ABSTRACTcore - Court: Milwaukee Art Museum

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Milwaukee Art Museum

Well Last night after returning to my hotel room in St. Charles (just outside of Chicago) I was swimming laps in the resort pool. It was a scorching hot day and the humidity here in Illinois was nearly unbearable! The swimming was nice, and the resort I was at is pretty ritzy. It must have seemed a bit weird to onlookers because I was holding on to the ladder on the side of the pool with my feet and paddling with my arms to try to keep my arms in shape for surfing. Almost everyone had left the pool by 9pm and there was only one guy left over... Verne.

Verne is a technical lead with Wrigley (the guys who make gum, notably Orbitz, my personal fav). I had never really thought about the brand but apparently in Europe, specifically Germany (where Verne is from) the brand owns over 80% market share and recently bought parts of Kraft because it is so saturated! I don’t want to get Verne in trouble by sharing any numbers here, but Wrigley has grown a lot lately and it really sounded like a neat place to work. They even have a new marketing program with youth in Europe trying to help them invent the next great candy/gum product and that is just awesome! I told Verne about my recent Euro trip, how I had visited Germany less than a month ago and had enjoyed his country. He told me how much he enjoys the US, and that he has been here a few times on business with Wrigley, to Miami, LA, Chicago, and even SanFran where I am from. This visit was actually for leadership development and it was designed to bring together the top 50 people from Wrigley for networking and personal growth. I told him I would get his card later this week if I see him again and that I’d visit him in Germany next time I’m around... He said he would give me some free gum if I visited.

Aside from chatting about gum and golfing at the resort, Verne has branched out a bit this past weekend and explored the area, including a short trip over to Milwaukee where there is this awesome new art museum! We got onto this subject because I had mentioned my recent trip to the Chicago Institute of Art just a couple of days ago. Apparently the Milwaukee museum has these huge windows and is almost entirely glass. It also has this weird roof that is shaped like bird wings which can be opened or closed to let the fresh air in or keep the heat out!