Hi all! Following in-comment discussions in Samuel’s retrospective document for the 2026 coworking week and internal discussions we’ve had over the years, I’d like for us to talk honestly about how we experience OpenCraft work trips in general — not to complain, but because there are a few recurring questions and frictions that deserve a proper conversation. It’s also an opportunity for us to get clarity on what can realistically change and what won’t — which I think is very valuable in itself.
Over the past few years we’ve heard things come up quietly — around meal costs, bill splitting, accommodation setups, the physical toll of long-haul travel, and how mandatory trips interact with our contractor arrangements. Some of this surfaces every year, which I think is a good sign that we should be raising it.
I also want to be clear that this comes from a place of appreciation — we’re well aware of the unique perks we have working here. Maybe some of this is nothing, and I could be wrong about how widespread these feelings are — but I’m genuinely curious to hear how the whole team sees this, including people who’ve never raised any of it before.
(edit) in the retrospective we also discussed the idea of adding a section in the Handbook to set expectations for newcomers, or act as a reminder for old timers!
Here are a few general questions we can discuss (feel free to contribute):
What’s working well about how we do retreats and conferences?
What consistently creates friction or feels unsustainable?
What would a better setup actually look like?
recurring questions/comments that I get privately pretty much every year:
Aside the fact that it’s in our current contract, would OpenCraft consider covering our meal expenses or at least a daily allowance? It’s an industry standard, it wouldn’t be very expensive overall, and it would make a significant difference in my experience and appreciation of this mandatory work trip.
The coworking trip is very expensive for me given that we’re not paid to be there, and we usually work less than our regular weeks
Will I get fired if I can’t make it to the conference? Attendance is written into our contracts — but what does that mean in practice? What are the legitimate reasons to opt out, and what are the consequences if someone can’t or doesn’t attend?
What’s working well: a lot ! Overall I think OpenCraft work trips are a very positive experience. We rarely get to see one another, and spending some time together working and doing activities has a positive impact on most of us. We’re all nice people and we like to see each other Personally, I always feel recharged when I come back from an OpenCraft work trip. And yes, I will do my very best to attend next year
Now for the friction points (takeaways are in bold, sorry for the walls of text):
Accommodation: a growing number of people are voicing privacy/personal space concerns about Airbnbs. Hotels could still make sense where they’re not significantly more expensive or where no good coliving option exists, but overall I think coliving spaces should be our default whenever possible. They offer a shared kitchen for cooking together (and cheaply), proper workspaces, individual rooms, and real security infrastructure. I think they address many recurring friction points without forcing us to choose between the original intention of the coworking week (spending time together), the community feel of an Airbnb, and the professionalism of a hotel. I’d love for coliving to be the first option we consider when selecting a location and to potentially influence which locations we consider in the first place. I’m sure Xavier will agree with this ;)
Splitting bills: people would love to split bills individually to avoid paying for other people’s (more expensive) choices. In some countries this is possible, but I think it’s the exception rather than the rule. Xavier indicated that anyone can access the original bill and adjust their individual amount in Splitwise. It’s better than nothing, but it puts the burden on the person who’s already uncomfortable. If you’re budget-conscious or feeling financial strain, you’re now also the one who has to quietly go back and reduce your share after the fact. That takes a kind of social confidence that not everyone has. All that said, we don’t have many options here — requesting separate bills where possible, and otherwise adjusting your amount in Splitwise, seem to be the only recourse for now.
Meal costs: obviously we’d all prefer to have a daily allowance for meals, even a modest one. Can we afford it out of pocket with our rates? Sure. Can we write off meals as business expenses? Yes. But having meals covered — at least in part — is industry standard, and it would meaningfully improve the trip experience, especially for those most disadvantaged by exchange rates.
Eating out vs. cooking: there’s a mild social pressure to eat out, as it tends to be the group’s default. It would be good to put more emphasis on the fact that it’s perfectly fine to cook — whether as a shared meal or on your own if you need to recharge. People should feel comfortable saying so.
Physical toll of long-haul travel: this year, the coworking week and the conference were on opposite sides of the globe. For those attending both, that meant two separate long-haul trips, significant jetlag, and for a lot of us it meant a lot of travel time for a few days of coworking. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East made things even harder this year, disrupting a number of travel plans. There are obviously many factors at play when planning these trips, and we can’t optimize for everything — but it might be worth identifying our priorities explicitly, so that travel burden at least gets weighed alongside cost, location preferences, and timing when we make these decisions. That said — and this was voiced by a few of us — our team is spread across the globe, which meant travel time this year was actually reasonable for quite a few people. This is also important to consider.
I feel like these two go hand-in-hand. You could make the stipend based on expected grocery costs (with some padding) to make it clearer that cooking is encouraged. I’ve had some really nice cozy nights in with team members where one of them cooked a meal for the house that is something I wouldn’t get back home. It might not be the local cuisine but it’s still a valuable exchange. I’ve also cooked meals for others and have been told that they plan to try the recipe at home.
This one is a big one for me. One of my most miserable times during the last few years was the flight back from South Africa, where I couldn’t sleep at all and happened to have digestive trouble. I know I don’t have the worst of it. Many years team members from India are flying way further than I am most years. Kaustav’s flight path between the conference, coworking week, and getting home was a complete circumnavigation of the globe this year!
Some notes in the handbook already exist about allowing for fewer layovers if they’re laborious, but it gets difficult to hit the ‘buy’ button on the ticket when you feel worried the total might be so high that reimbursement is refused and have to carry that cost. I don’t know how realistic a fear that is, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been given pause. So some assurances and better parameters would be helpful.
I’d like to echo strongly that the coworking week should at least be nearbyish to the conference to reduce the total jet lag and maximize the time we get on the weekend between to hang out and do things. The weekends were fully eaten this time around with travel, and a lot of our big group activities happen then. I ended up going to none of them aside from meals this year.
Thanks for starting this discussion. I think it’s useful to talk about this openly, especially because a lot of these points can feel awkward to bring up individually.
First, I want to say that I think OpenCraft trips are super valuable. It’s a cool perk and I’m grateful to be able to travel and see the world. It’s also really nice to meet team members from different parts of the world, have in-person project discussions, and do activities/meals together. I haven’t been able to make it to all the trips over the years but every time I’ve come back from one, I’ve felt that team spirit improved and that communication with each other became nicer because we now knew the human behind the remote coworker. Annual meetups/retreats are also common for remote teams, so I do understand the value and intention behind them.
However, there are a few parts of the current setup that I find difficult:
The biggest one for me is accommodation. I don’t think Airbnbs should be the default for mandatory work trips. They can be considered when there aren’t many hotel options, or if they’re run more like hotels/aparthotels with predictable standards. I don’t know enough about coliving spaces to comment strongly on them, but I can see how they might be useful if they provide proper workspaces and mean we don’t have to look for a separate coworking space. My main concerns are shared bathrooms, lack of privacy, and safety. Since we work remotely, we don’t meet or hang out with each other during the rest of the year. Sometimes we may be meeting someone for the first time during a coworking week, which means that in practical terms we are still almost strangers. Having to live together and share bathrooms in that situation can feel very awkward and uncomfortable, especially when we don’t really have a choice in the matter. For mandatory trips, I think a private bedroom and private bathroom should be the minimum expectation. To me, that feels like the normal baseline when a company requires people to travel for work.
On meals, I like the idea of a per diem, especially when travelling somewhere where food costs are high. As for cooking vs eating out, I think this comes down to personal preference. I personally haven’t felt pressure to eat out, but I usually like eating out when I travel because I get to try local cuisine/delicacies. It also reduces the stress of figuring out what to cook, accommodating everyone’s dietary choices/restrictions, buying ingredients, and so on. Cooking for a group is a whole other ballgame compared with cooking for yourself. A possible middle ground could be to have a few planned shared meals during the trip where everyone helps, but otherwise leave meals up to each person’s preference.
I also agree with @Fox about the physical toll of long-haul travel. Ideally, the conference and coworking week should be geographically closer together.
The mandatory attendance part is probably another aspect that I’m not super comfortable with. Attendance is written into the contract, but since most of us are contractors and not employees, and since the company is not necessarily liable in the same way if something goes wrong during the trip, I think people should be given the option not to attend if they are uncomfortable. I understand that the original intention behind putting this into the contract may have been noble. But the handbook says that team members who joined before 2018 are encouraged to attend the conference, but not strictly required to, whereas for others attendance is listed as an expectation. That can feel unfair if some people effectively have more choice than others. This becomes especially difficult when trips are in far-away or unfamiliar locations, because people may feel forced into situations they are not comfortable with. A per diem would at least act as some reasonable compensation for the burden, but I still think the trips should be optional. If in some years most people choose not to go, then maybe that is a sign that it would be better to skip the trip that year.
Personally, I find it hard to get much regular work done during the coworking week. For conferences, we at least have allocated conference hours and the expectations are clearer. But during coworking weeks, we’re working in different conditions and schedules than usual, plus there may be planned activities, travel fatigue, and general disruption to our normal routines. In-person collaboration is definitely useful, but I think expectations should account for the fact that we may not be able to work regular hours during these weeks. Maybe that means some activities are treated differently, or maybe it simply means setting expectations clearly with clients and epic owners in advance that coworking weeks are not normal working weeks.
I think these are all great points - let me add my 2c.
I’d also like to echo this first up! It was great to meet so many of you in person, and it was a fun location to explore.
100% agree. This would also make things a bit more equal, considering that meal cost (especially eating out) over a week or more is significant, and varies greatly relative to each member’s home country.
Even a reasonable small-ish stipend as @Fox suggested would be appreciated.
Agreed. I’m fine with long-haul travel, and understand coming from Australia that most places are a long trip. However, choosing to add another long-haul trip in between the conference and the coworking week adds an excessive and avoidable amount of extra travel. If I had attended the conference, it would have been something like 6 unpaid travel days plus the associated packing, jetlag, recovery, etc. for a 2 week event. That feels like a deal-breaker to me. Kudos to those who did endure that kind of travel this year!
Although it sounds like this kind of situation was a once-off, and we wouldn’t plan to do that again.
This was a real concern for me this year, although it turned out that due to the circumstances this year, conference attendance was kind of optional for everyone in the end.
Yep also given me pause. I was careful to present the flights I’d found to @gabriel on the ticket to confirm it would be fine before purchasing.
Yeah I also felt pulled in two directions - on one hand there was work to be done with looming deadlines and I couldn’t afford to take too much time off, but on the other hand there are all these unique opportunities: colleagues to hang out with, activities to attend together, a new country to explore. A hard problem, and probably one common to most kinds of work trips. Next time I’ll consider taking some days off after the event to have time to explore on my own time.
I think in general the points raised are relatively minor and can be addressed. I’ve put forth some grumbles, but on the whole the trips feel sustainable to me and I look forward to the next one.
Just noting that I’ve shared the feedback with Axim that knowing the conference location, dates and speaker acceptance as early as possible makes planning a lot easier for us
I’m generally okay with long flights since they are a given if I want to travel to many of the places I want to go. However, keeping the conference and co-working close-by should be a requirement. I can’t imagine the stress of travel for someone taking a 20+ hr flight one weekend to get to the USA, and another 20+ hr flight the next weekend with a busy week in the middle.
Nowadays even a seat selection generally isn’t included in the ticket price. I think we should clarify what kind of seat upgrades are okay. Often selecting a comfier seat isn’t that expensive but I generally not opted for that or done it at my own expense.
I completely agree!
While I didn’t have any issues with sharing a room or bathroom last year, I do feel that putting people in that situation makes it uncomfortable for them to express any issues they face since we all have to work together.
The first conference I had, the AirBnB didn’t even have a lockable bathroom! So we had to have a shared policy of leaving the bathroom door open if it wasn’t in use. While there weren’t any incidents, it was a constant discomfort.
In the 2018 conference we had a meal where @antoviaque, I and a former colleague (Rocio) all met at the market, picked up groceries and cooked together at the AirBnB. I still look back to that fondly! I would love to have more of those.
On the other hand in the co-working in Columbia I had to cook for everyone, and it was quite stressful! So I agree it’s probably better to have smaller scoped shared meals. This was another fun thing last year though I didn’t cook as much.
I am part of the pre-2018 batch, and while I’ve never wanted to skip any year’s meetup entirely, I also don’t like the idea of making this mandatory. My understanding was that even with mandatory attendance, life situations and other obligations could override this requirement.
I’ve often done this, but even with this there is some conflict with the leave policy. Given that for most places I need to apply for a visa and plan well in advance when I’m going and coming back, I often take a week or more off afterwards. However obviously this is going to be somewhat first-come first-served since only 2-3 people can be off at the same time. I don’t know if it’s worth putting a policy in place for this.
I was about to reply to a comment thread in the document, but I’ll share my thoughts here instead for easier access. My two cents on having to cover our own meal costs:
The line between what’s covered and what isn’t just feels arbitrary. Food is just as much a direct cost of being required to be somewhere as a flight or a taxi. We’re all contractors, so all of this can potentially be written off as a business expense. The point is: you don’t eat out in Da Nang by choice — you eat out because you’re in Da Nang because the company required you to be there.
Meal reimbursement during business travel is essentially universal in most professional contexts — it’s highly unusual not to cover it.
So, knowing that Xavier/OpenCraft has time and again been very generous and understanding on money matters, I’m curious to know what the exact rationale is for specifically not covering meals. I guess what bothers me is that I don’t really know the reasoning – or perhaps I just don’t remember it ;p. And after 9 years here, I know for a fact that OpenCraft is not a cheap company ;)
Since these trips are mandatory for most, IMHO the conditions should reflect that — half-measures tend to create more frustration than having a clear policy either way.
That said, I’m glad we’re having this conversation — I’m sure some good improvements will come out of it!
I couldn’t have put this in better words, I highly resonate with what @pooja said.
Yes, I have had similar experiences. I loved what @kshitij prepared in Bogota and the fruit tasting afterwards. I have also had similar experience with @tecoholic specially where we have kitchen big enough to accommodate multiple people and it becomes a social activity. I love those moments and times.
I have had this confusion so it will be really nice to have a clear answer.
I have the same confusion as others here and I agree with the point raised here. I have not much to add except:
The yearly trip is a perk I really appreciate. I have been to a different country/continent every year for the last 3 years, that I wouldn’t have done otherwise.
And secondly, this.
After the first trip, I literally could hear the person’s voice when reading JIRA comments and things that felt awkward and stilted before, felt very natural afterwards. Almost as if you are talking to them. So, I am hugely in favour of doing this every year.
Mandatory Travel: However, I did miss it in 2023 because I had a newborn baby at home and couldn’t make it. It was a bit of a stressful situation and @gabriel really made it feel easy. I think, I just asked him on the JIRA ticket.
I think that was a fair amount of resistance when opting out. i.e., talk to a human being and make the decision based on situation instead of it being completely optional or mandatory. Because I can see myself reading “optional” flag as a default of “opt-out” in the first year on OpenCraft. I didn’t have a personal bond with anyone until I actually met them, and I am remote worker who worked from home all the time. I feel, I would have found a reason to avoid traveling. Maybe other newcomers would probably be on the same boat.
Now it feels silly to say it out, because I am familiar with the faces and enjoy spending time with them.
Flight Reimbursements:
Wait.. what? Reimbursement can be refused?
Food and cost: Thanks @farhaan. I feel the same way. I have had a good time cooking and sharing meals the last 2 years, I did miss it this year. While I am happy to just eat anywhere, the costs in France did give me a pause. Multiple people have outlined this in detail. So, I simply want to say it would be good to have a meal allowance.
Visas: As an Indian living in Australia, this has been a pain every year. For the South African visa, I had to fly to Canberra and spend about a day and $500 AUD, just to submit the application. French Visa had me looking for a slot everyday for over a month and was able to get one on the “Emergency” category literally 3 weeks before travel. While a lot of this is out of the hands of OpenCraft and highly dependent on personal situation, I suspect many of the team members spend a considerable energy in getting Visa sorted. It would be nice to have an official policy regarding this, as there is often loss of work time and extra costs involved.
For clarity, I don’t recall ever refusing a reimbursement. That said, when available, we have proposed alternatives that were cheaper than the originally planned flight.
Indeed, this is an easy one for me to agree with There is a reason coliving spaces are structured like that, as it helps to reduce the friction of traveling and sharing a location with others.
Though note that there are variations even within coliving spaces - some share bathrooms or even rooms, at times. I agree that it’s nicer to have all our own rooms, though sometimes it has been helpful to call for volunteers when the space was tight - but I would try to avoid it and keep it voluntary. For the bathrooms, this could be something that can be requested individually? It has historically been fine, but some places are better than others for sharing that.
Btw it might be worth noting that when we were going to hunt our own airbnbs, we could pick one more aligned with our own needs - it might be worth giving a chance to those who would like to to join the locations selection search, so they can do their own search and participate in the initial review? It was likely already possible, but it could be worth advertizing, and making sure people can opt-in.
Maybe we could make this the default process, and encourage it in the coworking week guide? I had started adding a picture of the receipt to my Splitwise entries by habit from other Splitwise groups I participate to, but we haven’t really tried it for our trips. We could ask everyone to do the same for the expenses they cover, to ensure everyone is aware? It could still be up to each person to go and update it or not, but we can explicitly show that it’s OK and expected to go and update an expense’s share.
There are lots of things that the tech industry considers standard and which go against OpenCraft’s values and approach - self-management, open-first approach, asynchronousness, fully remote work, remuneration… and, yes, the approach to trip expenses, too.
Rather than requiring team members to come work at the office every day for the whole year, OpenCraft is able to function while requiring only two weeks of “office” attendance per year - a pretty good deal imho compared to the rest of the industry. Since that means that during those two weeks we need to get everyone to commute across the entire world, and that this is (very!) expensive, the deal since the beginning is that OpenCraft covers the flights to the location, the accommodation, and one team dinner, and that the rest is covered by individual team members. It’s a small contribution comparatively to what OpenCraft pays overall, and it’s one which has always been part of the deal about the conference/coworking attendance.
Unlike in most company retreats, it’s really just about being there during work hours and the team dinner - the rest of the time, it’s like the people going to the pub after the office, it’s up to each person. Outside of working hours, we are free to live the way we want. The approach comes from ensuring we would avoid forced socialization! If OpenCraft starts to give meal allowances, inevitably strings would end up getting attached to it - like meals/locations being decided by organizers rather than individual members, having to join the group for each paid meal, etc.
To keep pulling the thread on this, I’ll also add that one of our foundational principles is that our “rate must be chosen in a way which factors in all costs”; that includes paying taxes, accounting, provisioning for vacation, and paying for meals with colleagues - which is part of why you can expense it. The reason for that approach is to split more cleanly the responsibilities between the structure and the team members, and place more of the responsibility and decision-making with each team member - aka the do-ocracy of open source. Rather than OpenCraft deciding on specific benefits or conditions for expenses approvals, there is an overall generous budget attributed to each team member for predefined responsibilities via a good hourly rate, which can then be fully discretionary.
When the bill of a restaurant comes in during the coworking week, the effect of the core principle might not be as nice as getting invited would, but please remember that it has also related consequences that are very nice. It’s worth keeping a core principle free of exceptions as much as possible, or they progressively lose meaning.
Yes, definitely! I think we really need to make sure we have good options for cooking in the places we stay in (which again advocates for going to coliving spaces).
Also I’ve noticed that when we arrive somewhere, what we do at the very beginning can really influence the habits the rest of the stay. Maybe if we planned a cooking activity for the first or second day there, that might inspire us afterwards?
If you ever face that dilemma, a good solution is to submit the flight you have found to Flightfox, asking them if they can find something better and/or cheaper with your constraints. They don’t always do, but they often do for complex routes or tricky situations like avoiding specific routes, and the trips are reviewed before being booked there. That has worked for several people this year (including for me). Another approach is simply to ask the organizer, Gabriel or me.
+1! Hopefully next year the conference will be in a location suitable for the coworking week - or at least close to it. I’m sure this will factor in any survey we will do then
That is true, that is unfair and I apologize for this. I should have thought of putting it in the initial contract, but I hadn’t realized at the time how important seeing each other at least once per year would be, nor did I suspect how many people would end up not coming without the contractual requirement. To try to make it equal across the team now, there would only be two options:
Make it optional for everyone, but then even less people than now would attend - I know how to run a company seeing each other only two weeks per year, but I don’t know how to run one without that regular face to face time.
Make it mandatory for everyone - but then it requires adding a requirement for people who didn’t initially agree to it when they joined. Companies do this kind of unilateral changes to contracts all the time, but I think that in this case the least unfair is the current grand-fathering approach.
It’s in the contract, so just like any of our rules, going willingly against it and refusing to correct the issue could end up getting someone fired yes - but I can’t imagine it would get that far for that?! Having to be in a location only 2 weeks per year is pretty rare in the first place, I don’t know many companies who require less - maybe some freelancers, but even then there are usually clients to visit or conference to attend…
As for reasons to opt out, it’s really hard to think of everything that can go in the way of attending - so it has been more on a case by case basis, basically I review each reason individually, and I don’t think I have been very harsh there? Or have I?
I think this would be the best option. It avoids saddling the person covering the bill with a big accounting exercise, makes it clear what the expectation is, and normalizes the adjustment work.
I think one issue this is complicated by is that when the conference is in an expensive location like the US, we don’t bring everyone, and if Axim is slow on giving us approvals, we don’t even know what we need until the last minute. This was the case this year, and so I had to hand Gabriel the booking ticket like a week or two before we had to be there, and there wasn’t a lot of time to get people’s buy-in or input. Focusing more on coworking spaces where we can get them is probably the best mitigation we can do at the moment, which we’re already aligned on.
Unlike in most company retreats, it’s really just about being there during work hours and the team dinner - the rest of the time, it’s like the people going to the pub after the office, it’s up to each person. Outside of working hours, we are free to live the way we want. The approach comes from ensuring we would avoid forced socialization! If OpenCraft starts to give meal allowances, inevitably strings would end up getting attached to it - like meals/locations being decided by organizers rather than individual members, having to join the group for each paid meal, etc.
I don’t think this quite follows. If every person is told ‘up to $x per day is covered’ or ‘up to $x is covered for the whole trip’, then it’s just a matter of turning in receipts. No additional strings need to be attached to that. Basically it could work similarly to how we do now-- say we have a big elective meal at a restaurant. I choose to pay, and it happens to blow all or most of my meal budget. No big deal, I’m paying on the spot and turning in that receipt, and my stipend is exhausted, but someone else is paying next time.
If I decide to cook for myself, I go to the grocery store, and turn in that receipt instead. And even if the meal stipends WERE required to go to the group thing (which I would strongly recommend we not do, since that would 1. break the vibe, 2. make more organic splinter groups on a particular day harder to do 3. basically encourage a de-facto schedule) team members would still be able to pay for it out of pocket if they really wanted to do something different. Again, though-- I’d suggest just making it some flat allowance to turn in receipts for later.
I get the idea here, but there are a few things that don’t quite sit right:
Yes, the costs of the flights and accomodation are covered by OpenCraft, but the travel is still a mandate. If OpenCraft was offering the travel but you had the option to say ‘no’, then not having any stipend would be a great deal easier to swallow. It’s a deal I’d take almost every time.
The costs of meals in an unknown country are difficult to factor into your rate to start with. While we have improved the tools we give to onboarding team members to help them think of expenses, it’s not obvious what they should put aside for this (or that they should do so at all-- they may not realize this is an expense they’d have to cover, since it’s not industry standard). At the very least we should add in a line item to the default worksheet that estimates what kind of costs we’re expecting, even if it’s not perfect.
Life circumstances can change year to year to where you have to shift your internal budget, and a rate that was ‘good enough’ one year is ‘just getting by’ another. The mandate forces a difficult prioritization for some team members.
By that logic the coworking weeks should be optional. I don’t think we really want it to be optional, though, since even though there’s a good bit of working one’s self up to it, the benefits are tremendous, and it’s only a week (or two, with the conference.)
I’m not expecting any stipend to be generous if we have it. And I’ll be OK even if we don’t. But I get the feeling it’s harder for other team members, and they may not be willing to speak up about it, which is why I’m pressing here.
Good to know-- this might be something to clarify in the handbook. I need to go through this thread and collect the ideas and put them in once conversation settles.
I don’t think you’ve been unfair here. From what I’ve seen you’ve been quite understanding when attending would be a true hardship, personally risky, or legally infeasible.
I wouldn’t expect that. I’ve been in situations elsewhere where the company would have a policy to cover up to a certain amount per meal. You could completely make your own choices - you just had to send your receipt for reimbursement. If a single person paid the bill for a group, then they’d be able to list the others who were there and get reimbursed for the whole bill.
This resonates with me. It’s easy to say we should factor it all into our rates, but our rates are not negotiable after joining. So we’re still personally paying for anything we forgot to (or didn’t need to) factor in years ago. My situation now is very different to where I was 7 years ago.
I don’t want to complain, because I enjoy working here and the rates are decent. However, I would feel less put out for these cases if I was able to check in once a year perhaps to have a conversation about the rate. It would be nice to have the opportunity to put forward a case for adjusting the rate - eg. “my currency’s exchange rate means my rate has effectively dropped by X% and I would like to factor in Y for the year ahead, and would appreciate a Z% rate increase”.
Here are a few takeaways and comments on the topics discussed here:
Accommodation
Let’s prioritize coliving spaces when possible, knowing that private bathrooms are a strong benefit. Definitely +1 to opening up the location/Airbnb search process to whoever wants to participate, rather than it being handled by just one or two people.
Splitwise / bill splitting
Let’s make receipt photos the default practice, documented in the coworking week guide, so it’s normalized rather than an individual habit some people happen to know about. It’s also OK and expected to adjust our own share.
Food
Cooking should be normalized — this ties back to the coliving point above. We could also plan a cooking activity early in the trip to set the tone for the rest of the stay.
Flight booking
Don’t hesitate to ask for help! Flightfox is great for finding better/cheaper routing when things get complex.
Mandatory attendance
It looks like we’ll keep the current “grandfathering” approach, which seems to be the “least unfair” option. I think we should build a list of what constitutes an acceptable exemption, even if they’d still be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. And to respond directly to your point, @antoviaque — the question of potentially being fired does come up every year or so, but it’s true that this has never actually happened, and on the contrary, we’ve generally been accommodating for serious situations that prevent someone from attending.
It’s true that making attendance optional for everyone risks fewer people showing up — but IMHO that risk is partly a function of how appealing the trip currently is. A meal allowance and more private rooms wouldn’t just be “nicer”: they’d directly address some of the reasons people might be reluctant to attend in the first place. The overall challenge is to make the trip itself more enticing.
With regard to a potential meal allowance:
This is a fair point, and probably the reason most of us don’t fret too much over paying for our own meals.
Also, I’m glad we’ve made progress on the bill-splitting item, as it addresses a good chunk of the fairness concern people raised.
Given how open-minded we generally are about expense decisions, I don’t think this is really about cost — it looks like a question of principle. A daily allowance of, say, €40/person would run to roughly €10-12k for the trip. Not negligible, but not a huge sum relative to what OpenCraft spends elsewhere. I think the morale gained would outweigh the cost by a wide margin. If the underlying objection is one of principle rather than price, that would help me understand the decision much better.
We already give a discretionary allowance for local transport, and nobody decides for us how or when to use it. Meals don’t need to be different — it’s the same “fully discretionary” model you’ve described, just applied to another travel cost.
That said — is there any openness to this, and if so, what would change your mind? Or is this simply not happening, in which case I’d suggest we put it to rest and move on.
At the beginning, maybe not, but over time things like this do influence how much agency everyone has - like for the accommodation, where it pushed us to book things for the group, for convenience and price, because OpenCraft covers it.
Also I was just providing context for the original reasoning when establishing the contracts, to allow to understand why it was structured like that back then. At the end, the current split of costs for conference+coworking is part of the contract, accepted by both parties: it has been the deal from the start, and we are not going to start changing it.
For the conference&coworking trips, the agreement is that OpenCraft covers transportation & accommodation, each team member covers the rest there. Changing this is equivalent to changing compensation; and that is something which is done only through team wide raises of hourly rates. Those are meant to include these kind of concerns - OpenCraft already tries to pass on good business outcomes through raises (and sometimes even when the business is not so good).
Yes, definitely, thank you! Even though I’m saying no to the reimbursement of meals, the rest of the suggestions and measures look good. The discussion has definitely brought up lots of useful improvements and clarification, it will be useful to make sure we implement them for next year.
For having had these discussions in other more traditional employment contracts, I really disagree. They might occasionally allow to adjust something, but these custom adjustments add politics (eg pleasing those who decide, doing “visible” work, etc), they eat a lot of energy and time, they disadvantage people who don’t dare to ask for raises, etc.
The idea with OpenCraft’s approach is that it’s better to have good rates and only team-wide raises, rather than a collection of benefits and individual advantages decided by the company.
So same thing here, the deal is to only to adjust remuneration through team raises. It might not be perfect, and there are other systems – but that’s the one we operate with, and it’s not a bad one?
We can definitely start such a list - maybe documenting some of the reasons we have accepted and refused so far? I would still keep it a case by case review, but that can help getting an idea of it - which might actually help reassure about the approach there.
Exactly, this is about principle.
That said, 10-12KE is not a negligeable increase of the conference/coworking budget either. That budget is one to lower, not to raise - at 100KE+/year it’s already a huge expense for OpenCraft, and not one that we can keep adding to.
Personally, I always feel recharged when I come back from an OpenCraft work trip. And yes, I will do my very best to attend next year 
There is a reason coliving spaces are structured like that, as it helps to reduce the friction of traveling and sharing a location with others.
Even though I’m saying no to the reimbursement of meals, the rest of the suggestions and measures look good. The discussion has definitely brought up lots of useful improvements and clarification, it will be useful to make sure we implement them for next year.