MatterCon 2020 highlights the power of a remote community

As a remote-first company, we bring employees and members of our community together once a year at our offsite event, which is called MatterCon. 

MatterCon isn’t your run-of-the-mill conference—it’s more of a meeting of the minds where we’re encouraged to get to know the people we work with, share ideas with each other, and create together. 

Our co-founders Ian Tien and Corey Hulen decided to make Mattermost remote-first because it allowed them to hire from a wider talent pool while eliminating commutes and enabling the company to offer coverage across all time zones.

Since our staff live all over the world, we try to pick a different location for MatterCon each year. In 2017, we went to Las Vegas, in 2018, we went to Lisbon, Portugal, and in 2019, we went to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

MatterCon 2020 brought us to the beautiful Bahamas. Right before everyone was forced to stay at home to flatten the curve, we were lucky to get together with 170 attendees from 15 countries (including 7 partners and 9 community contributors) in Nassau to build a stronger company and community culture, increase alignment on goals, roadmap, vision, and leadership principles, and work together productively from the same physical location. 

Here’s a brief synopsis of what the event was like:

• Our management leadership team talked about FY20 and the company’s V2MOM for FY21 

• We defined our vision: Mattermost is an indispensable tool for software builders. We’re the command center for DevSecOps teams and everything they do.

• We held several department-level breakout sessions (e.g., R&D, customer success, and marketing) 

• We hosted a number of community-focused lightning talks 

• We ate a ton of delicious meals with our colleagues and members of the community

• We went “swimming” with pigs on the beach

It remains to be seen where MatterCon 2021 will bring us, but we’re looking forward to another unforgettable experience.

If you’re interested in making your way to MatterCon in the future, check out our job openings to see if there’s a fit. You can also follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our YouTube channel to make sure you’re notified when we announce our upcoming plans.

Stay tuned—we look forward to seeing you at MatterCon sometime soon!