2016 Remember The Milk Retreat – Montreal
Our team at Remember The Milk is distributed around the world, with team members living on four different continents (with five different time zones!). We mostly communicate via Slack, and while we’re big Slack fans, once in a while it’s nice to get together in real life with the people (and monkey) we work with every day. We were lucky to get that opportunity with a recent company retreat in Montreal.
Why Montreal? Being spread around the globe, with no more than two people living in a single city, there wasn’t any obvious place that we should meet. So, why not Canada, eh? :)
Our week was packed with a mix of group activities (both educational and fun!), delicious coffee and food (hello poutine!), and epic amounts of walking around Montreal (such as Mount Royal, above), with plenty of time for Remember The Milk talk. Oh, and competitive oatmeal-eating. More on that later.
Being a bunch of chocoholics, we were excited to kick off the week with a chocolate tour in the Plateau and Mile End neighborhoods. One of the highlights was meeting the very passionate Daniel from Chocolats Monarque, who taught us all about bean-to-bar chocolate making. We learnt a ton, and didn’t mind all the chocolate samples, either. (Little known fact: Bob loves chocolate.)
We took a break from all that learning to play glow-in-the-dark mini golf (exactly like it sounds), followed by some classic arcade gaming. Some of us are slightly into video games, so it was fun to relive our childhoods with a bit of friendly competition.
On the tourist front, we enjoyed exploring the Montreal Biodome, Botanical Garden and Insectarium. All that walking gave us time for some great conversations. For Bob, the highlight was seeing real live banana plants in the Botanical Garden (we had to stop him from helping himself!).
We also had the chance to check out the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and were moved by an amazing exhibition on Pompeii. We also admired some inspiring modern art, including some very cool Canadian artwork.
Bob particularly enjoyed an installation called Stuffed Animals by designer Claude Cormier, featuring 3,000 stuffed animals (!). We had a tough time pulling Bob away from this one. Did he want to join them? Free them? We’ll never know (unless 3,000 stuffed animals suddenly disappear from the museum… in which case, we were never there).
While in Montreal, we had to try a smoked meat sandwich. The team enjoyed the touristy Schwartz’s, and sought out other local delicacies like poutine and maple-flavored gelato. Not together, mind you, that would be gross. Or would it?
On the subject of food, about that competitive oatmeal-eating. We started each day with breakfast at our hotel, which offered oatmeal in either a regular or ridiculously large bowl. Someone remarked that the large bowl would be great for an eating contest… and with that, the Remember The Milk oatmeal-eating contest was born.
For those concerned, it was a dignified eating contest (no spills allowed!), and we only got a few weird looks from the hotel staff. While Sami and Andrew P. were favorites, the surprise winner was Omar, showing some exceptional oatmeal-eating technique.
Not done with competition yet, we tried out the relatively new sport of archery tag. Yes, it was a little bit like The Hunger Games. Ab had some serious archery skills, while Alonso impressed us with his crazy backwards somersault manoeuvres (the things you learn about your teammates!).
We also managed to fit in some table tennis, and the team got surprisingly competitive! It turns out we have a few not-too-bad players on the team, with Alonso and Andrew P. being the ones to beat. Next retreat: a proper table tennis tournament!
On our final evening in Montreal, Ab and Sami taught us to play two of their favorite games, Sushi Go! and Codenames. We learnt how useful wasabi cards can be, and to always keep an eye on those puddings. Definitely a fun end to an extremely rewarding week! Getting to spend time together as a team was amazing, and all of us (Bob included) were excited to return home and get to work on what’s next for Remember The Milk. :)
