How we’re infusing Conga culture in our remote work

As the world began to take precautionary measures against the COVID-19 pandemic, Conga, like many companies, sent its teams home and initiated a mandatory work-from-home policy.

With a culture like Conga’s, for many people, this was a shock to the system. Our teams work collaboratively, and without the ability to pop into someone’s office, engage in hallway chats, or catch up over lunch or the occasional ping pong match, the team quickly began to miss the usual level of camaraderie we typically enjoy in our global offices. To help stay connected, we started a work-from-home channel in Slack to share our home work spaces, the antics of our at-home ”coworkers” (which mostly consists of pet photos), and how we’re all passing the time while isolating at home.

One particular group was especially missing our open mic nights, which we recently started holding in our Broomfield headquarters, so they began discussions around a way to do a remote open mic night—which then evolved into the group writing and producing an original song. They chose a topic on all of their minds—this “new normal” of working remotely, and crafted lyrics that covered some of the characteristics of remote work we’re all enduring “Until We’re Together Again” back at the office.

Conga uses GoToMeeting to host our video conference calls, so this group came up with the idea to use GoTo to record and produce the music video for their song. 

So far, the group hasn’t officially declared themselves a band, but it’s probably only a matter of time. The talented participants include:

• Bob Pinkerton, CFO, on the keyboard
• Dan Johnson, Director of IT, on electric guitar
• Claire Wood, Recruiting Coordinator, on vocals 
• Matt Beshany, Senior Solutions Engineer, on bass guitar
• Joe Whiteley, Solutions Architect, on acoustic guitar
• Ken Asher, Technical Director of Security and Compliance, on drums