QBRing in Chicago

My job as a sales engineer is to support my sales reps in their efforts to sell our software. The sales reps are the ones with quotas and the ones who have a ton of pressure from management to make their number and to get sales. And if they don't do it, they get fired. Thankfully, that pressure is not directly on me, as that's not the type of job I want. Part of this process is a quarterly business review (QBR) where they get together with their management to talk about their plan for the quarter, how they are going to grow their pipeline, and what they are going to do to make their number.  Until a couple years ago, the sales engineers were also invited to these meetings, but for the past couple years we weren't, maybe to save costs.  But they must have recently reconsidered, as we were all invited to go the QBRs this time.  The meetings are today and tomorrow.  Today was productive, and it was particularly interesting for me, because due to a recent departure of another SE, I have four sales reps I cover (Jim, Dwight, Lateef, and Tara) instead of the usual one or two, so 4/7ths of the discussions were relevant to me and my reps.  But after the meetings were over, we had a fun team event.  Stu, the district manager, arranged for us to go bowling at a lively bowling alley where we also had great food.  Afterwards, we went out to the public area outside where they had sand volleyball courts set up, which we didn't play, and cornhole courts (fields?) which we did play, and it was a lot of fun.  Here are some pictures, which are terrible, because that's how low-light cell phone pictures are.