My Life Today: The Summer Gathering of a Nano Multinational Company

AdaCore 2017 Summer Gathering

I was back in New York City last Wednesday evening, after spending three days at the "Summer Gathering" of the company I work for, AdaCore.
This Summer Gathering has occurred every year at the end of August, for the last 20 years, alternatively on the East Coast of the USA and In Europe, most of the time in France.

This year, the Summer Gathering was in the US, in an hotel on the Long Island Sound, Glen Cove Mansion.

Glen Cove Mansion

As I said before, AdaCore is a "nano multinational" company. People working for AdaCore have citizenships from many nations (USA, France, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, Russia, Bulgaria, Peru, Romania, ...) and live in many countries.

For example, we have a contingent of Russians, that live in Russia and in France, that we sometimes call jokingly our "Russian Mafia".

Fedor and his father Sergey, from our Russian Mafia

Many engineers working for AdaCore, including myself, work remotely, either in their country of birth or where they emigrated. For example, we are two French guys in British Columbia, Canada, and there is another French in Madrid, Spain, and a German in Seoul, South Korea.

In France, the main office is in Paris, and there are people working in three other cities: Toulouse, Grenoble and Vannes.

In the US, the two main offices are in New York City and Boston, and there are people working in several different sates: Washington, California, Texas, Florida, DC.

Even if we communicate extensively and we congregate several times during the year in New York City, there is a need to have the whole company together once a year at the Summer Gathering.

So, this year, we took buses from the company office in New York on Sunday afternoon and came back to New York City on Wednesday evening.

During the 3 days of the Summer Gathering, we had full company presentations in the morning, most of them only 20 minute long.

Full Company Meeting

And in the afternoon, we had "Self-Organized" meetings on different subjects in smaller meeting rooms.

For very small groups, some meetings were taking place outside.

And, of course, there were many opportunities for socializing, mostly during meals.

Every year, at the Summer Gathering, we take a company picture. We have a professional photographer that works for the company; he lives in an island off the coast of Washington state.

Company Picture at the 2017 Summer Gathering

On this picture, the CEO is the first on the left, the president is the second from the right on the first row on people sitting.
And I am the one with the hat, sixth from the left on the first row, between a Bulgarian living in New York City and a Russian living in Moscow.

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After the Summer Gathering, I stayed two more days at the office in New York and came back to British Columbia Friday night, ready to work from there tomorrow Monday.