Last week, we held our half-year team meeting to revisit the major milestones from the first six months of 2026. At the end of the day, we traded slide decks for chef's knives at a hands-on cooking workshop in Utrecht, joined by Aldo from Idox, a long-time Global Campus partner, who jumped right into the kitchen alongside the team. Split into pairs, each team took on one course of a four-course menu built entirely around fresh, seasonal ingredients. Rather than everyone cooking the same dish, each duo owned their course from prep to plating, then the whole team sat down together to enjoy the results as one shared meal.

Things got slightly competitive with every duo trying to cook the best dish. Suddenly, neighbors were offering suspiciously generous "help" and stoves got quietly switched off mid-simmer. All in good fun, of course. Among other fun occurrences that afternoon, the desert’s pistachio cream took an unexpected savory turn. Luckily, it was caught in time, a quick taste test, a bit of laughter, and a fresh batch later, the cream was back on track before it ever reached the plate.

It turned out to be the perfect follow-up to a day of strategy and updates: less talking about collaboration, more actually doing it.

In the end, no official best plate was crowned but everyone walked away with a full plate and a good story: a long table full of colleagues left the evening a little closer as a team, one shared laugh at a time.