We’ve just returned from Barcelona, where we had our second company-wide retreat - being a remote company, we try to meet at least twice a year IRL to get some better resolution meetings and spend quality time together (like cooking paella while drinking copious amounts of cava).

Despite all the distractions, over the four days together we managed to write code sitting side by side, discuss our company mission and values, eat several delicious tapas, and have quite a few laughs at each other’s expense.

Mission Impossible: Speckle Reloaded

Speckle's development has always been driven by a very strong sense of purpose shared by everyone contributing to the project. The open-source nature and desire to transform the industry for a common greater good are key values that unite us internally, but as well with our community.

To date, there are 10 specklers hacking together with a shared purpose. Nevertheless, we are planning to grow, and we felt the need to articulate our shared mission in writing so that it can be easily communicated to future team members and to anyone in our community. A couple of hours and several dozens of iterations later, we finally got it:

Our mission is to enable everyone to speak in 3D

Three-dimensional models are the execution engine of the built world and we want to enable anyone to communicate, engage, and achieve more with them.

This is why we spend countless time looking at our screens writing code: we want to build an open digital infrastructure for the future of anything designed in 3D, and make it accessible to everyone.

Values

After defining our mission, we took a step further and attempted to distill our company culture in a set of core values. As with our mission statement, they are both descriptive, as well as aspirational!

Here’s what we stand for:

• Caring: we have an earnest drive to own what we build, do things well & reward others.
• Grassroots: we’re on this journey together with our community, we listen and we act.
• Open & Trusting: we are and we build a space for everyone, we trust each other and always assume good intentions.
• PBRF (Pragmatically Brave and Responsibly Fast): challenge the status quo when necessary, and balance for speed and stability.
• Quirky: we are ever so slightly eclectic humans that like to deliver delightful & innovative experiences and have fun while doing so.
• No BS.

Some of the values that didn’t make it on our official list:

• Move slow and breakfast 🍳
• 100% organic grass-fed employees
• ... and more

You can see where the quirkiness part comes from 🤣

Do these resonate with you? If so, don’t forget to check out our careers page - we will be hiring soon!

Paella 🥘

It wouldn’t be a proper visit to Spain without a some good paella; all that thinking got us hungry! So we headed to the Paella Club where we had the opportunity to not only eat but cook our own paellas. The process was accompanied by several glasses bottles of cava, so excuse us if we look a bit tired in the photo below!

Final words

The retreat was an amazing opportunity to spend quality time face to face and discuss in person both Speckle as a Product, but as well Speckle as a Company. It was amazing to see how we’ve grown, and this only made us more curious to see what’s next: where will we be in a year’s time?

Thanks for being part of our journey 💥

Izzy you were missed, but rest assured - we’ll photoshop you in all the pics!