CobbleWeb Team Retreat: Istanbul 2024

Team retreats can be dreary affairs: boring presentations, uninspiring activities, impersonal venues, and terrible food. It’s pretty demoralising when your main takeaway is that you’ve wasted time that you will never get back. 

We are therefore pleased to report that CobbleWeb’s first team retreat, since the pandemic disrupted everyone and everything, evaded all those pitfalls, leaving the attendees with lots of food for thought . . . and stomachs.

How could you not be inspired, when the backdrop was a 2,700-year-old city famous for being a melting pot of cultures and the epicentre of powerful ideas. Despite the onset of winter, Istanbul delivered crisp clear days that invited us to explore the ancient city’s maze of streets and architectural wonders.

Our accommodation was right in the historical heart of the city with an amazing view over the Golden Horn where ferries and other watercraft traversed the waterway in the distance. What better place to get everyone together as we headed into the end of an eventful year and looked forward to an exciting 2025!

Day one kicked off with CEO, Ramdane Mir, sharing some details about CobbleWeb’s history, the company’s current performance, and its vision for 2025. Check out the full presentation to learn why we specialise in custom marketplace development, what we’ve achieved so far, and how we are busying innovating for the future.

After a sumptuous lunch at one of Istanbul’s top restaurants we headed to a ten-pin bowling alley to test our competitive streaks. There were clearly some regular practitioners of this dark art, while the rest of us needed extensive coaching just to keep the bowling balls in the right lane.

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Day one closed with dinner at one of the most famous baklava establishments in Turkey, if not the world. Who knew that there are dozens of different varieties of this sweet delicacy? The group consensus was that the pistachio-flavoured baklava was the winner, even if our taste-buds were completely confused after stuffing our faces with several plates of the stuff.

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After a magnificent Turkish breakfast the following morning, we had an interesting discussion around the huge opportunities that ecommerce trends and technological innovation, in particular online marketplaces, offer specialised software agencies like CobbleWeb. Equally important, we also looked at the career advantages of this niche focus for software engineers. You can find all the details in our article: Why online marketplaces are great for your software engineering career.

The afternoon session was spent on refining our positioning as an employer of first choice in our niche. Some of the main pillars of our company culture were covered, such as project diversity and complexity, our collaboration framework, our innovation engine, and what it means to be purpose-driven in our context. We also reviewed feedback from candidates on our recruitment process to see if there were any areas that we could improve on.

Day two concluded with another lovely dinner . . . and you guessed it, more baklava!

We needed all that balaklava energy, because the next day was spent exploring the historical treasures of Istanbul. We crossed the Galata bridge into the Sultanahmet district, where we met our guide who took us on a tour of the Roman-era Hippodrome, the iconic Byzantine Hagia Sophia, and the Ottoman sultans’ opulent Topkapi palace. The beautiful library, constructed entirely of marble, was a timely reminder of the value of curiosity and continuous learning.

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The captivating tour brought our team retreat to a close on a high note. It was with renewed vigour and focus that we returned to our respective countries (France, United Kingdom, South Africa, Georgia and Tunisia) the following day. Innovative ideas were polished, new team bonds were forged, and of course, it was great to get to know each other on a more personal level. We can’t wait for the next one!