The Retreat 2022

Last week, the team spent three days away on our annual* retreat.

The retreats are a fantastic opportunity for us to step away from the detail of the day job and talk about the big picture, strategic things we don’t always get the time to talk about when we are consumed by the day-to-day.

This year’s venue was the absolutely stunning The Corn Crib, part of the Hesdin Estate. I can highly recommend it and I’m very much looking to seeing how the other properties at the estate progress. It really was the perfect backdrop for the week.

(*first time since 2019, you know why!)

This year’s theme was around Innovation and Sustainability.

Innovation

We discussed what the CMS and web app market shares are looking like at the moment, possible alternative frameworks we could delve into, new products and features we could develop for our clients right now.

But most of the innovation session was focussed on the future – Web 3.0. We discussed all things AI / machine learning, NFTs, Cryptocurrency, the Metaverse – what we know / think about them, what’s good and bad about them, what potential use cases there may be for 10 Degrees and our clients.

There’s a lot still to explore in this area and the team will be undertaking individual R&D projects to investigate further!

Sustainability

This is an area that is really important to us at 10 Degrees. We started the session by looking at our FuturePlus sustainability scores and ambition scores.

With a current score of 286/500 and an ambition score of 356/500, we think we’re doing pretty well for a company of our size. But we’ve still got a way to go and it’s important to be taking the whole team along on the journey with us.

We also discussed BIMA (British Interactive Media Association)‘s recent draft web environmental sustainability guidelines. We will be consolidating feedback from the team so we can have a small contribution to the creation of a set of guidelines for our industry.

This followed on to discussions around how we can better benchmark sustainability goals and metrics for the client websites and apps that we are building – including better educating clients on how their content and design decisions influence the carbon impact of their digital products.

Finally, we combined the two themes together – can we build a product that helps organisations monitor the full carbon impact of their digital products? 🤔……. watch this space 🤐… more to follow on that another time.

But above all else, the retreat is a time for social time as a team and enjoying each others company in beautiful surroundings.

I can safely say that 2022 was the best retreat we have ever had. Thank you to Team 10D for being so engaged and enthusiastic throughout our discussions and for being a joy to spend so much time with.

Now the planning starts for next year’s retreat…

The Author

Lynda Harvey

Managing Director. Leading our business strategy and culture.

The 10 Degrees Team