I’m sorry, Epic. You really dropped the ball today.

Let me back up a bit…One of the things I think is pretty cool about Epic is that the company really values the relationship they have with customers. One of the ways they reach out is by holding a week long conference called the Users’ Group Meeting every September. They set a theme every year and it’s a chance to mingle with customers and learn what others are doing with the software, etc. To be honest, I’ve been kinda looking forward to going to some of the sessions to hear a little bit about other parts of the company and what customers really think. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Epic cares so much about their customers, but today they totally forgot about their employees.

There is only one session that every employee is required to go to: the general session. Since Epic has been growing so fast over the last few years (current population is over 2100, up from 1600 when I interviewed in February) it would require a very large venue to house all of the employees and even more customers. So they decided to split us up: the customers in the convention center, the employees in the Orpheum Theater. Keep in mind we are still required to dress up even though we won’t see any customers for the only session we’re required to go to.

So some people on my team and I decided to carpool. We get downtown, find a place to park, and walk into the Orpheum right at 8 o’clock when the session is supposed to start. The first thing I notice is that it’s a little warm inside. I immediately took off my suit jacket, knowing I would be miserable if I didn’t. We proceed up to the balcony, knowing we will be able to better see the screen where they will be projecting the feed from the convention center. They’ve got a video on one side of the giant screen and a powerpoint presentation on the other. Not a bad setup. Or so I thought.

Each year a video is made to match the theme. This year: Mystery in the Midwest. I’m sure the video was pretty good, but I can’t really tell you for sure. As soon as the presentation started, a nasty speaker buzz started from the only speakers projecting the audio feed from the convention center. The volume wasn’t bad, but the voices were so garbled I caught about every fifth word. I thought maybe they were having issues and would fix them, but I was wrong. As the movie ended and the first speaker started, the feedback got worse. They made an adjustment and the sound stopped crackling during high volume, but everything was still garbled.

So here we go. Roughly 2000 Epic employees sitting in the dark in their nicest suits and dresses in an 85 degree theater for four hours watching a video feed from the nice (cool) comfy convention center that we can’t even hear well enough to understand. The video, the CEO, the Vice President, the keynote speaker from Princeton…I’m sure it was all great. I think I caught one joke in four hours, meanwhile I’m sitting there sweating through my dress clothes. Absolutely fan-frickin’-tastic.

I went to two sessions in the afternoon after enjoying (sort of) a free box lunch. They weren’t too bad, but I still can’t believe they didn’t test their setup ahead of time. That ranks right up there with a tech company that relies on Microsoft Outlook for absolutely everything having to go without access for 2 days while they install patches, updates, and make server changes.