After nearly two years of nose-to-the-grindstone work building and managing our clients' marketing and PR, we at Blue Practice just held our first company offsite. We're still relishing the afterglow. That rare opportunity to close our doors, shut off our phones and turn our attention inward for a long and critical look at our business, the landscape of sustainability, and how our talents can best serve a quickly-evolving world couldn't have been more rewarding. We brought forth some revolutionary thinking and creative program ideas that will really help us build a stronger agency in the months ahead.

Helping set the mood, of course, was the venue for our meeting – the EcoShack. Jessica recently bought one of these DIY yurt setups from Stephanie Smith, the company's founder. Smith is an architectural designer, an entrepreneur and a champion of light and nomadic lifestyles. Her designs are inspired by the ad hoc, indigenous and archetypal typologies typically found at the fringes of society and culture. The structure was actually much bigger than I expected, and provided an airy interior for our day.

We talked about our mission, our network, and ways to grow in the months ahead. And as a capper for the day, once the hard work was complete and the temperature in the shack heated up, we took a fleet of kayaks out on Richardson Bay for a row to Salsalito, the barraca-style taqueria down the shore from our launch.  Afterwards, we took a moonlight paddle around the harbor and back to the beach - but not before rafting-up our boats for a long and leisurely collective float on the calm waters of the Bay.