Base’s 10th birthday celebration

Originally posted on our ‘Base’ Medium account.
In September 2019, Base became Passenger.

This year, Base turned 10. We are phenomenally proud to have reached such a milestone in a climate where startups often struggle to make it past the two-year mark. Naturally, we wanted to celebrate in style. To Base, that means shotguns, hot tubs and fun-sized battlebots…

The first day of the Base 10th anniversary celebrations started with the team heading into the office to meet up and prepare to set off — only to be greeted by a nice surprise: travel sweets, a unique lego character tailored to each member of staff, and perhaps most importantly, an exciting agenda…

The team was led to a white van where Finance Director Andy was waiting to whisk them away on a journey across time and space. (Well, across Bere Regis and Ilminster…but still technically true.)

Before long we found ourselves cast into the middle of the Devon wilderness, with a hungry Matt and a rambunctious Marcin in tow…

…who soon found some peace and quiet in which to comfort one another.

After a strict safety briefing, everyone was raring to get going — we were here for the thrill of the hunt. The epic battle of man versus…er…clay pigeons.

And what a hunt it was…

Every member hit the mark on numerous occasions, but the pointers provided to Alex by our resident shooting experts seemingly worked wonders, as he was annoyingly good at shooting clay things out of the sky. (Seriously, who gets three double shots in a row? We suspect performance-enhancing substances.)

For some, the horror was too much. Luke was shell shocked by the experience.

And here’s the survivor’s photo. The Base team, enthused by an afternoon of shooting things, and mostly hitting them!

We left the shotguns to cool and, with an impressive casualty count of 0 humans to 189 clay pigeons, we got back into the van and left for our next location: the beautiful Beaverbrook barn, hidden away off grid, deep in the heart of Somerset.

Here, we were greeted by plenty of nice surprises, chiefly among them, Base goodie bags packed with treats — including sweets, a personal message from Base’s founder Tom, fun games for later in the evening…

…and, slipping from past to present for a brief diversion to the Base offices; a Base-branded glass, immortalising the features of each and every team member:

Back to Beaverbrook. Because no one wants to be the party host stuck in the kitchen we took the lovely Heather Brown, caterer supreme, along with us, who ensured we were extremely well catered for…

As both a reward, and by way of resting our shotgun-bruised shoulders, we took some time to enjoy the facilities of the stunning accommodation, including hot tub relaxation, sauna and the punting of inflatable pigs in the pool — that is of course until we broke them. We really can’t be trusted with anything nice.

The day took its toll harder on some than others. Beau took some alone time for deep reflection on the events he’d witnessed only hours before.

While Matt found another way to help himself relax/forget.

As the sun set, the suits came out. We’re all class here at Base, or so we like to tell ourselves. All except those who refused to wear socks and shoes indoors. Can you spot them?

And then it was on to a delightful evening of good food, good company, speeches and champers.

The remainder of the photos of this evening are either too blurry, or quite frankly not fit for sharing. You probably get the idea from this one sample…

You may also notice that some members of the team immediately dropped their suits in favour of their “Drinking Pyjamas” the minute dinner was done.

On to day two.

…trickier for some more than others.

Thankfully, our fantastic caterer Heather was on the case.

With a belly full of food, we could face Wednesday’s main event. Bigger than Ali vs Frazier. Wilder than McGregor vs Khabib. *Pause for dramatic effect* It was the Base Lego battlebot tournament.

It all started with Lego. Lots of it.

No really…lots of it. And all of it courtesy of the excellent Brick Solutions Team Building.

Split into four teams, we got to building.

We witnessed some extremely impressive technical wizardry. From diminutive killing machines with 360 spinning blades of death, to red brick battering rams that opted for brute force over subtlety and an impressively designed flip-flopping racer that could operate even when inverted — until its engineers were forced to add a tower of wheels to its bodywork, for reasons I’m told were to meet weight regulations and not, as first assumed, as some kind of tribute to the origin of transport.

Despite the innovative engineering and wheel placing occurring, some were still struggling to overcome the ravages of the night previous.

Nevertheless, soon it was ride or die time.

Let the wars begin!

Still images simply can’t do justice the scenes of devastation and chaos that played out before our eyes. Thankfully, a video of the event is in the works.

With the battle complete, and an undefeated champion crowned, it was time to focus on lunch. Thankfully, we had an amazing Nordic-style BBQ hut and an experienced team of back-garden chefs to hand. It was the the ideal way to spend the final hours of what was a perfect two-day celebration.

Come the end, we were sad to leave our little bubble of fun hidden away in the hills of Somerset, but reality beckoned, and while everyone chipped in and did their bit to load the waiting vans and cars, Chris went for a final dip in the hot tub…and who can blame him.

Looking back, now a week on, it was an amazing trip, spent with a truly awesome team. It’s the first time we’ve done anything of this scale, and what better excuse than our milestone birthday!

In its 10th year, Base is larger than ever and we continue to produce some truly exciting work over at Passenger. We’re proud to remain true to our values in finding time to get together and relax amid all the hard and rewarding work.

With everything we’ve achieved in the last decade, we’re excited about what we can accomplish in the next one. We’ve plenty more ideas up our sleeve and we continue to look for good people to help us deliver them. So if the above looks fun to you, be sure to get in touch with us to tell us where you think you can add value.

Here’s to another 10 years of Base.

See the full photoset (yes there are more) over on our Flickr.