For the first time in 11 years, I went on a company retreat with my department outside the office. In years past, we have gathered in the office conference room for six to eight-hour days to talk about strategy and planning, with brief side trips to local restaurants or activity areas. This was the first time we’ve actually gone to a different city as a group.

The planning team chose Charlottesville for its proximity and easy access by train. We made it to our hotel before noon, had some lunch, and gathered for a kickoff, then took a short drive to go to Monticello for our afternoon activity. Splitting up into two groups, I chose to tour the house and was pleasantly surprised to see that Jefferson’s complicated history has not yet been erased by the revisionist white supremacists. It’s still as beautiful and disturbing as it was the last time we were there, and that’s a good thing.

Retreats are always a tough balance between focused strategy sessions and teambuilding, and in years past our group seemed to lead heavily into days of focus and a lot less on teambuilding, which got exhausting quickly. This time the balance was much more in favor of talking to and interacting with people we don’t normally get to see. As our group has gotten more global we have more people on our team living and working remotely, so it was good to meet people from different countries and get to know them.

We spent 2 1/2 days in Charlottesville and I would say it was by far the best retreat focus on my group that I’ve been to since I’ve been at WRI.

While I was there I had two rolls of 35mm B/W developed from our trip to Portugal. Some of the highlights: