Ay caramba! In Spoiled Milk we spend the majority of our time in the virtual sphere for team communication and project collaboration. Therefore we choose to focus a lot on the yearly meet-up’s, where the entire team gets together and takes an action-oriented look at current issues and future ambitions. Most importantly, we get to spend some time together in real life and be reminded of the great personalities inherent in our group.

This year we took off Thursday morning to cosy, warm (literally 23 degrees) and friendly Barcelona and settled into a couple of really nice apartments (tip: Inside-bcn) also intended to house our work sessions. Friday was intense: Full-day workshops dealing with strategic challenges, communication and production. We even fit in a fruitful brainstorm about blog post themes, so prepare for more activity right here!

On Saturday, besides continuing where we left off the previous day, each team member gave a 5-minute Ignite presentation on a topic of interest. Among the creative ones were ‘My Swedish heroes’, ‘Surfing’, ‘History of philosophy’, ‘Stream of thought’ and the ‘Pomodoro technique‘.

Following these sessions and a paella lunch, we went into creative mode. Two mixed teams and the challenge of capturing a Barcelona story in 90 minutes and then presenting the result to the rest of the team. The first group based their story on the letters of “Barcelona” – finding associations for each letter. The second group asked 20 locals what their latest problem had been. See the presentations here and here.

Finally, Sunday was for relaxing and reflecting, and left time for Gaudi inspiration, a last bite of amazing tapas and the final glances of sun before returning to the colder North.

Some more shots …

… and much more on Flickr.

The needs for virtual organizing are increasing rapidly these days. Companies continue to go global.  There is an unprecedented economic crisis so we do not travel anywhere for a meeting. People have an ever higher awareness of environmental impacts, so the ability to work in virtual teams is in high demand.

Things have certainly developed rapidly for Spoiled Milk and many situations are new. The challenge of building a strong team feeling when working from two different locations on a daily basis is really interesting (+ we also had Andreas sitting in Stockholm and participating in the workshop).

The idea for this virtual workshop with Spoiled Milk was to create the same experience of a team workshop, but without being in the same location. Simply to have a fun team experience while doing something valuable and relevant for the company. Those things can easily be combined.

The challenge I gave Spoiled Milk was to find the words that describes the core values of the company, seek objects which represented those words and ultimately create a short video of the results. The main part of the workshop, however, was the virtual interaction between CPH and ZRH office and to talk about the things you usually don’t have time for during busy working hours. Those meaningful conversations build relationships – regardless of the divide between physical and virtual settings.

Screens from the event

And how did it go? Of course we have saved some screens for our blog readers.

Initial briefing (as seen from Anders’ screen) with – from left – Stockholm, Zurich and Copenhagen.

Grand overview – Anders facilitating the virtual workshop.

Local creativity – each team moves into creative mode.

Presentation time – Copenhagen screening the visual output.

Evaluation -  group discussion about how to improve the virtual settings in the future.

Goodbye – both offices rounding off.

A few more photos on the Spoiled Milk flickr account.

Creative output

Copenhagen’s video

Zurich’s video

(Anders Fredsø Olsen is temporarily working in Spoiled Milk as a strategic consultant mainly focused on writing a grand report about the “core of Spoiled Milk”. He will be finishing his studies at The Kaospilots in Århus in June)

We will be powering both offices down for Easter break from Thursday-Monday and be back for Spring action on Tuesday next week. You can still reach us all by email, if you have urgent requests or questions.

In good keep with traditions when we leave for a short holiday, the Copenhagen office spent the afternoon with various Easter delights such as chocolate bunnies, marcipan eggs and Easter beers (also called ‘Påskeøl’ in Danish).

On another note – as announced a few weeks ago, we held parties both in Zürich and Copenhagen recently. We’ve gathered a couple of sets of photos on Flickr to show you how that went down.

More photos from Zürich party #5

More photos from Copenhagen party #2

If you want to know when the next parties are on, please sign up as a ‘fan’ on our Facebook page and you’ll get all the dirty details.

We wish you all a happy Easter, whether it’d be spending it with your family, friends or foes.

Copenhagen
What: Spoiled Milk / CPH #2
When: Fri. 03/04/09 – 2000-0200.
Where: Street Shop, Nørrebrogade 32, Copenhagen.
Sign up here.

Zurich
What: Spoiled Milk / ZRH #5
When: Thu. 26/03/09 – 1900-2300.
Where: Salento Gourmet, Zurich.
Sign up here.

(illustration by our gifted Creative Intern from Germany – Isabel Seiffert)

The Copenhagen version of Twestival will kick-off on Thursday 12th February at RUMMET (Republikken) at 19.00 – 23.00.

We were asked by @marks and @solberg, who are organising the event, to produce a poster – you can see the result below.

Twestival is a worldwide event taking place in 175+ countries where “twitterers” will gather to have some fun and raise awareness of charity:water.

It will definitely turn out to be a great event, so if you’re able to make it – even if you don’t really use your Twitter account – do come! Registration is necessary (including a Twitter handle), which you’re able to do here for free.

See you there!

Our party on Friday was our biggest yet! Thanks to everyone who came and made it such a fun evening.

There are some photos available on Flickr now. If anyone has any more, please add them to the pool.

More on Flickr.

We’re currently loading up the Copenhagen office with beer and DJ equipment for tonight’s fun-fest, but didn’t want to leave out our Zürich friends and clients, so we’re also announcing the third Spoiled Milk Zürich party on the 22nd of January.

Once again, there will be a cosy gathering with good wine, super food and live music. We’re also happy to announce that Palkomuski will be returning to entertain us.

Thursday 22nd of January from 19:00
Salento Gourmet, Pfingstweidstrasse 6

For more information and to sign up

I gave a presentation at last week’s Zürich Webtuesday on how to brand and customise an iPhone application without stomping all over the experience of using an iPhone. The talk initially focussed on laying down some ground rules on what to consider when converting an idea into visuals and how to use the UIKit components, before going through the code from our CITYGUIDE application and discussing our implementation of UITableViewCell hierarchies and how we achieved some of the features.

The event was really, really nice, thanks to the hard work and planning of Jonas Schnelli and Marc Ammann. The feedback we received afterwards was very encouraging and it was great to hear that a lot of people found it more useful that the recent day-long official Apple iPhone Tech Talk World Tour. Our next plans are to set up a full mobile developers group in Zürich. More news to be posted on this blog.

As promised I’ve made my presentation slides available below, although they are probably only useful to those who attended the event, as most of the content was in the dialogue and discussion. You can also download the full Keynote file complete with fancy transition effects if you’d prefer.

2008 was a very busy year for us. Not only did we grow from 5 to 14 people (including our wonderful interns), but we moved to Nørrebrogade, opened a foreign office in Zürich, launched our new website and discovered how much fun making iPhone applications is.

In order to celebrate all of the above, we are throwing a *p*a*r*t*y* at the spacious new Copenhagen studio on Friday, 9th of January 2009 from 8pm.

If that wasn’t exciting enough – Russell, Frederik and new managing director, David Luisi, will all be in town.

So come and enjoy (some) free beers, (some) free snacks and (lots of) free music.

We can’t wait to see you all again!

Vi ses snart vores danske venner!

Nørrebrogade 32, 2.
2200 Copenhagen
Denmark

Friday 9th January 2009, from 8pm.

If you’re on Facebook then sign up at the event.

Image depicts party in a previous location and is only a serving suggestion.

While the Copenhagen office is busy enjoying themselves with Christmas parties and cooking up rice puddings, the Zürich folk are arranging fun events for the whole community!

Webtuesday – Developing for Apple’s iPhone

Webtuesday is a great monthly get together of the web development community in Zürich and surrounding areas. This month’s topic is straying slightly into other programming disciplines and will be focused on an introduction to creating native iPhone applications.

The event will be hosted by inclue7 and has been organised by Marc Ammann (Liip) and Jonas Schnelli (include7). I will also be doing a segment titled “How to brand without ruining the iPhone experience”.

Tuesday 16th of December at 19:30
For more information and to sign up

The 2nd Spoiled Milk Zürich party

We are happy to invite you to the next Spoiled Milk Zürich party, where we will once again host a cosy gathering with good wine, super food and live music. This month’s band is Palkomuski. We hope to see you there!

Thursday 18th of December from 19:00
Salento Gourmet, Pfingstweidstrasse 6

For more information