VSHNday 2021

VSHNday is an all-day event once a year, usually in late summer. It is about alignment and developing a shared understanding of what VSHN is and does. In 2021, VSHNday was held for the 7th time.

Personal and once again not remote

On Friday, September 24, 2021, VSHNeers got together again for a physical VSHNday (adhering to Corona rules with a valid Covid certificate, of course) after we had to hold VSHNday remotely in 2020 due to pandemic.

When we meet again all “in real”, of course a group photo could not be missing. 🙂

Location: Hive Zurich

The VSHNday 2021 took place at the Hive in Geroldstrasse in Zurich. Really a very cool location and perfect to get away from the daily grind in the (home) office and focus on the day in a creative environment and offline.

Schedule and Agenda VSHNday 2021

We started from 08:30 for Gipfeli & coffee and the official part started at 09:00.

Aarno Aukia gave a short intro about the history of VSHN and why the founders got together to start a company in 2014.

One of the main reasons was a shared understanding (or at that time better an idea) of values and culture of how VSHNeers would like to work together. 7 years later VSHN has reached 45 employees and the original ideas are available for everyone to see in our Open Source Employee Handbook in the chapter VSHN Values: https://handbook.vshn.ch/hb/values.html

The basic pillars of VSHN Values are Positivity, Effectivity, Integrity, Curiosity, Transparency and Accountability.

After Aarno’s presentation, VSHNeers then thought about Values and Culture, considered topics, and discussed them together in groups in an open space format.

For lunch we had a delicious pasta buffet and after a little game (draw toast) we continued with the topic VSHN product strategy.

As an introduction, Patrick Mathers gave a short intro on “Why do we need to grow at all?” including a nice illustration with Phippy. 🙂

Tobias Brunner then gave a presentation on VSHN’s product strategy, explaining our current VSHN Product Portfolio and which path we as VSHN want to take together or better continue to follow.

Afterwards, there were again Open Spaces with lively discussions on the topic of product strategy, which were very enlightening and have already brought about some new initiatives.

Conclusion and evening program

From 18:00 we stayed at the Hive for our dinner and the social part. Dinner was served by Gerold Chuchi and was super tasty!

In summary, we are overjoyed to have been able to meet physically and in person again for VSHNday 2021. It was great to see all VSHNeers in person again (or to meet them for the first time ever).

Very exciting discussions emerged in the Open Spaces and some of the ideas are already being implemented or are being discussed further in detail.

We thank all VSHNeers for their participation and constructive discussions and the organizers for a successful VSHNday!