All-team photo from MG Marketing East in Kolkata India with our web development team

Web Development Summit 2019

What an epic week! Adventurous, relationship-building, productive, and yes exhausting. Turns out traveling to the other side of the globe to visit your web development & technical team will really do a number on your sleep cycle. But it was all worth it and we’d do it again in a heartbeat!

Our Web Development Summit 2019 was about building relationships and elevating the level of execution across the board for our digital projects moving forward. Cameron and I started the week with a last-minute desert excursion during our long layover in Dubai. Sand, four-wheelers, camels, and Arabic food – game on! Then it was on to Kolkata to meet up with our technical team at MG East. My business partner, Tarun and I have been working together for over six years and this man is a cornerstone in the success and growth of our business together. His team is experienced, technically savvy, and most important, committed to greatness – on everything from proper code structure to the final go-live of beautiful websites and mobile apps.

Day-by-Day in India

Our first day was all about reviewing existing projects and meeting new teammates – we’ve grown in this area of the business and the technical team is now over 70 members strong. Old faces, new faces, and good times together as one team.

Day two was full speed ahead with a training session covering the latest in mobile app technology. Native or hybrid? React, Swift, Kotlin – when it comes to apps, technology moves fast, so the only way to stay current is to dig in and train. I couldn’t be prouder of our technical team for bringing us up to speed on the latest app technology for both iOS and Android.

Day three was back to the grind, working side-by-side on client projects and new web-apps. We have some exciting new services and tools on the horizon – stay tuned here. The leadership team also went out for a unique lunch at a Mogul restaurant. The Mogul’s are an ancient tribe tucked away in the mountains of Afghanistan and northern India. Their food is an eclectic blend of Arabic and Indian, and definitely adventurous – only recommended for those who like to stray from the “meat & potatoes” beaten path.

That night just as Cam and I were headed to bed, a group of dogs started barking out in the street. After about 15 minutes of non-stop commotion we decided to peek out over the balcony to see what was going on. Sure enough, a cow was wandering down the street and the dogs were wild over this. You’d think stray dogs would be used to roaming cows in India, but I guess not!

Day four was a whirlwind – wrap-up jam session on mobile app training, open website project reviews, and some brainstorming for upcoming projects.

Sightseeing & Team Building

As if we had not packed enough into the week, Cameron and I had more plans. Before leaving, we spent our travel day doing some sightseeing with a few guys from our management team. The history of Kolkata is rich and vibrant. Everyone knows India was once a colonial territory of Great Britain, but did you know Kolkata (spelled Calcutta by the British during their reign) was the capital of India at that time? We visited the Victoria Memorial building which was the capital building and a market to browse the local scene. My only regret was not having more time – we could have spent a week just sightseeing.

An epic trip indeed. I am extremely proud of the entire team, starting with my friend, Cameron. He quickly won the hearts of our technical & web development team in Kolkata and that alone was worth the trip. Then when you stack on top of this, all the training, team-building and productivity – it was a big week for MG Marketing! Here’s to the next Dev Summit!

Check out our favorite pics from our web development trip here!



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