I had the opportunity to travel to Hawaii for work. Really.

Aurora, the support team at Automattic that handles Jetpack and Guided Transfer, invited me to spend a few days with them talking about workflows, team goals, and more.

For workflows each person Chromecasted how they work through their daily tasks, including any helpful tools, snippets, todo list, and apps that make their job easier. It was really neat to watch the ways two people can attack the same work in distinct ways. I walked away with several ideas for better ways to do my own work.

We also worked on a Plus/Delta/Next gamestorming workshop which clarified a lot about what the team is doing well, thinks they should be working on and/or doing better. Besides being an enlightening team exercise it required sticky notes. Who doesn’t love sticky notes and sharpies? I mean, really.

Sticky note fun (+t+d fab pics courtesy of Jen Hooks):

While we were there, we took the opportunity to see a few sites and had a couple team-building activities. Here we are on a trip tubing down irrigation ditches. While that sounds a bit odd, it was really fun.

And well, of course we saw the ocean a bit too, visited a coffee plantation, took a hike to a waterfall, and I dyed my hair a little bit pink.