All:
I'm sitting in my Swiss Hotel Bed watching the BBC and avoiding packing for the time being. I mention this only because since I am posting about my travels to Switzerland, this becomes my fastest post-travel blog ever.
Let's cut to the chase: My team WON!! The whole competition! My Rollins College team of 4 students beat out MBA students from 31 other schools to become the victors of the first ever Nespresso Sustainability challenge. Talk about an excellent reward for many, many hours of hard work. Nespresso pulled out all the stops during the 3-day event. (UPDATE: Missed the window for fastest post-travel blog ever since it is now a few weeks later.)
After arriving in Geneva, Switzerland after a long flight, a Nespresso representative met me and my teammate, Morgan to give us our train tickets and a map of Lausanne so that we could direct ourselves to the hotel. Immediately I was amazed at the hospitality and friendliness of everyone we would encounter this week. Morgan and I navigated the train ride fine and walked the 5 minute walk toward the lake. Although we were desperately curious to go exploring we thought it best to nap for an hour or so while we waited for the others. Semi-well rested, we met up with the Canadian team to head out for a chocolate tasting. oh. em. gee. The Swiss do not mess around with their chocolate. Although the tasting was excellent, the best part of this adventure was the making of our own filled chocolates. I chose a dark chocolate shell, learned to make ganache (put a little whiskey in it too, mom), stuffed it with caramel & sea salt, caramel & hazelnut, whiskey ganache & chili powder, and dark chocolate ganache with candied orange. It was amazing. After the tasting, we headed back to the hotel and walked next door for a fondue dinner.
Dinner was hilariously long. The food took a while and our faces were probably priceless when we learned it would be fondue. Don't get me wrong, its not that we weren't excited about fondue, its just that we were so incredibly tired that the last thing we wanted was cheese, bread, and to cook our own meat. Still, delicious and really fun to relax with my Crummer teammates. The other teams seemed to be concerned that our "coach" hadn't arrived in Switzerland yet (we were not worried) and were way more focused on talking about sustainability aspects during dinner. My team gossiped. Like, high school gossip. It was awesome, and relaxing and just what we needed prior to the long day that lay ahead.
The morning of the event we all loaded the bus and headed to Nespresso headquarters. After a quick tour of the building and the room in which we would be delivering our presentations we headed back to the "modern building" to practice. Our first practice was horrendous. Like, really, really terrible. It was much too long, some of us forgot what we were going to say, some of our technology wasn't working. We all went into our own version of crisis management. One got angry, one micromanaged, one pretended, one fidgeted. Thankfully, things got better. After a cafeteria style lunch (and many Nespressos) we learned that our team would be presenting first. Yes! The Nespresso team led us to the older building and introduced us to the audience.
Intimidating is not a powerful enough word for people who were in attendance. See the link for a complete list of judges: http://sustainabilitymbachallenge.com/participants-guide/. Seriously, go check it out. In the midst of our presentation, we discovered that we could see our slides on the left wall, just behind the judges. You have no idea how much this made us relax for some reason. It also allowed us to showcase information we had kept in an appendix, to show just in case the judges asked the questions we thought they would. The 30 minute question and answer session seemed to go on forever and the room got hotter and hotter. Few people believe me, but I seem to have an out of body experience in these things. I rarely show how nervous I am and I often don't remember exactly what I said. Thank. Goodness. The "cocktail" party we were promised after all presentations had been finished was a little not as billed - mocktails. We just had a few more nespressos and tried to mingle as best we could. When they announced our names as winners the world revolved in slow motion. We were so shocked but managed to make our way to the stage to accept our trophies and have our picture taken. Then the gifts and congratulations just kept on coming. We gave interviews for some press materials, mingled with the judges, and kept grinning at each other like fools.
Celebrations just kept coming so I'll try to let the pictures do the talking (except the quality is pretty terrible. Will update later or just go see me on instagram). We did some exploring after the competition, got over by the lake, walked up and down the narrow and steep streets, ate crepes, bought swiss army souvenirs. Just grinned. And laughed. And Explored. It was one of the best experiences of my life. The event will culminate in a trip to Colombia set for the beginning of September. The lesson here: hard work really does pay off.
I'm sitting in my Swiss Hotel Bed watching the BBC and avoiding packing for the time being. I mention this only because since I am posting about my travels to Switzerland, this becomes my fastest post-travel blog ever.
Let's cut to the chase: My team WON!! The whole competition! My Rollins College team of 4 students beat out MBA students from 31 other schools to become the victors of the first ever Nespresso Sustainability challenge. Talk about an excellent reward for many, many hours of hard work. Nespresso pulled out all the stops during the 3-day event. (UPDATE: Missed the window for fastest post-travel blog ever since it is now a few weeks later.)
After arriving in Geneva, Switzerland after a long flight, a Nespresso representative met me and my teammate, Morgan to give us our train tickets and a map of Lausanne so that we could direct ourselves to the hotel. Immediately I was amazed at the hospitality and friendliness of everyone we would encounter this week. Morgan and I navigated the train ride fine and walked the 5 minute walk toward the lake. Although we were desperately curious to go exploring we thought it best to nap for an hour or so while we waited for the others. Semi-well rested, we met up with the Canadian team to head out for a chocolate tasting. oh. em. gee. The Swiss do not mess around with their chocolate. Although the tasting was excellent, the best part of this adventure was the making of our own filled chocolates. I chose a dark chocolate shell, learned to make ganache (put a little whiskey in it too, mom), stuffed it with caramel & sea salt, caramel & hazelnut, whiskey ganache & chili powder, and dark chocolate ganache with candied orange. It was amazing. After the tasting, we headed back to the hotel and walked next door for a fondue dinner.
Dinner was hilariously long. The food took a while and our faces were probably priceless when we learned it would be fondue. Don't get me wrong, its not that we weren't excited about fondue, its just that we were so incredibly tired that the last thing we wanted was cheese, bread, and to cook our own meat. Still, delicious and really fun to relax with my Crummer teammates. The other teams seemed to be concerned that our "coach" hadn't arrived in Switzerland yet (we were not worried) and were way more focused on talking about sustainability aspects during dinner. My team gossiped. Like, high school gossip. It was awesome, and relaxing and just what we needed prior to the long day that lay ahead.
The morning of the event we all loaded the bus and headed to Nespresso headquarters. After a quick tour of the building and the room in which we would be delivering our presentations we headed back to the "modern building" to practice. Our first practice was horrendous. Like, really, really terrible. It was much too long, some of us forgot what we were going to say, some of our technology wasn't working. We all went into our own version of crisis management. One got angry, one micromanaged, one pretended, one fidgeted. Thankfully, things got better. After a cafeteria style lunch (and many Nespressos) we learned that our team would be presenting first. Yes! The Nespresso team led us to the older building and introduced us to the audience.Intimidating is not a powerful enough word for people who were in attendance. See the link for a complete list of judges: http://sustainabilitymbachallenge.com/participants-guide/. Seriously, go check it out. In the midst of our presentation, we discovered that we could see our slides on the left wall, just behind the judges. You have no idea how much this made us relax for some reason. It also allowed us to showcase information we had kept in an appendix, to show just in case the judges asked the questions we thought they would. The 30 minute question and answer session seemed to go on forever and the room got hotter and hotter. Few people believe me, but I seem to have an out of body experience in these things. I rarely show how nervous I am and I often don't remember exactly what I said. Thank. Goodness. The "cocktail" party we were promised after all presentations had been finished was a little not as billed - mocktails. We just had a few more nespressos and tried to mingle as best we could. When they announced our names as winners the world revolved in slow motion. We were so shocked but managed to make our way to the stage to accept our trophies and have our picture taken. Then the gifts and congratulations just kept on coming. We gave interviews for some press materials, mingled with the judges, and kept grinning at each other like fools.Celebrations just kept coming so I'll try to let the pictures do the talking (except the quality is pretty terrible. Will update later or just go see me on instagram). We did some exploring after the competition, got over by the lake, walked up and down the narrow and steep streets, ate crepes, bought swiss army souvenirs. Just grinned. And laughed. And Explored. It was one of the best experiences of my life. The event will culminate in a trip to Colombia set for the beginning of September. The lesson here: hard work really does pay off.
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