It's May! Summer is around the corner which means trips to the beach, longer days, and remembering you're too old for outdoor music festivals!

At the end of April, Basecamp held its spring meet-up. Twice a year, the entire company gathers at Basecamp HQ in Chicago to grab some face to face time. We eat, socialize, do some work, have a snack, talk about company business, and then eat one more time just to be safe. We all work remotely, so meet-ups are essential for us to connect on a different level than a Campfire chat or even a Google Hangout can provide.

I do the planning for our meet-ups, and Basecamp is how I do it. We talk about Basecamp as a project management app, but I use it a little differently when planning an event like the meet-up. In short, we operate Basecamp with Basecamp (say that five times fast).

• I collected arrival and departure dates for our hotel room block. Emailing or pinging back and forth with 50 people is unnecessary when I can point to one Google doc that everyone can access and edit. It also makes sharing with the hotel that much easier.

• People posted messages about work- or not-so-work-related things. I posted a message to the group ahead of time, asking what kind of snacks they might like. Michael posted about a Sunday night event that could interest some early-comers. Ryan posted a message about a webinar. Josh failed to get people to work out with him. In all these cases, we were all notified of the message, and anyone could comment on the thread. Then, it's all stored in Basecamp for me to reference as a shopping list, or for Michael to grab a quick look of who would be joining his pig roast.

• Everyone stayed on top of the daily schedule and knew exactly when their next meal was happening (spoiler: always soon).

Coordinating 50 people from across the globe is hard, but Basecamp keeps everything in one place. And I have somewhere to point when the 10th person in an hour asks me where we're having dinner.

At our meet-up, we welcomed two new people! Matthew Draper joined our programming team. He hails from Adelaide, Australia and was impressively alert after his multi-day journey to Chicago. Kris Niles is our new product designer. He is from Colorado, so Kris was also remarkably alert at the meet-up due to the excess of oxygen in his system. Welcome Matthew and Kris!

The Distance is a Basecamp-sponsored podcast about small businesses that have endured for at least 25 years and the people who make that happen. This month, they spoke to LION, a company that makes protective gear and equipment for firefighters. It's a crucial and technical job, and they've been doing it since 1898. You can listen to this episode and past episodes on The Distance's website, iTunes, or Google Play.

Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you next month!
-Andrea at Basecamp