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Above the Arctic Circle: Our Move Work Forward Offsite in Rovaniemi 2026

February 23, 2026
<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/business-team-brainstorm-idea-lightbulb-from-jigsaw-working-team-collaboration-enterprise-cooperation-colleagues-mutual-assistance-concept-pinkish-coral-bluevector-isolated-illustration_11667116.htm#query=collaboration&position=2&from_view=keyword&track=sph&uuid=21ea3c1d-7461-49c7-9157-5822c4372896">Image by vectorjuice</a> on Freepik

🌍 A Team from Everywhere, Together in Rovaniemi

Once a year, our fully remote team becomes very real.

This time, that place was Rovaniemi - deep in Finnish Lapland, just above the Arctic Circle.

We flew in from Ireland, Egypt, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Singapore, the US, and the Netherlands. Different time zones. Different accents. Different backgrounds. One company.

Move Work Forward exists across marketplaces, ecosystems, and continents. For one week, we existed in one snowy town at -20°C.

And it was perfect.

🏡 The Villa: Sauna Talks > Zoom Calls

We rented a cozy riverside villa - wood, snow, steam rising into frozen air.

Every evening followed a rhythm:

  • Sauna.
  • Hot tub under the stars.
  • Table games.
  • Long conversations that would never happen in a 30-minute calendar slot.

There’s something about a Finnish sauna that dissolves hierarchy.

Product, engineering, marketing, founders - everyone equal, everyone sweating, everyone laughing.

We spoke about:

  • The past year at Move Work Forward
  • What 2026 will demand from us
  • Antarctica
  • Arabic
  • Random facts nobody expected to learn

Remote work is efficient.

In-person time is transformative.

❄️ Cold. Wild. Unforgettable.

The agenda was full. Intentionally so.

  • Day and night snowmobile rides through frozen forests
  • Husky sled runs across white silence
  • Ice kart racing (more competitive than expected)
  • Forest hikes in air so crisp it felt engineered

All of it below -20°C.

Cold strips things down to essentials. You focus. You rely on each other. You laugh more. You complain less.

Shared discomfort builds shared memory.

And shared memory builds culture.

‍

🎅 Yes, We Met Santa

We also visited Santa Claus Village - because when you’re here, you don’t skip it.

There’s something poetic about discussing product roadmaps above the Arctic Circle and then crossing the line where the world officially becomes “north of normal.”

It reminded us why we build what we build.

We connect ecosystems.
We connect tools.
Most importantly - we connect people.

🤝 Learning, Showing, Building What’s Next

We ran Show & Tell sessions about:

  • What we achieved in the past year
  • What 2026 holds for us
  • New product directions
  • Lessons from customers
  • Random knowledge sessions that somehow made us smarter

Having Miro from Atlassian join us for a couple of days added another layer - perspective from the broader ecosystem we operate in daily.

Marketplace builders.
Platform partners.
Product obsessives.

It wasn’t a “corporate offsite.”
It was a builders’ camp.

🌐 Why This Matters

Move Work Forward is remote-first.

That means:

  • We hire globally.
  • We trust autonomy.
  • We optimize for output, not presence.

But once or twice a year, we invest in presence.

Because culture is not Microsoft Teams.
Alignment is not Confluence or Notion.
Trust is not a KPI.

Trust is built:

  • On a snowmobile in the dark hunting for the northern lights.
  • In a sauna at midnight.
  • During a board game that runs too long.
  • In conversations that don’t have an agenda.

🚀 Want to Build With Us?

If you’re reading this and wondering what it’s like to work in a globally distributed team that:

  • Ships across Atlassian, Microsoft, Google, Autodesk ecosystems
  • Operates like owners
  • Values depth, autonomy, and experimentation
  • And occasionally finds itself above the Arctic Circle

You now have a glimpse.

We don’t just build integrations.

We build momentum.
We build products people rely on.
This year - we built snow memories at -20°C.

If that sounds like your kind of team, you know where to find us.

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