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ESSENTIALS AT A GLANCE

The Venue
A collection of historic stone lodgings and a medieval fortress, set upon a steep, car-free island rising from a glacial northern Italian lake.
The Goal
To deepen cultural cohesion amongst an international network of core Python and AI data engineers during their second annual assembly on the island.
Industry
Data Science, Infrastructure Scaling & Artificial Intelligence.
Country & Region
Lombardy, Italy.
Producers
To deepen cultural cohesion amongst an international network of core Python and AI data engineers during their second annual assembly on the island.
The Goal
To deepen cultural cohesion amongst an international network of core Python and AI data engineers during their second annual assembly on the island.

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How a community of open-source builders came back to Monte Isola, and let a lake, a castle, and a karaoke machine do what a thousand Slack threads cannot.
By the time the first ferry from Sulzano cut its engine against the dock at Sensole, most of the Quansight team had already stopped checking their phones. That, more than anything on the agenda, was the point. Quansight is a consulting company built almost entirely on distance — a global bench of scientists, engineers, and open-source maintainers who write the code that underpins much of modern data science and AI, often without ever sharing a room. Co-founded by Travis Oliphant, a name etched into the history of the scientific Python ecosystem, the company's real infrastructure isn't a server rack. It's trust, built one merged pull request at a time, between people who rarely meet in-person.So once a year, Quansight closes that distance the only way that actually works: in person, somewhere far enough from a laptop charger that the work has no choice but to wait. For the second time, they chose the same small island in the middle of Lake Iseo — a quiet sign that the first visit had left a mark worth repeating.
Monte Isola
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82 Peoples
Monte Isola
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82 Peoples
Monte Isola
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82 Peoples
Monte Isola
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82 Peoples
Monte Isola
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82 Peoples
Monte Isola
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82 Peoples

BUDGET (€)

100K

DURATION

4 DAYS

GROUP SIZE

20
How a fleet of vans and a mortar and pestle achieved more than six months of calls

How a fleet of vans and a mortar and pestle achieved more than six months of calls

For years, the Campfire annual retreat followed a predictable, if beautiful, script: we went to the mountains. But by February 2026, the industrial air of Turin felt a little heavier than usual. The team had grown, the pace had accelerated, and the "Zoom fatigue" was real. We didn't just need a meeting; we needed a change of state. So, we traded the peaks for the coast, packed the core team into a fleet of vans, and headed south toward the Ligurian Sea.

“We didn’t know what to expect from the retreat, but it quickly became clear: it didn’t just bring the team closer, it created momentum we could feel after returning to work.”

CAMPFIRE COMPANY TEAM
CEO AT LOREM IPSUM
CAMPFIRE COMPANY TEAM

The first sight of the blue

The journey was designed to be a slow-burn transition. Before we even looked at a check-in desk, we made a tactical stop at Sestri Levante. For a team coming from the shadow of the Alps, the first sight of the Baia del Silenzio acted as a collective exhale. We sat by the water and shared our first meal: authentic Ligurian focaccia, famously the best in Italy. It wasn't just lunch; it was the first "nudge" to get the team to look up from their phones and at the horizon. Our destination was a deliberate choice. We wanted intimacy, not a sprawling corporate hotel where the team would drift apart in a sea of tourists. We found it in a secluded agriturismo perched on the Ligurian hills—a rustic, refined resort that offered the silence of the countryside but kept the Mediterranean firmly in view. It was the perfect "home base": far enough from the coastal noise to allow for focus, but close enough to smell the salt air.
The first sight of the blue
The first sight of the blue
The first sight of the blue
The first sight of the blue
The first sight of the blue

We’ve always believed that for the important stuff, less is more

Our agenda was sparse by design, built on the philosophy of “giving a powerful nudge and letting it cook.”
The first nudge was a Storytelling Workshop. We skipped the boardroom for a glass-walled space overlooking the waves, then split into teams with sixty minutes to script, film, and edit a one-minute video capturing the Campfire soul.
Terraces and olive groves became film sets, and the energy was electric. Distilling our mission into sixty seconds stripped away the jargon and revealed the heart of what we do. That night, the creative high spilled into a legendary Karaoke Night, where the last professional barriers dissolved in a chorus of badly sung ’90s hits.

Stone Mountains and Goals

By Day 2, the team was "primed." The "state" was right. We returned to our sea-view hub for the final formal session: the 2026 OKR Presentation. Because we had invested so much in connection over the previous twenty-four hours, the rollout of the new year's objectives felt like a shared victory rather than a top-down mandate. To give those goals some literal perspective, we spent the afternoon hiking the famous Carrara marble mountains. Trekking through the massive, blindingly white quarries—the same stone Michelangelo chose for his David—provided a sense of scale and history that no office could ever replicate. We ended the night as all good stories should: gathered around a campfire with drinks in hand, letting the day’s strategic clarity settle under the stars.
Stone Mountains and Goals
Stone Mountains and Goals
Stone Mountains and Goals
Stone Mountains and Goals
Stone Mountains and Goals

We’ve always believed that for the important stuff, less is more

Our agenda was sparse by design, built on the philosophy of “giving a powerful nudge and letting it cook.”
The first nudge was a Storytelling Workshop. We skipped the boardroom for a glass-walled space overlooking the waves, then split into teams with sixty minutes to script, film, and edit a one-minute video capturing the Campfire soul.
Terraces and olive groves became film sets, and the energy was electric. Distilling our mission into sixty seconds stripped away the jargon and revealed the heart of what we do.That night, the creative high spilled into a legendary Karaoke Night, where the last professional barriers dissolved in a chorus of badly sung ’90s hits.

The Genoa Finale

The drive back to Turin was no mere commute. We turned the return leg into a grand finale in Genoa.The team split to navigate the "Caruggi"—the city’s labyrinthine, ancient alleyways—and to master a culinary challenge.In a hands-on masterclass, half the team crafted traditional trofie pasta while the other half prepared authentic pesto using Carrara marble mortars—a tactile callback to the mountains we’d climbed the day before. Success depended entirely on synchronisation. We eventually converged for a final feast under the Italian sky, eating the very meal we had prepared together.
The Genoa Finale
The Genoa Finale
The Genoa Finale
The Genoa Finale
The Genoa Finale

The Curated Pivot

We transitioned the team from their usual mountain setting to an intimate agriturismo, proving that a home base environment is the key to deep connection.

Logistical Choreography

We managed a multi-van road trip with complex rotations in the heart of historic Genoa, ensuring the travel felt like a perk, not a chore.

State over Frameworks

By dedicating 80% of the time to play and 20% to high-impact work, we achieved total alignment on the 2026 Roadmap without a single moment of retreat fatigue.

"We returned home with more clarity on our 2026 goals than if we’d spent the whole trip in a boardroom. When the team feels open and connected, the right conversations just happen."

CAMPFIRE COMPANY TEAM
CEO AT LOREM IPSUM
CAMPFIRE COMPANY TEAM
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