The second day of the offsite was dedicated to our product.
Tomer, our Product Manager, lead this day and its goals were:
Sync on the next quarter goals
Discussion about vision - where should our product be a year or 2 from now
Tomer started with a short intro the the new devs, followed by a presentation about the next Q plans, accompanied by some cool statistics, figures and examples of different users' blogs.
Although the Israeli team attended the roadmap presentation when we presented it to Wix management, the Ukranian team did not. In addition, there were some modifications done to the plan and it was important to share then so that we're all on the same page.
Next session was by Reuven Sherwin, Wix VP Product and our team Chairman.
Aside from sharing his very important experience as a user of our product he shared his expectations from the team. It was awesome to hear it in this forum. I made a mental note to myself to mention it on my session, on the last day of the offsite, to make sure we discuss it as well.
Reuven continued with a great talk about how product is done at Wix. It was the first time I ever heard it and it was quite interesting. I really hope some of it sunk in as I want the team to be more involved in the product as well.
The last product session was, as mentioned, about the vision. Tomer led a very interesting discussion, with most team members participating, about the issues that our users might have and the solutions we can provide. Originally we were kinda worried about this session, fearing that either there won't be any visionary ideas or that everything will be looked at from a technical perspective. I'm glad to have proven wrong.
Last 2 hours of the day we had two sessions of technology review, covering projects we're currently on and making sure that the whole team is familiar with the bigger things that are now in progress.
All in all, a very successful day. I feel that both goals were achieved. Chemistry-wise - there's still some barrier between the Israeli and the Ukrainian teams and also the new guys were almost not heard. I hope that tomorrow will improve the situation and will think of ways to change that, comes my session on Thursday.
And tomorrow - Outdoors activity!