The Chicago Post
Alright. After several days of a work-in-progress post, I finally have something presentable from my trip to Chicago. It didn’t help that I had to change offices this week, but that is another story. For those who might not recall, I had to leave for Chicago the day after my birthday to attend a reliability conference for a week. All in all, I enjoyed myself, although the non-conference activities clearly outweigh the conference sessions themselves. But let’s start from the beginning.
To start the trip off, I was on stand-by for both my connections to Chicago and literally got the last seat on the plane on one of them. Don’t ask why because I don’t know the reason, but I did make it there and was pleasantly surprised that my luggage also made it! I wasn’t at the same hotel as everybody else (since I was informed about making my own travel plans too late) so I had the luxury/curse of being removed from everyone else. Unfortunately, for me this meant that I had to ride in a lot of taxis, which I wouldn’t mind as much if it weren’t for all the money/time spent hailing a cab (although I did meet some nice cabbies).
For dinner that first night our whole group got together and had dinner at a steakhouse with Gene, our CEO. As we sit, he announces to the table he’s ordering wine and looks for other takers. After several people say they’ll have some beer, I look at Gene and tell him that I’ll have some wine with him. So he ended up ordering 2 bottles for 3.5 people to drink, and by the end of the evening I had had about 3/4 of a bottle myself. He’s a real down to earth guy who remembered my name and we joked about my turning 23 and just being so young. I thought surely some of these other company reliability big-shots would have dined with Gene before, but apparently it’s a very rare occurrence. So it was rather amusing to be rubbing elbows at dinner with our CEO after 10 months with the company versus 10+ years of everybody else.
I must clarify a point about our location. Both the hotels and conference were in Rosemont about 15 miles outside of Chicago. That’s why on the second night, we decided to check out the city and experience a little more traditional Chicago. Several of our group presented at the conference that day and they were looking to celebrate a job well done. So we took the train in (which took about an hour, but was faster than the traffic) and went in search of some deep-dish pizza. After walking down several blocks, following my supervisor with the map (it seemed like a recipe for disaster), we arrived at the original Uno’s. There was an hour wait so we put our order in and sat outside where we drank pitchers of beer and guys could smoke some cigars. For some reason they ordered a lot of pizza and each one was an inch thick so hunger wasn’t an issue. I got through 2.5 slices and drank about 3/4 of a pitcher of beer before calling it quits and heading home. There’s just something amusing about drinking with these company big-shots.
Well the next morning I was a little late getting to the conference (stupid taxis) and didn’t see anyone from our group until after the first session. When they saw me, they asked if I was feeling alright and if last night had any effect on me. Apparently, my supervisor had a little too much pizza and beer and was the only one who got sick that night. I find that rather comical (something to lord over him perhaps?), but it killed any adventurous plans for the rest of the trip, leaving me to fend for myself the last few nights.
The conference itself was rather dull and surprisingly uninformative. I really am shocked at just how much I know about reliability stuff than most of the groups there, but it goes to show what a highly reliable company looks like compared to one just trying to implement one. I was also a rather small conference as well, about 250 people, but it still drew groups from Venezuela to Canada. I can’t complain too much because they gave us good meals, ice-cream breaks and a mixer one night where we each got 2 drink tickets redeemable for boxed wine or Bud Light. It’s not very classy, but at least it’s free.
It was a fun trip, but it felt like I was missing the adventure buddy that I’ve depended upon in some past trips (Rach in London, Becca in Japan, etc). So I would like to revisit Chicago some other time and actually get to spend some time in the city, but I did have fun and I can’t knock all the great moments that I had during the trip. And hey, I’ve got new drinking buddies in my superiors!
To start the trip off, I was on stand-by for both my connections to Chicago and literally got the last seat on the plane on one of them. Don’t ask why because I don’t know the reason, but I did make it there and was pleasantly surprised that my luggage also made it! I wasn’t at the same hotel as everybody else (since I was informed about making my own travel plans too late) so I had the luxury/curse of being removed from everyone else. Unfortunately, for me this meant that I had to ride in a lot of taxis, which I wouldn’t mind as much if it weren’t for all the money/time spent hailing a cab (although I did meet some nice cabbies).
For dinner that first night our whole group got together and had dinner at a steakhouse with Gene, our CEO. As we sit, he announces to the table he’s ordering wine and looks for other takers. After several people say they’ll have some beer, I look at Gene and tell him that I’ll have some wine with him. So he ended up ordering 2 bottles for 3.5 people to drink, and by the end of the evening I had had about 3/4 of a bottle myself. He’s a real down to earth guy who remembered my name and we joked about my turning 23 and just being so young. I thought surely some of these other company reliability big-shots would have dined with Gene before, but apparently it’s a very rare occurrence. So it was rather amusing to be rubbing elbows at dinner with our CEO after 10 months with the company versus 10+ years of everybody else.
I must clarify a point about our location. Both the hotels and conference were in Rosemont about 15 miles outside of Chicago. That’s why on the second night, we decided to check out the city and experience a little more traditional Chicago. Several of our group presented at the conference that day and they were looking to celebrate a job well done. So we took the train in (which took about an hour, but was faster than the traffic) and went in search of some deep-dish pizza. After walking down several blocks, following my supervisor with the map (it seemed like a recipe for disaster), we arrived at the original Uno’s. There was an hour wait so we put our order in and sat outside where we drank pitchers of beer and guys could smoke some cigars. For some reason they ordered a lot of pizza and each one was an inch thick so hunger wasn’t an issue. I got through 2.5 slices and drank about 3/4 of a pitcher of beer before calling it quits and heading home. There’s just something amusing about drinking with these company big-shots.
Well the next morning I was a little late getting to the conference (stupid taxis) and didn’t see anyone from our group until after the first session. When they saw me, they asked if I was feeling alright and if last night had any effect on me. Apparently, my supervisor had a little too much pizza and beer and was the only one who got sick that night. I find that rather comical (something to lord over him perhaps?), but it killed any adventurous plans for the rest of the trip, leaving me to fend for myself the last few nights.
The conference itself was rather dull and surprisingly uninformative. I really am shocked at just how much I know about reliability stuff than most of the groups there, but it goes to show what a highly reliable company looks like compared to one just trying to implement one. I was also a rather small conference as well, about 250 people, but it still drew groups from Venezuela to Canada. I can’t complain too much because they gave us good meals, ice-cream breaks and a mixer one night where we each got 2 drink tickets redeemable for boxed wine or Bud Light. It’s not very classy, but at least it’s free.
It was a fun trip, but it felt like I was missing the adventure buddy that I’ve depended upon in some past trips (Rach in London, Becca in Japan, etc). So I would like to revisit Chicago some other time and actually get to spend some time in the city, but I did have fun and I can’t knock all the great moments that I had during the trip. And hey, I’ve got new drinking buddies in my superiors!
posted by Chris Burzlaff @ 4/28/2006
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