What happens when a fully remote team meets in person for the first time

When a fully remote team meets in person for the first time, you might expect it to feel awkward. In 2024, Openprovider, the sister company of Sevv, brought 70 colleagues from over 15 countries together in Dubai, and for many of them it was the first time meeting in person. Within hours they were laughing, talking and helping each other as if they had shared an office for years. It did not feel weird. This is what happened, and why it worked.

Why the team went to Dubai

Openprovider turned 20 in 2024, and the company marked it by bringing everyone together in Dubai. This was before Sevv existed. What the team experienced on this trip was one of the reasons Sevv was created afterwards.

Openprovider went fully remote in 2020. People in a few cities could meet locally, but most of the team knew each other only from Slack messages and scheduled calls, and many had worked together for years. For a lot of them, Dubai was the first time meeting in person.

What the organisers worried about

The nerves were mostly about logistics. The worry was whether everything would run smoothly and whether everyone would arrive on time. With 70 people travelling from over 15 countries, that is a reasonable thing to worry about.

A more subtle worry sat underneath. These were people who had worked together for years through a screen, and it was possible that meeting would feel awkward and the energy would feel forced. Flights and rooms can be organised. People cannot be organised into liking each other, and nobody could know in advance what years of Slack had actually built.

First meetings and first hugs

There were first hellos and first hugs between colleagues who had worked together for years and never met. People who had only ever known each other through messages and scheduled calls started talking, joking and taking pictures together, and they helped each other.

It did not feel weird or awkward to meet so many people and, surprisingly, it felt as if everyone already knew each other.

What the team had been doing all along

The reason was the amount the team already did together, and still does. Openprovider puts real effort into small, repeated social rituals, and almost none of them need an office.

There are weekly coffee chats. The format has changed over time. At first each chat put three people together, mixed across tech and non-tech teams, so that colleagues who would never share a project still shared a conversation. Now it is two people, picked completely at random, so anyone can end up talking to anyone, whatever their team.

Every quarter there is a pizza and quiz event. Employees get an allowance to order pizza, and the team plays an interactive quiz built for the occasion. The questions cover the company, colleagues, cultures, fun facts, hobbies and pictures, and the quiz is different every time. A quiz about colleagues is a discreet introduction. A colleague's answer about a hobby is a good reason to message them afterwards. Colleagues who live in the same city also meet up or work from the same place each quarter.

Repeated often enough, small things add up. By the time the team landed in Dubai, many people had already talked to each other, seen each other's baby pictures at quiz events and learned about each other's favourite hobbies. Dubai was the first time they did it in one room, and the habit of talking was already there.

What the programme looked like

The trip mixed play and work. There were team-building activities, including dragon boat races, along with sightseeing and a desert safari. One day was a company conference day, with talks about the company, brainstorming sessions in mixed teams that brought together people who might not usually work together, and team photos. The trip ended with a gala and dinner.

A dragon boat race is hard to do alone, and a brainstorm with colleagues from other teams is a different kind of work from a call. Both give people something to do with each other, and doing things together is a quicker route to knowing someone than small talk.

What years of remote work builds

Remote colleagues also build a kind of familiarity without noticing. You learn who answers a question within a minute and who answers an hour later with something better. You learn whose messages are careful and whose are quick. You see how people behave when a release goes wrong at six on a Friday, and how they respond when a colleague asks for help. That is real knowledge of a person.

What was missing for all those years was a face to put with the name, and a way to start a conversation without a reason. In Dubai both arrived at once. Colleagues had years of shared history to talk about and, finally, somewhere to do it.

It also explains why a first meeting can move so quickly. You are never starting from zero. There is the outage everyone remembers, the project that nearly slipped and the colleague who always has the right link. Meeting in person gives those stories a face and a voice, and the conversation has material to run on from the first minute. The risk with a remote team is rarely that people dislike each other. More often nothing gives them a reason to talk.

If you manage a remote team, our guide to managing remote employees covers the day-to-day habits that build this familiarity on purpose.

What a screen leaves out

A video call carries words and faces. It drops almost everything else about being near someone. In an office you notice who is at their desk, who looks free and who is heading to the kitchen. You can start a conversation about nothing, because nothing is a perfectly good reason when the person is standing right there.

Remote work removes that. Every conversation needs a reason, and most need a calendar slot. Even people who like each other end up talking only when work gives them a reason to. Picture a standup where four of six people never unmute. Nobody is unfriendly. Nobody has a reason to speak, and nobody can see that the person on the next tile would be glad to hear from them. That is a structural problem, and it has little to do with how friendly the team is.

Dubai changed that for a few days. Everyone was in the same place, so being together took no planning. Being in the same room did the work, and the connection that years of messages and rituals had built finally had somewhere to go.

The problem was never the people

Remote teams are often told to try harder. Turn your cameras on. Join the Friday quiz. Say more in the channel. The advice assumes the team lacks the will to connect.

What happened in Dubai pointed the other way. The will was there, and so was the goodwill. Seventy people from all over the world had spent years being good colleagues to each other, and it showed within hours. They had everything except a shared room.

The conclusion at Openprovider was simple. Remote work works. What people need is a space to come together, have fun, brainstorm and get to know each other.

That matters if you run a remote team and sometimes suspect your people are disengaged. They may be perfectly willing and short of somewhere to be willing in.

How to tell whether your team is ready

If you are wondering whether a first meetup is worth the cost, look at what already happens online. Look for people answering each other's questions without being asked. Look for jokes in the channels that other people reply to, and for public thanks when a job goes well. Those are small signs that a team likes each other, and a team that likes each other online will usually like each other in a room.

The reverse is worth knowing as well. If the channels are silent, a trip will not change that on its own, and it is better to find out why first. None of this needs a survey. Ten minutes scrolling through a busy channel will tell you most of it.

If you are planning your own first meetup

A few thoughts for anyone about to do the same.

Start the small things first. A weekly coffee chat costs almost nothing, and it does the groundwork that a trip then builds on. Teams that already talk to each other arrive as colleagues rather than strangers.

Put your effort into logistics. Travel times, arrival days and who needs what are the parts you can control. Share an arrivals list early, so people know who else is landing and when.

Mix work and play. Openprovider's trip had a conference day with talks and mixed-team brainstorming, and it also had dragon boat races, sightseeing and a desert safari. Shared activities give people a starting point for conversation, and shared work shows them how their colleagues think.

Leave room for the unplanned. The scenes from Dubai were conversations, jokes and photos, and those happen when people have time. Expect some people to be quieter than others. That is true in any office, and it is fine.

Why a trip is not enough

Most remote companies solve this with an offsite. Once or twice a year the team travels, spends a few days together and goes home. It works, and it has two limits. It is expensive, which makes it rare. And whatever closeness it builds has to survive the return to the same channels, the same calendars and the same silence between meetings.

Smaller meetups help. A quarterly lunch or coworking day for colleagues who live in the same city costs little, and it means a few people always have someone to see. The rest of the team still has no equivalent, and the people in other time zones are usually the ones who feel it most.

Travelling together is worth doing. The harder question is what the rest of the year looks like.

Giving a team that room every day

Nobody can fly people from all over the global to the same place every Tuesday. Dubai showed what changes when people share a room, and it left an obvious gap on every other day of the year.

That experience was one of the reasons Sevv was created, for remote teams in the same position. Sevv is a virtual office with desks, meeting rooms and social spaces, in your browser. You can see who is around, and proximity audio and video means you hear the people near you and nobody else, so you can walk over to a colleague the way you would in a real office. It will not replace a trip like Dubai. It gives a remote team a place to be on an ordinary day, so the connection they have built does not have to wait for a flight.

In Dubai, the connection was already there. It needed a room.

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