Outdoor Team Building Events
July and August featured Outdoor Team Building Events from Meta, Google, Pura and others.
Summer Recap: Robots in Silicon Valley, Sandcastles on the Coast
July and August kept the TeamWorx crew on the road, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Between two Robot Build & Battle events in the Bay Area and a Sand Castle Building competition on the Southern California coast, this summer was a good reminder of why we do this work: put a group of smart people in front of a shared challenge, step back, and watch what happens.
Robot Build & Battle at Meta: MPK 20
We set up under the covered outdoor patio at Meta’s MPK 20 campus, in the Westworld area — a great space for this program, with plenty of shade and enough open floor to run heats without anyone crowding the arena. Teams unboxed their kits, argued productively about drivetrain choices, and had working machines on the ground faster than most groups do.
The winning build team (pictured above top left) finished 7th all-time for the Robot-Build-and-Battle-2 robot! An amazing time considering hundreds of teams have competed over 5+ years!
What stood out was how quickly the room organized itself. Within twenty minutes, every team had found its builders, its driver, and its strategist. Nobody assigned those roles. That’s the part of this program you can’t put on a run sheet.
Robot Build & Battle at Google Mountain View
A week’s worth of gear later, we were on Google’s Mountain View Charleston campus, running between buildings with the palms overhead and the arena set up in the open. Different site, same energy: and a competitive streak that showed up early. A few teams started reverse-engineering their opponents’ builds between rounds, which is exactly the kind of adaptation the format is designed to reward.
Sand Castle Building with Pura: Newport Beach
Then we traded concrete for sand. The Pura team met us on the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach for a Sand Castle Building competition, and they came ready to compete. Towers, carved detail work, branded lettering pressed into the sand: the finished builds were genuinely impressive, especially given the clock.
Beach events have a rhythm of their own. The pressure is lower, the collaboration is looser, and people talk to teammates they’d never cross paths with in the office. By the time the tide started creeping in, nobody wanted to stop.
What’s Next
Fall is filling up quickly, and we’re bringing a new program to the lineup: Drone Games: build it, fly it, compete. If you’re planning a team event for your group, indoors or out, we’d love to hear what you have in mind.
TeamWorx Team Building: experiential team building across California, and the nation since 2002.
