We had 24 hours in Dublin, with a full day at Google’s Dublin office packed into the middle of it.
The goal was simple: spend time with the Google team, have the conversations you don’t get to have over email, and make sure we’re aligned on our 2026 goals together.
It was a full day packed into a tiny window, and it reminded us why relationships matter just as much as strategy.
This was the day, start to finish.
Early start, airport coffee, then a short flight over. We landed and headed straight for a taxi.
By midday, we were at Google’s Dublin office meeting the team.
We like to think Shoptimised HQ is pretty well set up, but Google is on another level. The place is built for people who spend their whole day there, and it shows, with space to focus, space to switch off, and plenty of fun built in.
Then it was time for lunch and a chance to settle in before the afternoon kicked off.
Lunch in the canteen was next, and it immediately put every sad desk lunch we’ve ever called ‘fine’ into perspective.
Ulises popped over to join us, too. He was our Senior Partner Manager in the early Shoptimised days, so it was genuinely great to see him again and have a proper catch up before the afternoon meetings.
We made the mistake of thinking we stood a chance at ping pong. Shubham fixed that quickly.
Two takeaways:
After that, Shubham took us around the office and showed us all the fun stuff, which made our “we’ve got a games room” confidence wobble again. We’re still waiting for them to accept our foosball rematch at Shoptimised HQ.
This was the core of the day.
We spent the afternoon with the Google team talking through where we’re heading in 2026 and what ‘good’ needs to look like for agencies and retailers.
The best meetings are the ones where you get into specifics. Not ‘growth’. Not ‘innovation’. Just practical alignment on things like:
It was a good reminder that most challenges are the same everywhere. The answers are usually not clever campaign tricks. They’re fundamentals you can repeat: cleaner data, cleaner structure, and decisions you can stick to.
Meetings done, heads full, time for the traditional reset.
That first pint of Guinness in Dublin always feels earned, even when you’ve only been there a few hours.
Steak dinner was exactly what we needed after a day of caffeine and conversation.
It’s where the debrief happens without anyone opening a laptop. Just good food, and a proper chance to talk through what we’d covered before the night started.
After dinner, we went out for drinks and let the day wind down.
Next thing we knew, it was late, and the early flight home was starting to feel very real.
We were in Dublin for 24 hours, with a full day at Google’s Dublin office packed into the middle of it. It sounds quick, because it was, but it did exactly what we needed it to do.
It gave us time in the room with the Google team to align on our 2026 goals together, talk through what’s working, what needs tightening, and what we want to push next.
There’s something useful about stepping away from the day-to-day and having those conversations face-to-face. You leave with clearer priorities, fewer assumptions, and a much shorter list of “we’ll come back to that”.
It was a good reminder that the best progress still comes from getting in a room and talking things through. Which explains why at Shoptimised, someone is always pulling you into a meeting room.
#WeMoveTogether
