The End of Year Bash is upon us! It’s a pretty special tradition – the one time of year we get all of Timely in the same room.

The Timely Holiday Bash

As a remote working company, we see each other almost every day in one form or another: Slack, Google Hangout, or coffee meetings. But since we’re spread out over six cities and three countries, getting everyone to sit down together is pretty rare. In fact, it hasn’t happened since the last one!

And since then, we’ve hired 10 new people, so it’s really about time.

Remote working is a big part of #timelylife. It’s about being flexible with your day, and working in a way that suits you. It’s about taking advantage of the afternoon sunlight and working a little bit after dinner. It’s about being able to pick your kids up from school. It’s something that’s been ingrained in us since the beginning, and it doesn’t look like we’ll be changing it anytime soon.

But as much as we love the remote life, it’s still important for us to get together in person from time to time.

And that’s just what we’ll be doing this week. Everyone is flying into little ol’ Dunedin and we’re all going to sit down together and get to know the people we’ve been talking to for the past year a little better. We’ll talk about milestones from this year, both personal and professional. We’ll probably talk a lot about the new iOS app, and some of the cool awards ceremonies we’ve been to. Some people might recount their expo experiences, while others will share their traveling adventures.

We’ll take a new team picture! This one will have 31 people, and some different faces from last year’s. We’ll lay out the strategic plan for Timely over the next few years, and reaffirm our commitment to making an awesome product and being an awesome company.

I have to say, I can’t wait.

What this means for you

While we’re off chatting and planning away, we may not be as quick as normal to respond to support enquiries. We’ll keep an eye out for any emergencies, of course. But barring any of those (fingers crossed) on Wednesday, December 14th and Thursday, December 15th, you probably won’t hear back from us. We’ll be back in action on Friday and ready to answer any questions that might have popped up!

There are always the help docs  and Timely TV to look over if you’re waiting for a response.

We’ll also be off the Christmas weekend plus the following Monday and Tuesday (December 26th and 27th) and New Year’s weekend plus the following Monday and Tuesday (January 2nd and 3rd). That means responses will be slower than usual over those days, but we’ll keep our feelers out for any emergencies.

I hope you’re all taking a bit of time to yourself to rest, reflect, and enjoy the days. It’s been a huge and wonderful year for us, and we couldn’t have done it without you.