Today was our longest day on the trip, and it was also the day I was most excited for! For many years, I was an avid World of Tanks player, which is developed by Wargaming, and I was very excited to get the opportunity to tour their headquarters! Upon our arrival outside Wargaming HQ, I was struck by the look of the building. It is massive and has a distinct modernist style that looks beautiful against the Cypriot landscape. What was surprising to me is the fact that it’s one of the tallest buildings in Nicosia, which I would never have expected a video game company to own. The inside of the building was very clean, and I was struck by the number of amenities they had for their employees. In the basement, they had a large gym, a sauna, showers, and cheap personal trainers. The emphasis on employee quality of life was surprising to me. Very few companies in our country really focus on these small perks, and that’s something that really stuck out to me about Wargaming. The presentations with the wargaming employees were very interesting, and I greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn more about their strategic objectives. In particular, it was fascinating to me that the transition away from boxed games to purchasing online only really accelerated during COVID-19. This was a very positive development for wargaming, as it removes the need to maintain supply lines for physical products and allows them to cut costs. Overall, our visit to Wargaming was extremely exciting and one of the most memorable parts of the trip for me.

After we left wargaming, we traveled to the University of Nicosia and began a long series of group activities. Before our first activity, we watched a presentation on carbon output in the supply chain and the difference in emissions between different forms of transportation. Our first activity was trying to figure out the total carbon emissions our group caused by going to Cyprus. This was surprisingly difficult, as we had to both figure out the emissions we made as a group and our personal emissions going to Pitt. My group collaborated phenomenally, and we were able to utilize the different strengths we’ve gained from learning about business and engineering. The engineers in our group were able to efficiently figure out which units to use, conversions, and how to actually calculate our total emissions. What I was able to do was quickly set up an efficient Excel table that organized our information well and made it so we didn’t need to do any calculations by hand. As a result of our strong collaboration, my group was able to finish quickly and get an extremely accurate answer. This activity really emphasized to me the importance of understanding everyone’s skill sets when collaborating. After our first activity, we switched to another teacher and worked with a new batch of UNIC students. We proceeded to do a series of activities that were team-building exercises, culminating in the marshmallow tower construction activity. It was fascinating talking to the UNIC students, as they came from many different countries and had interesting stories to tell. My team did end up struggling a good deal with properly collaborating. With the early exercises we did, too many people wanted to be leaders, and it led to nothing getting done and instead we were constantly talking about one decision over and over again. We then had a different problem in our later exercises with people being checked out and not caring, as we spent several hours together. What this experience really taught me was the importance of deciding how to run a group first. If we had decided early on who was the leader, what we expected from people, and what our goals were, we would’ve done much better as a team. Our visit to UNIC was long but very interesting, and I was glad I got to meet so many interesting people.