From Slack to the Slopes: Inside ZayZoon’s 2026 Winter Camp

The doors opened to ZayZoon’s Winter Camp, and Darcy Tuer, in a light blue sweatshirt, sat at the piano in the corner of the room as our team walked in. They slowly meandered over to the bar and didn’t even realize the music was coming from the Co-founder and CEO of ZayZoon, who was happily playing the keys in his usual stoic focus and passion.

We were about to kick off three days of intense connection and learning, and a huge dose of fun. “Were we going to hit the mark?” were the loudest concerns in my head. 

My purpose in life, if you’ve worked with me, is to solve complex problems beautifully. And in tech companies, the biggest problem most leaders face is how to get outsized performance from people who use their brains, and fingers, to create value.

What I’ve learned in my career is you can pontificate on this for days, hours, and weeks, but without true relationships and friendships in the workplace, no amount of structure will solve the lack of connection.

And so, ZayZoon Winter Camp was born, with a goal of creating the environment to build authentic connection through shared adventures, experiences, and learning. 

Why we chose to do it this way 

Firstly, coming together as a collective company is not new to ZayZoon. In fact, the founders have done it for years. We made a strategic decision to skip 2025 and recalibrate the date with the start of the year, which would have a higher impact. 

ZayZoon retreats in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 2023 and 2024

Secondly, ZayZoon is a fully distributed workplace. We have a Calgary location, where locals come to the office for in-person interactions and high collaboration, but 90% of our company never sees one another in real life. So if my point of view on those relationships is true, we have to create space(s) throughout the year for those moments to click. 

Third, this time of the year works for ZayZoon on two fronts. The first, which was stated already: we start our year with the calendar, hence the kick-off theme. It’s also that time of the year where all our partners and customers are doing the same reset. Our emails and phone calls are quieter, so it’s just a natural fit where we can bring everyone together. 

Lastly, as we scale, we’ve surpassed the milestone of 200 souls at ZayZoon. It’s easy to forget names, lose touch with leadership and so forth. We know though, we’re all just people on the same mission: to save 10 million workers 10 billion dollars. 

This was the ultimate get-to-know-everyone opportunity, and that we did. 

The experience: Three days that changed the room

One of my personal principles is to treat employees as highly capable, resourceful, and responsible adults. We’ve spent all this money to get them to a beautiful part of Canada that most people only wish to see. We weren’t going to stick them into a windowless conference room during blue sky days.

What we did was organize a variety of thoughtful activities that they could self-sign up for. This created an environment for authentic, organic shared experiences. This included: skiing, ski lessons, snowboarding, snowboard lessons, tubing, snowshoeing, pottery, needle punch, paint and mediate, yoga, sound baths, and fireside (literally) chats with our founders and senior leadership team. Again, all in the theme of vintage winter camp, especially throughout the day.

We then threaded in our shared experiences around those peak daytime hours. We had a keynote at 7:30 am on “the ONE thing,” which was a great kickstart to our content. Then in the evenings, we spent time bringing everyone through some company history, our 2026 product road map, and our go-to-market strategy.

This was followed by our organizational priorities and how those all lined up with each other and in concert with our 2026 bonus plan. We also did a company-wide workshop on taking “the ONE thing” into action on both a work-related topic and personal.

I was struck by how everyone leaned in, showed up, and engaged in each session—whether it was in questions, comments, activities, and conversations during breaks and at the bar. I had countless times I personally had to ask people to stop talking so we could continue—what an amazing problem to have!

There was a moment though, that I was so worried about psychological safety. Were people going to pretend through the days or were we really going to create those authentic human connections? I guess it’s never that binary, but my gut tells me we as leadership showed up as authentic, human, and open to connection too.

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What this reinforced about my purpose

Bringing together those three ingredients: adventure, shared experience and learning was the right recipe for success for us. During those bright days, memories and photos poured into our event app and through Airdrops everywhere. Those connections were growing by the plenty. Every bus load of people offboarding with tired bodies but smiles on faces were small proof points: we got some of the Winter Camp right.

We were very intentional about our company ZayZoon content—to have a strong narrative from beginning to end, to bring those new Zoonies along and steeped in our Koolaid, and to fill the hearts of those who have been at this for years. I believe our role in leadership is to provide context, in addition to purpose, to employees who can take that information and make better and informed decisions when no one is there to help. Ultimately empowering them.

No one in our leadership team knew what to expect from “the ONE thing” workshop. And so, no one could coast through it. We recommitted to our personal values, and in doing so, created a beautiful stage to have conversations that typically don’t make it to your weekly one-on-ones. Furthermore, we got pretty granular, trying to work back to a daily or weekly activity that would bear the largest fruits to success. It wasn’t perfect, but it was practice, at scale.

At minimum, it gave us all a common language, 200 people reading and then doing the work for 3 hours, and now we have a new way of prioritizing and focusing ourselves. Most companies, and even more so, most HR people, wish for this type of transformation. They worked on it for years, and we did it in 45 days or less. While it’s too soon to tell if the impact will be felt, at least, for the most part people enjoyed the session.

From energy to action: What happens next?

So, what now?

Geez, it’s not that simple I guess. Firstly, we now have 200+ team members who want to align themselves to our goals for the year with vigor. The wildest part is they now have those relationships, friendships and connections to lean on when the dependencies start flying across time zones on Slack and Google Meets.

We as leadership owe them the respect to follow up on what we’ve set out to do, report back and continue to course correct as the year progresses.

We also need to continue to create these spaces, even virtually, where the new hires who didn’t get to camp can join this atmosphere of connection. We have some things already in the books, and some things up our sleeves, but also, we got to know that this time and money were well spent on Winter Camp.

Final thoughts and gratitude

Firstly, this event was a labour of love. I have two people who did the lion’s share of the work, and then two more as strong backup dancers. During the actual event, wowza—it was a team effort—and everyone rolled up their sleeves, filled their champagne flutes with prosecco, and got down to building boxes, stuffing pillows, and so much more.

I’m particularly proud that we supported so many small and medium-sized local businesses in Canmore. They reflect so much of our actual clients and customers we serve; it was a genuine honor to do so.

If I were to give words of encouragement or wisdom to someone on this journey, I would say, don’t underestimate the small details (see swag pack below), and document this for yourself and those attending. These are truly magical moments that bleed between personal and professional. Rather than talking about the “good ole days” and making it seem exaggerated, document it and simply show it. With that. I leave you this video—I hope you can feel all the feels I do when I watch it.

Major thanks to all the people and companies we worked with (in no particular order):

• Event planner: Brittney De Paola from Inspire DS / Team Retreats Canada
• Our favorite root beer from The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company
• Pottery from Crock-a-Doodle
• Videography by Dave Gravy
• Photography by Pam Doyle
• Bevvies & cider from Wild Life Distillery
• Non-alcoholic bevvies from Tuesday Brewing
• Maple Taffy from the Maple Station
• Accommodations and hotel from Coast Canmore Hotel
• Transportation from Signature Charters
• The One Thing Keynote and workshop with Produktive
• Printing with Print Calgary
• Swag through Creative Promotional Marketing Agency
• Decor & Balloons by Erica Woods at Party Haus (one of our very own team members!)
• Mount Norquay Ski Resort
• Banff Sunshine
• Wellness sessions with Etana Wellness
• DJ Services through Pez Productions
• AV through Encore
• Bloom to Fruit Alchemy
• Allfly flights