Remote Work Week by Lake Balaton – More Than Just a Company Trip
This spring we did something a little different at Forward Forever.
As always, we kicked things off with our annual FF “summer camp” – a long weekend where the whole company comes together. Every year we make space for this, alternating between Finland and somewhere abroad. After Spain and Portugal, we can now add Hungary to the list. This time, we gathered in Budapest.
The weekend wasn’t just about catching up and spending time together (although there was plenty of that). We also organised our own AI & agent hackathon — you can read more about it here: We Ran Our Own AI Agents Hackathon – Here’s What Happened
After the weekend, instead of heading straight back home, most of us continued the trip to Lake Balaton, to the town of Balatonalmádi, for a full remote work week together. At Forward Forever, we work remotely a lot, and our people are spread across Finland – and also in Spain and Portugal – so opportunities to spend multiple days together like this are actually quite rare.
We stayed in bigger shared accommodations, which made everyday things easy. You’d bump into someone in the kitchen in the morning, continue over breakfast, and then sit down with the same people again during the day. Work itself didn’t really change – same projects, same meetings – but the way we interacted did. Quick questions didn’t need a Teams message, and conversations that might not have happened at home happened.
Evenings were completely flexible and everyone’s free time. People joined in what felt right for them. Over the course of the week, that meant things like golfing, beach volleyball, visiting a winery, exploring nearby villages – or simply staying closer to home, swimming, cooking, and spending time together.
The surroundings definitely didn’t hurt either: waking up to sunshine, proper summer temperatures, and those glimpses of turquoise water in the background set a very different tone to the workday than a typical Finnish spring. It’s hard not to feel a little more relaxed in an environment like that. But what made the week truly special wasn’t just the location — it was the shared experience.
It reminded us of something quite simple but easy to forget in the regular at-home remote setting: connection doesn’t need to be forced or formal to be meaningful. It often just needs time and space: sitting down for breakfast together, working side by side instead of behind screens but also those random conversations that start from something small and end up going somewhere completely unexpected. Then there’s also the moments of cheering for Finland’s ice hockey team in the evenings or heading out for a run together.
This week gave us something we don’t often get: a full week of everyday life together, not just a short event. We might try it again some time!
