K&C Turns 20! Celebrating Our Anniversary Together And With Special Thanks To All Customers Past, Present & Future!
Any ideas what happened 20 years ago in 1999? Quite a few things that will make you feel old!
- The euro made its debut
- So did SpongeBob SquarePants
- Bluetooth was invented
- Apple released its first laptop – the iBook.
- USB flash drives appeared
- The first Blackberry phones were released
- The Matrix was showing at cinemas
- Napster launched
And if all that wasn’t enough, 1999 produced one more gem – Krusche & Company (K&C)!
Yes, it’s a whole 20 years since a young and dashing Michael Krusche was kind enough to lend us his name! And to mark the momentous occasion of our 20th anniversary as Munich’s favourite IT services outsourcing company, we of course had to celebrate.
So celebrate is exactly what we did over the weekend of August 16th to 18th when all 3 of the nearshored K&C offices (Krakow, Kiev and Sofia) converged on our Munich headquarters. We wanted to show our appreciation of all the hard work K&C’s wonderful team has put into the past 20 years of growth and development by bringing them all together to treat them to some good old Bavarian hospitality.
It was also a great opportunity to get colleagues from different offices together. The digital age has made effective communication at a distance a possibility and that’s great. But there is always something that little bit more special and personal that only face-to-face communication and interaction brings to the table. So we hoped 3 whole days together would really help strengthen the ties between the individuals from the different K&C offices and mean that communication is even better over the months until the next meet up.
Creating a balance between fun, partying and professional value is always a challenge. Buuuuut…. we think we pulled it off! Let’s see what we got up to as we prepared for the next 20 years of K&C powering our partners’ digital transformation and supporting their IT services needs!
Day 1 – We March on Munich!
With the local team waiting beyond airport security to greet them, all three nearshored offices arrive at Munich airport on Friday morning like clockwork over a single hour – no flight delays and not a single person set their alarm wrong, forgot their passport or even had their t-shirt on inside-out despite everyone having to be up at between 3 and 4 am. That’s already quite an achievement with so many people travelling so early! K&C precision at its best!
At K&C we really make the most of an international talent base and are nearshored tech talent centres are crucial to us being able to recruit the best people – those who have driven our success these past 20 years. But we are also proud of our Munich and Bavarian roots and identity. So it seemed fitting to start our weekend together with a city tour.
That was hungry and thirsty work, especially with everyone having started their day so early. Which meant a quick pit stop was in order. And there’s only really one way to feed and water a hungry and thirsty group at the end of a tour of Munich – to take them to one of the city’s iconic beer gardens! So we made our way to the Chinese Tower Beer Garden found in the leafy surrounds of the Englischen Garten – a stone’s throw away from Munich’s Old Town.
We’re hard workers at K&C but with a 3 a.m. start, most of the team had already had a 10-hour day by this point. So it was time to make our way to our base for the weekend and spend the rest of the day relaxing by the Ammersee Lake – a large, beautiful glacial ‘finger lake’ around 45 minutes from the centre of Munich that boasts the stunning backdrop of the Alps in the distance.
We thought most of the team would jump at the opportunity of a free window of a few hours to put their heads down after a painfully early start. But no….straight out to enjoy the Bavarian summer sun and Ammersee! That’s the K&C spirit!
We did have to squeeze in a little welcome meeting after the downtime and took the opportunity to walk everyone through the 20 years of K&C history that lead up to our anniversary celebration in Bavaria. Some of the current team have been with us for almost 10 years but only Mr Michael Krusche himself has all 20 under his belt. So it was fascinating to hear from him the full journey from the company’s birth working on a single Sparkasse Bank IT project to today’s reality where K&C teams work across a myriad of projects for partners like Bosch and some of Germany and Europe’s most exciting corporations and SMEs.
A long first day was rounded off with a stroll to a fantastic BBQ restaurant a little further along the Ammersee shore where our own private BBQ chef made sure we all left with our bellies full and eyes drooping!
Day 2 – Lego And Piracy On The High (Amer)sees!
To say Saturday was an action packed day would be something of an understatement. We wanted to arrange some great team activities that would not only be fun, engaging and help team members from different K&C offices get to know each other better but also offered some professional value.
After breakfast, our morning activity was LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. If you’ve never tried or even heard of this facilitation methodology you have to check it out if you’re ever looking for a great team building event that focuses on creative thinking and communication. It can be used to help teams explore all kinds of concepts and ideas and together with our great facilitator Anna Donato (highly recommended if anyone in the Munich area want to do some LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® with their own team) we chose to angle our session towards thinking more about the relationship between our client, their problem, our process and the final solution.
As well as really making us all think more from the client side of any technology problem K&C team members might be tasked with solving, the Lego session was a huge amount of fun, taking us all back to our childhoods. And it would appear some K&C kids may have been more talented with the Lego building blocks than others! 🙂
And there was no let-up in our schedule after an enjoyable lunch. Next up was another walk along the Ammersee shore line to where our next activity had been prepared for us – raft building.
This one was pure teamwork. Which was just as well as, not mentioning any names, not everyone displayed a natural talent for DIY. Within half an hour it started to become obvious which K&C stars might face a struggle with an IKEA flat pack J . But luckily there were enough budding Robinson Crusoes among us to get the job done and we celebrated by taking our hard work out on the lake and enjoying the afternoon sun from the water while getting some exercise paddling our masterpieces of nautical engineering around the Ammersee.
Again, the raft building and sailing was tough work so refreshments were in order. And since, after all, we were here to celebrate a birthday anniversary, and not just any old birthday but a 20th birthday, there just had to be cake and champagne. So cake and champagne it was. Cheers! And a very Happy Birthday to us! 20 years of K&C!
From here on in it was time to relax and just enjoy spending some time together and strengthening the bonds that we’re sure will see K&C off to a great start for the next 20 years. And of course, the end goal of our strength as a company is achieving the best results for all of our clients.
It’s you, the K&C partners of the past and present that we owe the most to and who have made the biggest contribution to the last two decades of our company’s enablement of digital transformation. And fresh from our weekend together in Munich and on the shores of Ammersee, we’re all reinvigorated to make the next 20 years even more of a success for K&C. And the only way to do that is through our enablement of your success! So thanks again to you, the customer, and everyone that has contributed to K&C over the years since our first steps back in 1999. And see you all again soon!
