AVOW Summer Week Highlights
It was the hottest week of the year in Berlin, and one of the best.
Most weeks, the AVOW team collaborates across time zones. This week was different.
Many AVOWers based outside Berlin flew in to spend AVOW Summer Week with the team at our Berlin HQ, in person. Teammates who normally work several time zones apart sat in the same room for a change.
The heat caught our traveling colleagues by surprise. They made up for it by bringing snacks from home to share, which felt like the right move regardless of the weather.
The Kickoff
The week started with the team settling in at Berlin HQ, suitcases still half-packed with local delicacies from home. People showed up with snacks and treats from all around the world, and the desks turned into an impromptu tasting table before anyone had even opened their laptop.
Familiar faces, new ones, and a few people finally putting names to faces after months of working across time zones. Simple, but the right way to start the week.
Breakfast at Berlin HQ
The team danced their way into the office for a special breakfast. Grazing table, good coffee, good company. Pastries disappeared fast, coffee cups got refilled more than once, and the office felt more like a kitchen table than a workplace for an hour.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast, and during AVOW Summer Week, we took that literally. It’s an easy thing to overlook during a heads-down deadline stretch, but a shared meal does something a shared calendar invite rarely does. It set the tone for the rest of the week: less about the schedule, more about the people filling it.
Parks and Beer Gardens
Some of AVOW Summer Week ran on its own rhythm, and that was the point. The team took time to enjoy what Berlin does best in the summer, trading the office for the city’s parks and beer gardens, including a stop at Holzmarkt right on the Spree. Long tables, cold drinks, and conversations that wandered far from work.
A heatwave is a lot more manageable when you’re sitting in the shade with your team, watching boats drift along the river and arguing over whose turn it is to grab the next round. These are the moments that don’t show up on a project timeline, but they’re often the ones people remember longest. A good team culture isn’t built entirely in meetings. Some of it gets built at a beer garden table in July.
Marketing Team Night Out
The marketing team swapped their screens for a different kind: Electric Social, Berlin. Darts, virtual fishing, shooting hoops, and a competitive streak everyone quietly had, then drinks and BBQ at Biermeisterei by Lemke to round out the night. High scores got compared, then immediately disputed, the way they always are.
It’s the kind of night that turns a group of coworkers into a genuine friend group, one round of darts at a time. The people you’ve spent a year exchanging quick messages with over a shared project suddenly have inside jokes, favorite drink orders, and stories that live entirely outside quarterly targets. That shift matters more than it sounds like it should.
Padel at Padel Neukölln
AVOW Summer Week made it to the padel court at Padel Neukölln, and it turns out the team has been sitting on some serious talent. The South American and Spanish AVOWers were suspiciously good from the first rally, moving like they’d played together for years instead of minutes. We’ll leave it there. 😅
Great time had by all, and already, people are looking forward to the rematches, along with the excuses everyone will bring with them. Padel might have started as a one-off activity for the week. Given the reaction, it may have just become a tradition.
The AVOW Summer Bash 2026
AVOW Summer Week saved the best for last. We took over Tabula Rasa tucked into the cool heart of Friedrichshain, for the AVOW Summer Bash 2026. Industrial setting, open air, BBQ, beats, and chilled drinks all night. String lights, concrete walls, and a crowd that stayed well past when the first songs played.
The dance floor filled early and stayed that way, with a foosball table pulling in its own steady crowd of challengers between rounds. Somewhere in between, AVOW BINGO made its debut, a card full of weird facts about members of the A-Team that had people wandering around trying to match names to secrets. It’s the kind of Berlin summer evening that reminds you why Berlin summers have a reputation. AVOWers who flew in from across Europe and other corners of the world joined the Berlin team to close out the week properly, and by the end of the night, it was hard to tell who’d flown in from thousands of kilometers away and who worked down the hall every day. That, in the end, was the whole point of the week!
Click! Click! Photo Gallery
From the dance floor to the kicker table to the AVOW Bingo, here’s a look at the AVOW Summer Bash in photos.
Join the AVOW A-Team
AVOW Summer Week 2026 was a week of good food, good company, padel courts, darts, beer gardens, and one very memorable summer bash. Strip away the itinerary, though, and what actually happened was simpler: a distributed team spent a week being un-distributed, and it changed the texture of how the group works together, at least for a little while.
If you’re looking for a team that values creativity, collaboration, and the occasional summer bash, check out our careers page.
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