Holiday Party Speech for a Remote Team (About 2 Minutes)

The toast

This is the first time most of us have been in the same room, and I've already learned that Jerry is a lot taller than his camera suggests, and Janet laughs even louder in person, which I didn't think was possible.

I want to talk for a minute about the window thread. For anyone who's newer, back in January Janet posted a photo out her window on a Friday morning. Snow on a mailbox. No caption. The next Friday, three more people did it. By spring everybody was doing it. I've now seen the view from fourteen windows every week for a year. I know whose street gets plowed first, whose neighbor has the inflatable dinosaur, and that Jerry's view is mostly a brick wall, which he photographs with real commitment.

It sounds small. It isn't. A remote team doesn't get a hallway. We don't bump into each other at the coffee machine or notice when someone looks tired. That thread became our hallway. On the hard weeks, and there were a few, it was the one thing that showed up on time.

So thank you, for the work, which was very good, and for the windows, which were better.

Please raise a glass, and if you're watching from home because you couldn't make the trip, raise whatever's on your desk. To the team. And to Jerry's brick wall.

Why it works: The window thread is a ritual this team made up, so the speech sounds like nobody else's. It names what remote work takes away, a shared hallway, and shows how the team built one anyway. The toast includes the people watching from home.