Last Saturday I went for a family lunch and my niece was given a huge cup of ice cream for dessert: she had the biggest smile, couldn’t sit still on the bench and kept looking at her parents to share her excitement. The Marketing Academy boot-camp has the same effect on me.
The week of boot-camp is usually quite intense at work because we are two days away from the office, but the thought of taking that train from Paddington to reach magic Cookham keeps us all going. We get to the station and arm ourselves with Prosecco for the train to officially put our week behind us and enter the “ice cream” mood. Cookham is the loveliest typical English village, with a high ratio of nice little pubs, hotels and curry houses for its size. The sky is always blue in the day and you can see the stars at night, it could be the quietest place on Earth if it wasn’t for the scholars’ invasion three times a year. Our Marketing-Academy special pub quizzes do make quite a lot of noise. I struggle go to sleep because I don’t want to miss a minute of that precious time at the pub in the evening with all the scholars and somehow still jump off my bed in the morning because I can’t wait to go through the most amazing line up of speakers I will ever get. The Mikado and the Creme Eggs help us keep our sugar levels ups and the Ritz are the perfect hangover snacks, I think everyone will agree. Every break comes with an energizing chat, an update, a hug. And every boot-camp ends with a moment where we each appreciate another scholar: if tears haven’t appeared already from some John Lewis advert, James Brett story or Project Everyone video that is when we are usually finished off.
We are back in that train again, overwhelmed by how much we feel we have all grown and by how lucky we are to get so much from our industry.
To discover the content of Cam’s agenda, please refer to fellow scholar Dan Murray’s posts – http://startupmumblr.tumblr.com/
