October 31st, and the week leading up to it, is always a highly anticipated time at Atlantic BT. During this spooky period, employees take part in pumpkin carving, Halloween parties, donning costumes, applying special FX makeup, and chunking pumpkins.
In the all-around abnormal and spooky year of 2020 itself, Atlantic BT looked to accommodate these Halloween traditions in a new, remote environment.
While employees sadly could not enjoy the festivities together, some time-honored traditions held up. One of the employees favorite traditions, the Pumpkin Carving Contest, was able to be done virtually; a lunch and learn on how to create road rash still gave employees a reason to lose their lunch and fool their spouses; and everyone looked festive in the weekly company Google Meet meeting.
Take a look at years past.
As we continue to deal with the effects of COVID-19 on our communities, it’s made some of us a bit nostalgic for Halloweens of the past.
Pumpkin Chunkin
For those of you that know us at ABT, you will remember the Pumpkin’ Chunkin’ events of the past. It was always such a fun gathering of clients, prospective clients, vendors, families, and in some years even the larger community.
This event was created many years ago when the infamous Bill Bonar and ABT “Culture Club” decided that they wanted to build a trebuchet to smash the pumpkins we had all lovingly carved for our “pumpkin carving contest”.
Keep in mind that building a piece of medieval weaponry and using it to propel pumpkins is no simple feat! Yet through teamwork, engineering, and sheer awesomeness, the task was completed.
It’s still how ABT operates today. While Bill has moved on, we continue to push ourselves daily to solve challenges our customers are facing with digital transformations, security, data visualization, data integrations… you get the point.
Over the years this event became one of the family favorites and kids of all ages enjoyed the sounds of pumpkins breaking open on concrete. Here are a few images of past events. Until we meet again on the battlefield!
Pumpkin Carving Contest
You can’t have Pumpkin Chunkin without the hard work and dedication of the ABT employees. Each year we’ve had some of the most horrific, funny, and delicately carved creations under the sun.
It’s a time-honored tradition where our creative employees join together to start carving pumpkins over lunch and bring them back the following Friday completely transformed into something magical.
In years past we’ve had a difficult time parting with a lot of them to the trebuchet:
Halloween Festivities
The employees at Atlantic BT love Halloween so much, we like to throw two parties sometimes! Our most recent Halloween extravaganza went all out with the popular TV show Stranger Things.
The Culture Club impressively transformed part of the space into the Upside Down and Will Byers’ house for the event, not to mention a large group joined together to form a large part of the cast, themselves. In the past, we’ve put together Halloween stations where kids could trick-or-treat by department and drink competitions where you could sample the best potions.
Blood and Guts Lunch and Learn
Before I delve into my personal favorite event of the Halloween season, I want to put a disclaimer for scrolling down too far. If you are not a fan of blood or injuries read no further!
… Now, back to my favorite part of the Halloween season: the Blood and Guts Lunch and Learn! Every year I put together an interactive presentation on special FX makeup for my fellow employees. Together we go through just how simple it is to create some truly horrifying looks for the season.
In the now six years that we’ve done it, we’ve covered bloody knuckles, deep cuts, exposed veins, bruises, bites, and a few more gruesome topics. It’s truly a wonderful experience to get to share something outside the normal realm of work we deal with and see how crafty people can be.
In short, we love Halloween at Atlantic BT. Covid may have taken some things away from us, but our love for Halloween stands strong!
