Tech BBQ 2021 - Remote work and culture

Tech BBQ 2021 got off to a great start for Contractbook. The exhibition hall was rammed with companies from all walks of tech life. Right next to stand 14 where we are located an environmental company working towards the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. There are companies dedicated to workspaces, opposite us are Joes and Cos with unlimited access to work spaces. Of course one of Contractbook's customers MuteBox are on location, perfect for those meetings.

Want to store your belongings while you exhibit? What about Luggage Hero? They are here too. There has a been a great vibe around the hall all day, the smells of food outside being cooked by local companies such as War Pigs and many others.

Day One:

Our very own CPO and Founder, Jarek Owczarek, hit the Camp Fire stage with the first delivery of Contractbook themed discussion. For us it was about culture, what do we do within these times leading away from Covid 19? We have been working remotely as many other companies have too, but we were remote first before the pandemic.

We have colleagues around the world, all over Europe and an office in the states. We will continue to work remotely and be able to use that to our mutual benefit. As Jarek put it: "We are able to get access to some of the best talent in the world by having a remote first culture." Which is true. Why have a limit of a few million people when you can have the pick of applicants from 7 billion people?

Of course there were a few laughs thrown in. When asked what channels spring to mind when thinking of Slack, the answer of course was "Random" and "Dad Jokes" the audience lapped this up. The repetitive "Dad jokes" murmur was pretty audible at the end. Fair to say whoever is monitoring channel creation at Slack will be inundated with Dad Joke channels.

Another channel that is created on Contractbook's Slack - Main - Where Jarek explained that it was created to say "Hi" and "Bye". For all 10 people originally, now over 100, where we all say hello and goodbye every day, we also find things out there. "Oh you had a baby!? Congrats." Mixed in with a selfie Tuesday.

Remote first culture was pretty much made clear to be an important part of Contractbook's makeup.

Booth activity was constant through the day. All of our sales and partnerships teams discussing the company, interest was high, it is clear people are noticing. How do I know this? I heard them say it. "I recognized the company." or "I have seen it before."

We also had interest from top law firms in Denmark who are gearing towards tech start up involvement.

Our partnerships team was solidly booked for the day and had a ton of meetings scheduled. Again a great amount of interest circling regarding partnering up and many have serious intentions of how we can help with access to incubators, accelerators, and VC portfolio companies.

Johan Mortensen hit the Tech Stage in the afternoon delivering Contractbook as a startup. He nailed it. The focus again on culture, what we stand for and how we like to work hard, but have fun too. A work place thrives when people are trusted to perform and execute, while being able to engage and form bonds with colleagues.

Day two looks promising. After being named one of the top 10 by Danske Bank, we have our CEO, Neils Martin Brochner, facing the press and media including the likes of Forbes and FT. And also we have Thor Haugaard, who will deliver a keynote on the Tech Stage.

Day Two:

The second day of tech BBQ 2021 got off to an early flier with our CEO Niels Brochner facing the press and media. Questions were fired at him from the likes of Forbes, Financial Times and ... amongst others regarding Danske Bank’s 100 companies. We have all been working tirelessly to put forward Contractbook on the best platforms possible and this was a great example of that.

Sales teams were back at the booth, number 14, and some of them were booking great meetings right from the first minute until the last. What a turn out. On day one, a member of the sales team booked a meeting and held it with a company, had a fantastic discussion around their use case. Well, what would you know? Day two comes by and that same company set up a booth directly opposite us, which was a pretty cool thing to be fair.

Our automations wizard, Thor Rowland, delivered a great keynote. Super professional, of course, it was like watching a Ted Talk as he went through his repertoire on all thing Contractbook automation - Now everyone knows what automation is, where we see it in everyday life, and how we use it in contracts. “We are surrounded by it every day but maybe you don't know. It is in the traffic lights, phones, computers, everywhere. The future for me is being able to speak to your phone and it produces a contract right there and then.”

That, I am pretty sure you will agree, is some futuristic Demolition Man, Terminator, Minority Report level contract creation. Hyperbole aside, of course this is a much more advanced version of Siri, its more advanced sibling, which I am sure would have some suggesting it would be easy to do - for the non-tech savvy like yours truly, not that easy.

If Tech BBQ is to be summed up for Contractbook. A great event to network, gain some knowledge and put forward Contractbook as a business and as a solution for many people, it is what they were looking for. So much interest, the proof of where we are going is the fact that we are so recongnizable to people now. In other ways Tech BBQ has been great internally - We had representation from Sales, Customer Success, Partnerships, Marketing and not to mention participation from our founders too. A great team building event.

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