Secret Santa, quests, quiz and skating rink - as we met ABBYY New Year
Soon the new year, and in order to raise the festive mood to everyone, we decided to sip this post and show what had happened in the walls of ABBYY for the last couple of months. Do you want to know what abby Christmas elves look like, what secrets are hidden in the Secret Santa parcels from Australia, how many kilograms of Olivier we ate in one day and how can we diversify the ice skating at -13 degrees? Then let's go! Under the cut a lot of pictures (~ 5 MB)
ABBYY offices are located in 11 countries of the world, so New Year and Christmas for us are special holidays that help unite global teams from Russia, America, Germany, Ukraine, Japan, Australia and other countries. We started preparing for the New Year's fairy tale from the beginning of November, when we launched the game “Secret Santa” in the office. Until the middle of the month, everyone willing filled out a questionnaire with one question: “What do I want to get from Santa?”. Warm socks with snowflakes, a Christmas-tree decoration, a book with recipes or a traditional souvenir from Lapland? You are welcome. There was only one restriction for fantasy - a gift should be no more than 10 dollars.
frame from the movie “ Frankie and Johnny ”
Having collected all the wishes, we found a pair for each participant - from different countries and departments. So colleagues can get to know each other better. And then the most interesting thing began - all ABBYY offices turned into real Santa factories. Until the end of November, we prepared surprises, packaged them beautifully and carried them to our "New Year's Elves." This is how a whole mountain of surprises looked from Russia, to which our colleague almost climbed:
What was asked of the Secret Santa? 14 pairs of Christmas socks, 32 books, 11 mugs, 8 Christmas toys, 8 tabletops, 7 T-shirts. But many gifts are difficult to attribute to some categories, for example, a trinket “Troika”, “Pikachu” in any form, something hot and “something that will make my wife happy”.
In the middle of December the parcels went to their addressees. For example, here we were not yet sure whether it would be possible to close this suitcase, but we knew for sure that it would fly to Munich:
In general, to be the elf of the Secret Santa is a non-trivial task that requires a lot of time and attention. For example, part of the gifts was delayed at the customs, and such an item as the harp , the delivery service refused to accept. It turned out to send a musical instrument, you need a cover letter from the Ministry of Culture that it is not an object of cultural value.
“Here you set me a task! To go to the forest, to find this and bring it from the children. ” (shot from the cartoon “Snowman-mailer”)
This year, ABBYY’s secret sant was almost twice as many as in 2017.
Gifts from other ABBYY offices continue to arrive in Russia. And sometimes they are very unusual. For example, a circle with an image of a representative of the local fauna flew from Russia to Sydney. Here is the Australian Kookabarra's anboxing :
And Cheburashka went from Moscow to Japan
In a group at Workplace, colleagues share photos of their gifts and thank Secret Santas for these magical moments:
In the meantime, the new year was getting closer, and at the beginning of December the halls of ABBYY were decorated with green fluffy spruce trees, garlands of pine cones ...
... and the kitchen - with Christmas wreaths. The festive mood seems to have come!
Christmas decorations - for everyone. You can take a ball or some tinsel to add the spirit of the coming New Year to your workplace. The main thing is to wait for the winter holidays bright!
ABBYY New Year crept up on December 20 in the morning in the form of breakfast with Russian salad, pancakes, cheesecakes, cocoa and ginger men. Sorry for the food photo, the author was just hungry, and the food looks too appetizing. By the way, on this day, the Russian office of ABBYY ate 17 kg of vinaigrette, 81 kg of Olivier, 12 kg of gingerbread and washed down this 102 liters of cocoa.
In the kitchens began a cheerful joint eating yummy.
And let's raise our cocoa for the new year? And let's
They ate, you can and ... train your brain! During the day, connoisseurs of New Year and Christmas films went to the cinema quiz. They had to recognize the frames from the New Year films and not only. Attention, dim the lights and start.
Forms team, which won first place. Charged for success.
But not everything was easy. Guess what attribute of the New Year's holiday is encrypted in this rebus?
Other colleagues went in search of New Year's mood in the quest for the office, which prepared the magic elf. He only makes a cute look, and in fact distributes tasks to the
The guys had to complete 6 different tasks - solve puzzles, solve puzzles, practice memory and decipher the Christmas message. Elven miracles unraveled 160 people.
One of the ABBYY teams will soon guess the secret cipher!
What can be done with a hammer and yarn? At creative workshops, colleagues mastered quilling, made paintings from threads or eco-ornaments from natural materials.
Photographer, do not distract us. There is jewelry work!
Meanwhile, on the 4th floor, festive photo-transformations took place. Before and after:
In the afternoon, ABBYY Santa (CEO of the ABBYY group of companies Ulf Persson) and ABBYY Moroz (executive director of the ABBYY group of companies Vadim Tereshchenko) visited the office with New Year's gifts. And handed them to everyone personally!
Ulf: “This year we all worked a lot and deserved gifts!”
Lucky-Lucky! This is only the first cart!
What is hidden in the box - look under
spoiler
There are gingerbread cookies with a Mezen painting, a Christmas-tree toy-pig, a painted mug and raspberry jam with mint. All these are handmade gifts made in charity workshops.
But back to the holiday, which continued on the rink "At the Arc de Triomphe." Nearly 400 abby people came out on 5000 square meters of ice.
Do you like to ride? Then go ahead for the snake!
Or maybe try to combine ice, mop and brick? It turns out like this:
In the meantime, ABBYY's Australian office staff also gathered to celebrate the new year and play curling, but on an indoor rink.
And on the New Year's holiday in the Ukrainian office reigned the spirit of the 30s of the last century. The gangsters were surprisingly gallant, the ladies were elegant, and not a single civilian was injured.
Colleagues from Japan celebrate in their own way: they went on a tour of the local winery.
Everyone managed to feel the approach of the new year and share positive emotions with each other. And in the morning,
Write in the comments, what holiday traditions do you have in offices and at home, how do you implement your ideas and what inspires you?
Elizaveta Titarenko, editor of the corporate blog ABBYY