Trip to Chicago

9/17/2015

Ever since starting my job at Kalypso in January I have been hearing about their annual firm-wide event called Karma. So for the last eight months I have been listening to stories from past Karma events, like how a couple of years ago they rented out the entire Broncos stadium for a night. Or last year, when Joan Jett gave a private performance for the firm's 10-year anniversary. And while the stories sound amazing, it wasn't until I experienced Karma for myself this past week in Chicago when I realized just how truly special it is.

For me, one of the best parts of Karma was that any new employees from the past year arrive in town a few days early and go through Krash, which is an introduction to the firm's culture and innovation strategy. This year we had the largest Krash class in history, with almost 50 people. That's a huge number for a firm of just over 200 people all together!

Here's a basic agenda of how I spent my time in Chicago:

Tuesday, September 8: take the first flight out of Denver to arrive in Chicago for our first day of Krash
Wednesday, September 9: lots of classes and presentations throughout the day, dinner at Gino's East that night
Thursday, September 10: last day of Krash
Friday, September 11: graduation, architecture river tour, Karma reception
Saturday, September 12: day 1 of Karma, beach party at night
Sunday, September 13: day 2 of Karma, closing dinner at Chicago Theater
Monday, September 14: operations training all day
Tuesday, September 15: operations training in the morning, fly home to Denver that night

Now that you can see how I spent my time, I'm going to walk through the highlights of my trip. After only a couple of hours of sleep, I woke up on Tuesday morning at 2am and caught the 5:35am flight to Midway with two of my co-workers. We were instructed to take the 'L' train into the city to the InterContinental Hotel, where we were staying for the week. The train ride wasn't that bad, but the hard part came when we had to drag our 50-pound suitcases through a turnstile and down a flight of stairs. Lesson learned...take a cab!

Ultimately we survived that adventure and arrived at the InterContinental in one piece. We had lunch and then met with our fellow Krash attendees for our first day of presentations. After a late dinner in the ballroom we got a quick drink in the hotel bar and then went to bed.

Sunrise from the plane

My Denver co-workers, Denise & Rachel, on the train

A warm welcome at the InterContinental's reception desk

The pretty view from our hotel room

After some much-needed sleep we spent all day Wednesday in the ballroom learning about the firm's culture and strategies for consulting. My roommate and I took a quick trip to Nordstrom before dinner for some shoe shopping. Then we walked to dinner at Gino's East, which is the famous pizza place where you are encouraged to write on the walls. After dinner a small group of us decided to go up to the Signature Lounge, which is the bar on the 96th floor of the Hancock Building. We had an amazing view while we enjoyed our $15 cocktails. Thank goodness everything was reimbursable!

Cute (but comfortable) shoes from Michael Kors

A private room at Gino's East

The amazing view from the Signature Lounge at the top of the Hancock Building

We spent all day Thursday in our conference room, listening to more presentations and doing group work. That night we went out to RockIt on Hubbard Street, which was a quick 10-minute walk from the hotel.

On Friday morning we had our "graduation" and then had the rest of the day off before the rest of the firm showed up for our welcome reception that night. I had heard about an architecture river tour and recruited some of my classmates to come with me. We had a group of 8 who all had a great time looking at the buildings along the river and learning about Chicago's history.

That night we had our welcome reception at the hotel pool. It was weird to see so many faces I didn't recognize. After spending the last few days with the 50 new people it was a surprise to not know everyone all of a sudden. Thankfully, everyone at Kalypso is very welcoming and friendly, so there were lots of people to meet and catch up with. After being extremely busy for so many days in a row my roommate Denise and I decided to make it an early night. And by early, I mean we were in bed by 9:30!

It was so much fun hanging out with my fellow "Krashers"

I was awarded "Most Insightful Question" at our graduation ceremony

The 8 of us who went on the architecture river tour

Chicago is such a great city, I can't wait to go back!

A view of Navy Pier from our river tour

It's not a trip to Chicago without seeing the "Bean"

One of my favorite pictures I've ever taken!

On Saturday we had a long day in the Grand Ballroom, learning the story of Kalypso and watching the 54 promotion presentations for everyone who was promoted. That night we went to a party at the beach, which would have been amazing except that it was the coldest night of the whole trip and very windy as well. We made the best of it, taking advantage of the drinks from the open bar to keep warm. I was a trooper, taking the last bus out of there. I credit growing up in Michigan to being able to manage wearing flip flops in 50 degree weather!

After the beach we made our way to RockIt again, which was quickly becoming our favorite bar. We even had a senior manager from Kalypso show up and buy us all bottle service. We danced and drank whiskey until 2am, which wasn't such a good idea considering that we had meetings starting at 8am the next morning! Apparently we weren't the only ones to have a good time the night before, because in his opening remarks our host said the smell of alcohol was palpable in the room. I guess you could say we were embracing the firm's motto of "work hard, play hard".

Sunset from our beach party

Denise & Hugo dancing at RockIt

On Sunday night we had our big event to end Karma. We all dressed up in 20's attire and walked to the Chicago Theater. The marquee was customized for us and it was such a cool moment to walk up on stage and enjoy our fabulous awards dinner. After eating they had dueling pianos set up in the grand atrium and we had a dance party ending with "We Are The Champions". What a great way to bond with your co-workers!