corporate headquarters, started off our year with high stakes robot battles.
We traveled straight up I-5 through Portland, and all the way to Redmond WA, just outside of Seattle, to the vaunted Microsoft Headquarters. The groups we worked with were spirited competitors and competed to build the robot faster than each other.
The Microsoft event also had the unique addition of Virtual Attendees. Three team-members joined us via MS Teams, and each connected directly to 1 of the 6 six teams. Since we had fewer virtual attendees than teams, three of the onsite teams mimicked the virtual experience at their tables.
What was the virtual experience? We sent the team members joining us from their home offices a link to a set of instructions the onsite folks did not have. The onsite folks had the parts, and the virtual folks had the instructions. This setup made for a fun and challenging experience, and extended the build times by about ten minutes.
The battles were predictably awesome, with all six robots battling every round, and surviving for most of the the last bot standing competition!
Netflix hosted a Robot Build and Battle team building at their corporate studio headquarters on Vine Street in Los Angeles. We were just down the street from three different massive sound studios, comprising over 30 acres of indoor, perfect filming environments. I imagine studio executives strolling, like I did after parking my vehicle and arriving two hours early, to the gigantic studios to checkout firsthand how things are going on numerous different productions.
In fact, our event was hosted inside of a much smaller scale filming studio embedded inside the headquarters building.
As expected, the teams were excellent builders and teammates, and the battles were spectacular! The battle winner was affectionately called “two-wheels” as the robot and driver persevered despite the robot having no front wheels! The “low game” has always been a key battle winning point of distinction, and “two-wheels” won this battle sort of accidentally, and then capitlalized to carry that advantage to a championship!
A huge thank you to both Microsoft and Netflix for inviting us to your headquarters for amazing Robot Build and Battle events!
