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Kicking off the FirstRain India Events for the New Season…

Aug 2012/in /by

FirstRain India had another great team-building event this week! These events allow people from different departments to come together and team up to excel in an entirely different setting, and this was our first event since forming teams in June (you can read more about our team building events here). It was fun to see them in action!

For this event, each team nominated four members to work together and come up with a unique costume, made completely out of newspaper. They had 30 minutes to complete the project. One member of each team then modeled the costume for the entire FirstRain India Team. It was great to see the teams work closely together and come up with some fantastic ideas

By the end of the 30 minutes we had some great costumes, ranging from a tribal prince, to a queen, to an Indian mother (rooting for their Olympic athletes!).  We voted on the best costume and it came down to Preeti (representing “Team Avengers” dressed as a modern Indian Woman) and Priyanker (representing “Team The Y-Nots” dressed as Eklavya). Priyankar received the most votes and the win went to “Team The Y-Nots”!

The event demonstrated our team’s creativity and efficiency, and was a lot of fun!

offsite meeting

Progressive states of long offsite meetings

Jan 2012/in /by

Long meetings can progressively sap energy and create altered states of being. Yes they can.

We went offsite as a management team for 2 days this weekend to talk through our strategy and 2012 planning. 11 of us in 2 houses at Pajaro Dunes, lots of flip charts, heated discussions, cooking together, walking on the beach and generally spending time together thinking about our business. It was really fun but, even so, it was intense and, combined with long discussions late into the night about the state of the world accompanied by some excellent wines, pretty tiring for some.

Two of our jokesters memorialized their progressive states of mind as they helped clean up after the meeting. They sent me the photos – the editorial is all mine.

Yeah! This two day offsite thing is a great idea, they’re ready.
A few hours in and Ryan is already wondering, he’s seen enough of these type of meetings to be healthily cynical, but Nima’s still gung ho.
Second day and Ryan’s mind is wandering but Nima’s using caffeine to push through – “There’s the mountain guys let’s go for it!”
Ryan’s rolling his eyes at Nima’s enthusiasm, just as Nima starts to wind down .
But as Nima finally falls asleep in response to Penny’s energizer bunny, Ryan stoically keeps pushing forward.

Thanks Nima and Ryan – it was fun – and despite the warm sun and sand, amazingly productive!

splash and dash

Splash and a Dash of Teamwork

Aug 2011/in /by

The FirstRain office has had a full house this week with members from our East Coast sales team in town for our quarterly sales kick-off. And last night, in the spirit of fun, culture and generally getting over ourselves, the entire sales team and most of the company, headed down south to Cupertino for the final Splash and Dash race of the summer.  The race consisted of a one-mile swim in the Stevens Creek Reservoir, followed by a three-mile run.  We are lucky to have 13 great (or at least enthusiastic!) athletes that competed in relays – so we had 6.5 teams in the competition. The less brave joined the superb cheerleading team led by Julie and her cowbell.

Splash and Dash race @ Stevens Creek Reservoir

Aaron and Ryan finished first for the team, crediting their win to the support from our star, 5-year old cheerleader Natalie.  Natalie earned her prize, keeping the shiny blue pom-poms that she used to cheer on each rainmaker.

Natalie– our star cheerleader

After the race, everyone plus families and friends and headed back to my house for a team cookout – where Thomas, Carolyn and Doug dueled over the grill (I was happy to hand off the tongs, so to speak). It was a beautiful night out, with great food and terrific company.  We finished the night by celebrating Rajiv’s birthday (he is visiting us from our Gurgaon office) using our best singing voices to serenade him (in and out of tune!).

all of our FirstRain racers (minus Eugene)

The Splash and Dash race has proven to be a great team building event for FirstRain and I’m very proud of my team.  The encouragement and support they show one another builds the kind of relationships that make a company great.  Their ability to congratulate each other for a job well done, to help each other, to care about each other independent of their work roles is part of what makes FirstRain such a fun place to be.

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