The end of each year presents a unique opportunity to look back and reflect on all that we've seen and done at X-Team over the past twelve months. And it's been such a busy year! Here are some of the key things we accomplished.

X-Outpost

First of all, what a year it's been for X-Outpost. X-Teamers traveled to no less than nine exotic locations around the world, to work hard while exploring the unique areas of our planet. X-Team covers accommodation and any X-Teamer can take a +1, so it's a no-brainer for anyone who loves to travel 🌍! In alphabetical order, here are the destinations we traveled to, with a few links to more detailed posts on them:

  • Brazil
  • Colombia
  • Crimea
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Scotland
  • Serbia
  • Spain
  • Turkey

X-Babies

The X-Team community grows in more ways than just new hires. This year, we've had the joy of celebrating seven new additions to the families of X-Teamers πŸ‘Ά. Congratulations to all X-Teamers with their newborns!

Fit Quests

In August this year, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of Fit Quest: quest games on Slack designed to get people moving. Walk, work out, and hydrate to defeat enemies and win rewards!

This year, we organized five Fit Quests, including our first ever competitive one, where X-Team was split in two (the Outlaws vs the Settlers) and both teams had to fight out their differences.

  • The Wild Frontier (theme: Wild West 🀠 - competitive)
  • Space Quest (theme: space πŸš€)
  • 21 Nights (theme: zombies 🧠)
  • Battle for Gold (theme: fantasy 🏹)
  • The Dungeon (theme: dungeon run πŸ‘Ÿ)

Events

While doing research for this post, I quickly realized that the X-Team community had organized so many events it would be a fool's errand to list them all below.

There were so many initiatives: a wine club, a photography club, a fine dining club, a yoga club, Quake III tournaments, programming contests, open-source collabs, fireside chats, screenshot challenges, and more...

The list can go on. X-Team makes it very easy to start a new community on Slack and find at least a few other people who are interested in joining it.

This being said, some events stood out and are worth listing here:

  • The Town Hall halfway through the year, where big announcements were made, new Vault items were added, and awards were given out to valuable members of the team.
  • A React workshop with React-router creator Ryan Florence.
  • MeetJS in PoznaΕ„, Poland: a huge conference for front-end developers where X-Team was the main sponsor.
  • A Reason + ReasonReact workshop with Patrick Stapfer.
  • The Forever Fearless Christmas Party, our ridiculously fun end-of-year Slack event.

Charity

This year, X-Team made it easier for people to donate to charity. Since January, X-Teamers could use their bounties to donate $50 to a charity of their choice.

And give we did: tens of thousands of dollars, in a near-continuous stream throughout the year that peaked in December, when we organized the 12 Days of X-Mas charity drive.

We want to help unleash people's potential, and giving to charity is one of the ways we do so.

2018 has been a fantastic year for X-Team. We want to thank every X-Teamer for creating such a vibrant community that motivates, supports, inspires, explores, and so much more. Thank you for all the energy and the love πŸ’Œ.

Enjoy New Year's Eve 🍾. We'll see you in 2019 for a lot more adventure.