Cheering on the Royals from Afar

The Royals have begun their quest for a World Series title, as bizarre as it seems.  They lost Game 1, as Madison Bumgarner was unstoppable, but they fared better in Game 2, tying the series 1-1.  I've been on a business trip, but I've made sure to do everything I could to not travel during the games so I could watch them on TV, and it's worked out so far.  I was even able to watch the game over a few drinks with my colleagues, who were of course rooting for the Royals because they are neither terrible people nor from San Francisco.  I have what's probably unfounded confidence that the Royals will pull this off, but we'll see how the Series unfolds as it heads back to the Bay Area.

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.

Lunch with the Freadhoffs

Today Jason's boss Dylan came through Kansas City on his way to a wedding with his fiancee Kim and her two kids. We all ate lunch together at SPIN! Pizza. It was nice for me to meet Kim since Joshua's birth thwarted the last time we were supposed to meet, and we had a fun meal before they had to get back on the road.