Vignesh Panchanatham

Immediately after arriving in Chicago on a red-eye, I was faced with a daunting (for me) 2-hour drive to Milwaukee with little sleep. Normally, I refrain from drinking coffee because I want to avoid dependence on the beverage and my sleep schedule is good enough that I don’t need it. However, on 4 hours of rest, I needed something to tide me over. So, I broke the drive into two parts – one to a Starbucks midway between Chicago and Milwaukee and then from there to our Airbnb. I went in and bought a Frappuccino, but not cream-based as I normally do. I could feel the coffee taste, which I was not fond of, so I assumed the drink would give me a caffeine boost. Later, as multiple friends informed me, I realized that a Frappuccino is pure sugar, and barely has any caffeine. But I guess the placebo effect worked, since it kept me awake till Milwaukee. Felipe and I returned to the Midwest separately after returning to our respective homes for the July 4 th break. We didn...

A daily dilemma for Felipe and I was attire. Technically, every meeting that we were attending were with business professionals, so business formal would seem to be the obvious choice. However, the Midwest has varying standards of formality in every company. The executives that we met with had a sliding spectrum of dress, from full suits down to polos and khakis. Thus, while we started out wearing suits and ties in Detroit, we later only went full business formal when meeting with investment banks and some of the top companies. Minneapolis was a perfect illustration of us being overdressed for meetings. We walked into a meeting with a big investment bank in formal attire in 90-degree weather and the CEO came in wearing a polo. The week before 4 th of July in Minneapolis is the ideal time for everyone to head to the lake, so the offices that we visited were all pretty empty. Since we were there only for the three days right before July 4 th , we were only able to ...

Like Cincinnati, we had only scheduled a single day for meetings in Kansas City. Despite the short timeframe, we had one of our most anticipated meetings scheduled. From the moment I had clicked the link to this architectural firm, I was beyond excited to talk to them about coming to our Design Nation conference. Their website was awe-inspiring and perfectly captured the work they have done in the past. The firm specializes in sports stadiums and event planning. As we learned in the meeting, they are involved in the planning process for the Super Bowl and designed the Tottenham Hotspurs stadium, among many others. Their offices were filled with models of modern stadiums, showcasing the different projects they had designed in the past. Both the concept of designing sports stadiums and the work itself amazed Felipe and I. That was definitely one of the coolest companies that we met with in the summer. Though we were only working for one day in Kansas City, we st...