Team Building and B-Day Celebration with Arduino

Earlier this month, DevTech Americas team got together at Autodesk San Francisco office and held an annual team meeting. In day-to-day interaction, our team is “virtual”, meaning that each member is based in a different geographically location, and our communication is always through the Internet. Having an opportunity to get together physically near the company’s headquarter helps us get the latest information about our products, exchange opinions, and re-align the goal of our divisions. I was grateful that our VP and the director are always supportive to our requests and generous with their time. They came and talked to the team during the team meeting despite their super busy schedule. We are also lucky to have had the chief architect and dev managers coming to talk to us.

While most of our time is spent on the latest technologies, review and goals for coming years, we also try not to forget about human aspect of ourselves and to have fun while we are together. This year, we decided to do “Introduction to Arduino Workshop” for this.

Ever since I mentioned about Arduino workshop I participated, I was the center of envy from my team. So, it wasn't difficult to come up with the idea. I was brave enough to volunteer as an instructor for one afternoon. I was a little nervous as I was probably the slowest among the participants in the one in Waltham. Nevertheless, I had no doubt that my team would enjoy having a similar experience, and it was such a mind-shifting experience for me; working on hardware gives you another perspective toward software.

Coincidentally, we had a birthday boy in the team. (Technically speaking, in proximity of two days. But if the team can get together only once a year, it’s close enough :-) The team had a secret mission to make a little surprise for him by bringing in a cake a half way during the workshop. Along with the cake, I managed to play a B-day music using Arduino! 

Below are a few photos from the workshop and a recording of my b-day music:  

  

Arduino Birthday song, my first attempt to entertain using Arduino. (With a help from a forum post and fine tuning it to my ears. In case you are interested in my version, you can find the code here.) 

 

Here is the B-day boy, Augusto, in the middle.

 

The team getting hands-on with Arduino. 

 

We invited our director, Jim Quanci, to the workshop (right). Jim was working on RGB LED and buzzer, making colorful blinking light and sound (left). It was nice of him to spend time with us like this. 

 

Three months ago, I could never imagine putting myself in a position to instruct how to use Arduino. So far I'm having fun with the unexpected event like this.   

It was great meeting the team.

 

Mikako