The Adventure Begins

Once a year, the entire Avalanche Creative team gathers together in Holland, Michigan, with some of us barely leaving our zip code and others clocking some serious travel miles! We spent nearly a week at the GENEVA Camp & Retreat Center (shoutout to their amazing staff and beautiful lake-front venue!). 

Despite being very intentional with staying connected across our remote team, we find that you can never truly replicate the same level of connection that is made in real life. That’s why we so highly value our limited yet critical time together in person. And this year, we had the whole crew in town and couldn’t have been happier.

The Main Questlines

The retreat theme was Level Up. Not just leveling up on an individual level, but company-wide. We gained experience points (XP) across several areas, including sharpening our expertise of internal systems, understanding what it means to be open and honest in our communication, strategizing about the future of Avalanche, and expanding our creative approach to client services.

Jennie, our Project Director, created a quest for all of us to complete. We had to navigate and restore order to ClickUp, our project management software. By collaborating as teams, many of us discovered new ClickUp features that help solve problems, create tasks, build automations, and improve workflows… and a new appreciation for project management.

The Know Honesty workshop was led by a special guest, Grace Gavin. Grace taught us about the true meaning of being open and honest. We learned how to identify moments where the “Fake You” and “The Wall” appear when trying to protect ourselves, or the people around us. 

There have been many Avalanche 2.0s over the years. This year, we made major decisions about what that meant for the future and put them into action. During a brief strategy summit, our team unanimously agreed that our site needs more of our personality and a refresh (more on that later). What we really spent our strategizing on was our new organizational structure. The pods, as we have called them, are groups within our team that are focused on specific clients, being able to commit more time and energy for their strategies and giving us the ability to delve even deeper into our work for clients.

Side Quests & Bonus Rounds

But of course, we had to make room for more fun along the way! A few members of Avalanche put together activities to challenge our brains in ways they normally wouldn’t in our day-to-day work. Lance and Sara, prepared an AI Gauntlet that made everyone a visionary. We were given problems involving AI, and had to pitch a solution. Searrah, walked us through how to make a chainmail bracelet, and Sandra, taught us the basics of foraging.

A favorite side quest among the team was the E&E Working Genius game, created by Deanna. Inspired by a D&D style game, we were all working for a new agency, in new roles, and had to lean into our working geniuses to solve problems that businesses regularly face.

Giving Back IRL

Volunteering at Kids’ Food Basket

We spent the morning volunteering at Kids’ Food Basket, one of our treasured non-profit partners. Their main mission is to provide healthy meals to families in the West Michigan area. 

Power-Ups & Party Time

Being together is so important to us. How else would we know, Keelie, is the Mario Kart master?!? 

Spending an evening in Holland had us bonding over food and drinks. Of course, we stopped to smell the flowers during the famous Tulip Time Festival. 

Our nights ended with a beautiful sunset, chats by the fire, and s’mores.

Wrap-Up & Reflections

We took our dreams and laid the groundwork to turn them into reality. Everyone went home with a Leveled Up Achievement Award and enthusiasm for the upcoming year. We can’t wait to see how our work during the retreat continues to level us up throughout the year ahead!