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IDEO Chicago Annual Studio Awards
Type of Workplace Ritual
Community + Team Building
Collaborators
IDEO Chicago Workplace Experience team: Chris Draz, Jonathan Mueller, Katie Beach, Peggy Pearson, Will Bertke, and Scott Sauer
Shop team: John Grimley, Jamie McCoy, Hal Monson, and Chris Gold Technology team: Matthew Gilman-Smith and Ren Rowsey
Additional collaborators: Jon Wettersten (Co-MC) and fellow ChIDEOers
Location
IDEO Chicago
Date
2008 - 2021
For 14 years, I helped design, produce, and MC IDEO Chicago’s (AKA ChIDEO’s) annual studio awards. The ritual started with a request from the Managing Director for an end-of-year celebration more meaningful than a regular holiday party — one that would celebrate our collective work and highlight individual contributions.
The event structure was inspired by the Academy Awards. Our twist was to make it about the weirdest, most wonderful, most innovative things that happened in our studio that year. We had 10 award categories, such as “What the What?!?” for the weirdest incident, “Business Unusual” for the best BD effort, and “Culture Club” for the best internal initiative.
As project lead, I set and fleshed out the event’s theme, managed sub-team activities, facilitated voting, and served as showrunner and co-host. The key to the awards’ success was community involvement—everyone participated. Unlike our usual consulting work focused on the future, the Studio Awards offered a chance to look back, reflect, and bond over shared experiences.
We adapted the event to a Zoom format during the pandemic to give our community a sense of stability amid an anxiety-ridden time, and finally retired the ritual in 2022 as part of IDEO’s reorganization.
Please join me in presenting this final “Lifetime Achievement Award” to the Studio Awards: one of the ties that bound our community together for 14 long years.
