VIC Engineering Summit 2022: Obrigado Lisboa!

What can engineering, accounting, a live coder DJ, skating, sunset sailing, dad jokes, an energizing product vision, crabs, and surfing possibly have in common? Well, let me tell you the story of a group of people that traveled from all over the world to meet in Lisbon, Portugal for a week of bonding and learning opportunities at the VIC Engineering Summit, also known as VICES’22! Here we go!

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THE ONE WHERE MOST OF THE GROUP ARRIVED 

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It was on a sunny Monday that most of the group arrived in Lisbon. For a remote-first team, if there is one word to summarize that day, it would be reunion. Some team members were meeting in person for the first time, and some others were simply elated to come together again in person. It also happened to be Freedom Day, a day of celebration for the people of Portugal. Needless to say, there was a very special atmosphere. 

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THE ONE WITH THE WELCOME DINNER

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With nearly all expected participants arrived at the hotel on Tuesday and settled with accommodations, some carried on with their usual work activities, while others embarked on team workshops. In the workrooms we booked or in some more creative spots within the hotel. The day ended with a welcome dinner, marked by warm speeches from our CFO, VP Engineering and Director of Operations:  VICES’22 was officially kicked off!.

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THE ONE WHERE VISION WAS AT THE CENTER

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Wednesday was eventful and rich in sharing from the leadership team in the morning. It started with our CEO Alex giving a highlight of how Vic.ai is truly revolutionizing the world of invoice processing and accounts payable by using autonomy and intelligence to deeply transform. The vision of the platform for the future was an empowering moment for the whole audience. The sky's the limit! We had the honor of hearing about the growth strategy from our CGO, Aditi, sales from Lance and product from Zak. Then it was time for the star of the show, Brett, our VP of Engineering, to own the stage. He gave an overview of the Engineering team at the moment, presented the vision for where our Engineering aims to be, all of it through a highly interactive session, with special prices at stake!  

Impossible to conclude without reporting the two main complaints heard from the audience. One, more dad jokes were expected from our VP of Engineering. Two, many wished that the announcement stating that all company wide meetings will be presented in Norwegian was not a prank! English and Norwegian as Vic.ai official languages, who is with us?

In the afternoon, it was about a different type of vision. One in Virtual Reality, thanks to Lisbon-based startup, Virtuleap, which aims at elevating the cognitive assessment and training industry with the help of emerging technologies such as virtual reality and AI. The scientifically designed games were highly immersive, intense and fun, with the goal to test and train your brain in skills such as processing speed, sustained attention or problem solving!

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THE ONE WITH THE ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT PRESENTATIONS AND THE CODER DJ 

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The next day, the focus was on knowledge sharing and an invitation to learn more about the work of different teams within the Engineers function. Release Operations kicked off the festivities with a presentation of the team structure, End-to-End Automation testing and a peek into incident management. Next, the API team demoed our newly built automation engine, followed by the UI/UX team giving everyone a taste of interface creation by running a guided coding session to make a selector that displays temperatures in various cities in Portugal. Last but not least, the ML team showed how one can use a combination of criteria from a dataset to predict the sex of a given crab. Kudos to Rachel, Barbro, Gunnar, Noah, Estela, Florian and the whole ML team for the interactive and knowledge filled presentations!

Early afternoon that day, we had the honor of an internationally known guest speaker: Sam Aaron. Sam is the CEO of Sonic PI, an environment for live coding music he created in collaboration with a British charity and organization that aims at promoting the study of basic computer science in schools. It was fascinating to watch Sam generate sounds and even entire pieces of music using a programming language, Ruby. The demo of the program was the perfect mix of discovery and fun as many of us found themselves moving to the music from our seats.

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DURING VICES’22, WE ALSO:

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Had so much fun during outdoor activities!

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Ate great food

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Laughed, a lot!

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Stayed hydrated

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Enjoyed the beauty of Lisbon

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OBRIGADO LISBOA

As far as team retreats go, VICES’22 was legen… wait for it… DARY! If you are reading this, and already part of our journey here at Vic.ai, you know that we hold company retreats multiple times a year and you are very excited for the next stop! Not currently part of our awesome team? Join the Vic.ai adventure! We are always looking for new talents.