Airtame

Published on: Oct 8, 2019

Exciting new ideas often start with a tight-knit team who work side-by-side to bring a shared vision to life. But all successful companies must expand and that often means bigger teams, more voices and even cross-border communication. We caught up with Airtame to find out how Catchbox is helping to maintain engagement and encourage closer connection within a growing international team.

Encourage Flow in Collaborative Environments

Have you ever been so caught up doing something that you lose track of time? Sometimes we lose ourselves in tasks or activities that captivate our attention to the extent that we barely register what’s going on around us. This state of complete concentration and engagement was coined ‘flow’ by Hungarian Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. When in ‘flow’ ideas come naturally, creativity is commonplace and most of the time, you thoroughly enjoy what you are doing!

Increasingly, our days are filled with distractions and loss of focus. Whether in the boardroom or the classroom, we often find it difficult to keep full attention on the task in hand. A recent study found that the average American touches their smartphone 2617 a day. Whilst we might like to tell ourselves otherwise, most of us can’t help checking our notifications at work or scrolling under the table in class – even when we know we shouldn’t.

In businesses and educational settings, loss of focus poses a significant barrier to achieving flow. Airtame strives to minimize time lost to disruption through its innovative screen-sharing solutions. To achieve flow, we need to get caught up in the content, not the tech setup. By breaking down some of the barriers that arise when we use technology – waiting for the right cable in a meeting, having to walk to the front of the classroom to share your work – Airtame help businesses, school and universities encourage flow and inspire engagement.

Staying connected: The Challenges of a growing team

Airtame was founded in 2013 and has since gone from strength to strength. Having started out as an intern in those early days, Simon – Now a Product Manager – has seen the company grow from 15 employees to globe-spanning team of over 100 individuals, with offices in Copenhagen, New York and Budapest. Despite this expansion, Simon believes the company retains a family-like atmosphere by encouraging fluid collaboration between employees. One of the best ways Airtame do this is through their monthly all-hands meeting, when all employees tune in and share developments across the company.

Whilst video-calls and live-streaming have certainly made distances shorter, bringing together 3 offices and several remote-workers is certainly still a challenge. Having played a key role in implementing the all-hands setup, it remains Simon’s responsibility to ensure everything runs smoothly. Simon’s goal is to ensure all team members feel as close as possible, regardless of where they are.

Using Catchbox to open up the conversation

“Before Catchbox, I tried everything” Simon explains. “Some solutions worked for a while, but we still felt there was a distance between those in the room and our colleagues elsewhere”. As Airtame grew, Simon found it increasingly difficult to ensure every team member could play a viable role in the all-hands meeting. ” We were using USB mics for a while – but they still needed to be passed around the room. The time lost in this process is magnified when you are on the other side of a screen. Simon needed a solution that could minimize the gaps between content and keep everyone engaged. That’s where Catchbox came in!

“I first saw Catchbox at an event in Amsterdam. I had a chat with some of the lovely Catchbox team and realised that this is what we needed for our All hands meetings. Within weeks, we were using Catchbox regularly. The setup was super easy and stress-free.” Simon was particularly drawn to using a throwable wireless microphone as a way to eliminate time lost to ‘mic-travelling’ in meetings. When using Catchbox for the first time, he was hugely encouraged by the positive reception from colleagues and management. “When our CEO first saw it, he picked it up and threw it like a basketball! Now when we use it, people always seem to be smiling and enjoy making a catch. It also feels like everyone is more willing to speak up and get involved. You can feel the room is more engaged and that can only be a good thing.”

Crucially for Simon and Airtame, it’s not just in the meeting room where the benefits of using Catchbox are being felt. ‘Our New York Office – who have previously suffered a lot from poor audio quality – immediately asked me what the new set up was. It was such an improvement to what they had been used to.’ Airtame now also have a Catchbox in Budapest and Copenhagen too!

What would be your recommendation to other Catchbox users?

‘If your company does something like all-hands or town hall meetings, I would recommend going for the Catchbox Plus with the Presenter Mic. We keep the presenter mic at the front of the room and pass the Catchbox between the audience. It gives us a great balance and also allows for seamless transitions between presentation and conversation.’

For the all-hands meetings, Simon uses Airtame’s own products alongside Catchbox to minimize disruption and encourage collaboration across the organisation. “We find the combination works really well for us internally, so we would definitely recommend using both products to Airtame users in businesses and schools!’