Three months ago, during a quarterly planning call, I watched our product team debate a technical architecture decision across five time zones. The conversation was sharp, the ideas strong, but something felt inefficient. Not because remote work doesn't function—it does, and we've built our entire company on that foundation—but because certain conversations need a different bandwidth. You can't sketch on a whiteboard over Slack. You can't read body language through a screen. And you can't build the kind of trust that accelerates decision-making through scheduled video calls alone.
That moment stayed with me. As AI Digital has grown, we've become exceptionally good at remote collaboration, but I realized we'd been so focused on optimizing our distributed workflows that we hadn't yet built the complementary in-person touchpoints that could make those remote interactions even stronger. It felt like the right time to add that dimension. So we're bringing our global team together in Barcelona for our first company off-site in 2026.
The off-site paradox for remote companies
The most effective remote companies I know are intentional about when and why teams meet in person. They recognize that face-to-face time serves specific purposes that video calls cannot replicate, particularly around complex problem-solving, relationship building, and strategic alignment.
Research supports this. A study of more than 700 partners at a large U.S. law firm found that professionals who attended off-sites made about one more new connection per month compared to colleagues who didn't attend. Nothing mystical here. It’s just mechanics. In-person time compresses relationship-building. A conversation at lunch accomplishes what might take three scheduled meetings remotely.
For AI Digital, this matters because we operate in programmatic advertising, where cross-functional collaboration isn't optional. Our technical teams need to understand client challenges directly from account managers. Our strategists need to grasp engineering constraints. That knowledge transfer happens through hundreds of small interactions—the kind that occur naturally when people share physical space but require significant coordination effort remotely.
Off-sites help close that gap, not by “solving loneliness,” but by building the professional relationships and shared context that make remote collaboration smoother and more efficient over the months that follow.
Why Barcelona: The practical case
We evaluated locations using clear criteria: geographic accessibility, time zone positioning, operational costs, and cultural environment. Barcelona met every requirement while offering advantages we hadn't initially considered.
Geographically, Barcelona functions as a practical midpoint for our team distribution. With employees across Europe and the United States, we needed a location that balanced travel burden across regions. Barcelona offers two-hour flights from major European cities and direct transatlantic routes that make U.S. travel manageable. The city operates in Central European Time, creating overlap with both European morning schedules and U.S. East Coast afternoons.
This accessibility, combined with an intentional choice to bring our U.S. team to Europe rather than defaulting to an American location, creates something valuable: experiencing a European city together, navigating cultural differences as a team, and building relationships in an environment that requires everyone to adapt produces shared experience in a way that meeting in New York or San Francisco wouldn't.
Barcelona's thriving tech ecosystem—home to Mobile World Congress and European offices for significant tech companies—also matters for a team working in advertising technology. But beyond the logistics and industry context, the environment itself shapes how people engage. When you're asking employees to travel internationally and work intensively for a week, the setting affects productivity. Barcelona's architecture, food, and quality of life make it a space people find stimulating, not merely functional.
What we're actually building
The off-site agenda reflects what matters most: building the connections and alignment that make our remote work more effective. We've designed three days that balance structured collaboration with the organic relationship-building that happens when people simply spend time together.
Thursday opens with a city quest challenge—teams navigating Barcelona, solving problems together, and experiencing the city's culture while building connections across departments. It's team building with purpose: colleagues who rarely work together directly will collaborate, problem-solve, and explore in ways that reveal working styles and communication approaches you never see in Slack channels. The day closes with pod dinners—small groups sharing meals together, continuing conversations that started during the day.
Friday shifts to strategic work with our conference: Mapping Our Next Chapter. This is where we align on 2026 priorities, present our product roadmap, and tackle the cross-departmental discussions that are harder to coordinate remotely. Our product and client services teams will work through actual client challenges together. Technical teams will present infrastructure plans to colleagues who need to understand system capabilities for client conversations. We're also hosting a guest speaker session—bringing in external perspective on industry trends and innovation. The evening gala dinner brings everyone together to celebrate the work we've built and the year ahead.
Saturday balances formal team syncs with optional activities. Some will choose structured sessions diving deeper into specific topics. Others will explore Barcelona further or simply work alongside colleagues in shared space.
By the end of the week, we expect every team member to have substantive conversations with at least three colleagues they don't regularly work with. We're tracking whether cross-departmental projects initiated during the off-site maintain momentum remotely. And we'll survey the team later, measuring communication efficiency, collaboration quality, and professional connection strength compared to pre-off-site baselines.
Building remote-first, not remote-only
AI Digital remains committed to remote work as our default operating model. We're not using this off-site as evidence that remote work requires constant supplementation with in-person time. Most weeks, our team works from wherever they're most productive, and that model serves us well.
But remote-first doesn't mean remote-only. It means being intentional about when physical presence creates value that remote collaboration cannot replicate. For us, that's annually—a single week where we invest heavily in face-to-face time that makes the other 51 weeks more effective.
Barcelona represents our first attempt at this model. We'll learn what works, what doesn't, and how to structure future off-sites more effectively. But the core principle is already clear: the best remote companies don't avoid in-person time. They use it strategically, investing in the relationship infrastructure and strategic alignment that makes distributed work sustainable long-term.
That's what we're building in Barcelona—the foundation for another year of effective remote collaboration.
.svg)
.svg)
