Sandstormers Fueled By Curiosity at Our 2025 Summit

We step out onto the sidewalk, the end-of-summer sun beating down on us. It’s funny; I left Washington for this trip just as the weather was supposed to ease back into the usual 60’s-and-rainy I’ve come to expect of the Pacific Northwest. In Chicago, I get a few more days of 80’s and sun.

My manager, Emily Kodner, and I are about to catch the Blue Line train to take us to our Airbnb in Logan Square. We rented a house for this year’s Summit, and tonight is the pizza party. Lou Malnati’s, just like last time.

For the last couple of days, Emily has been stressing about a White Elephant gift for this trip. I reassure her at some point or another, we’ll walk by a place that will have something for her. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing between the workspace we’d been using for most of the afternoon and the entrance to the train station.

Off to the Pizza Party

The train ride isn’t too long, and the following walk is only a few blocks. Along the way, Emily spots a cute little gift shop with pumpkins and ghosts in the window, which she vows to check out in hopes it will resolve her White Elephant conundrum. Eventually, we arrive at the entrance to the house, which is a glass door with a big skull decal on it.

There’s nowhere to input the code we’ve been given, so Emily phones a friend (Nathan Haas) for help. As she does, I see a secondary doorknob with a keypad on it. I enter the code, and voila, we’re in. Funnily enough, this is not Emily’s first lost battle against a door since this trip began.

The Airbnb is not a house but two flats: “Dos,” which Andy Cullen helpfully translates as two, and “Tres”. Both have the same layout: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, and a kitchen with a vaguely Western theme. There’s also a garage and a back patio, which we’re all excited to use later. All of it is ours to use. We’re told that this place often hosts bachelorette parties, which also explains the “decorate the Bride’s bedroom” add-on we could have purchased (which we apparently almost did for Amanda Heberg).

Slowly but surely, everyone arrives, and eventually the food does too. It’s a great evening spent reconnecting with everyone. At the end of the night, Nathan and Alma Meshes (our two fearless leaders in organizing the Summit) distributed the summit merch: a beautifully designed t-shirt with a slogan that embodied the whole retreat, “FUELED BY CURIOSITY.”

Not only did “Fueled By Curiosity” become our mantra for the entire summit, but the design of the t-shirt was littered with unique Sandstorm easter eggs, meaning many of us spent lots of time playing “I Spy” to find them all.

Day 1 of Being Curious at Chief

The Chief clubhouse in Fulton Market is where we hosted the main day of our last summit, and it’s a cool place. There’s a central area with the front desk, lots of plush seating, a bar, rooftop access, and conference rooms, of which we booked the biggest. They’ve also got bubbly water on tap, which is easily my favorite part. 😉

We’re in that same big conference room for day one of the Summit, and as everyone trickles in from the Airbnb, the hotel, or their Chicago residence, we eat a delicious breakfast of bagels, fruit, and Chief-provided coffee before diving into all of the sessions for the day.

Creating Belonging With the IDEA Team

Our first activity is brought to us by the committee I lead, the IDEA team! Before the Summit, I randomly generated groups of four–though I admit to manipulating the results to try and pair up folks who don’t often work together. Joanna Jackson then leads us through a craft of creating flowers.

Each person on the team gets a petal of the flower to write something unique about themselves. Then, each petal is connected by a circle at the center, where we write something that connects us. Discussions are DEEP to find those things to connect us.

Some highlights include:

• One group all agrees they wish they could play an instrument.
• One group has all been snorkeling at the Turks and Caicos Islands.
• One group has all been bitten by animals more than normal people.
• One group are all dog owners/lovers.
• One group is made up of people who are proud of their creativity.

Embracing Artificial Intelligence

Cameron Panice leads our first session of the day, which “AI Prompting: Do’s, Don’ts & Tips”.

Some DOs when prompting AI:

• Be clear and specific
• Break big tasks into steps
• Provide examples of what you want
• Set constraints (tone, length, style)
• Iterate until satisfied
• Restart a chat instead of continuing in the same chat chain

And some DON’Ts:

• Don’t be vague or generic
• Don’t overload one prompt with too much
• Don’t assume AI knows your context
• Don’t ignore your audience
• Don’t expect perfection on the first try

But perhaps the biggest takeaway from Cameron’s lesson is “ELI5”, AKA ”Explain Like I’m 5”. Often used around the internet when asking other users to simplify concepts, it can also be used to guide AI. By the end of the summit, many of us are throwing around the word “ELI5” to one another, not just ChatGPT. 🤭

Once we have that primer from Cameron, it’s Sandy’s turn to talk us through how we can embrace AI. While we’ve done significant work around AI for our clients already, there’s always more to innovate. Sandy emphasizes it’s everyone’s responsibility to drive AI forward, and she talks us through how to leverage ChatGPT as a strategic advisor and thought partner, referencing the book The AI-Driven Leader.

Some key takeaways are:

• AI needs a lot of context, so don't be afraid to give it what it needs and spend most of your time there while writing prompts.
• Let AI fill in the gaps of its knowledge by inviting it to ask you questions.
• It's everyone's responsibility to drive AI forward at Sandstorm. How can we start to use AI more day-to-day in out-of-the-box ways?

Closing the Day With Innovation, Team Get-Togethers, and Celebrating Our Work

We break for an hour to enjoy our tasty lunches from Pockets, which I’ve never had before. Afterward, it’s time for more AI innovation. Amanda Heberg and Janna Fiester lead us through an exercise by breaking us into small groups and providing an EasyRetro board. 

It’s a cool tool we often use for client workshops during the discovery phase to align on things like goals, target audiences, inspiration sites, and the like. For us, though, we answer one key question: what is one AI idea that boosts operational excellence and elevates Sandstorm’s brand?

After that, we break into groups by department. The development team stays in the main room while the UX and creative team leave Chief altogether, disappearing for a nice long walk. The project management team (which is the team I’m a part of) head up to the rooftop patio. We each share through something we’re proud of, talk through our AI doubts, and eventually end up shuffling some clients around so that those with super full plates get the support they need.

We wrap up the day with Nathan highlighting some recent work we’re proud of and a Drupal courtesy of Andy. Everyone is eager to wrap up, though, because that means it’s time for our next stop: dinner!

Christmas in… September?

Before COVID, Sandstorm’s holiday party tradition was to rent the big room at the back of Cafe Ba-Ba-Ree-Ba and do a White Elephant gift exchange. In planning for the Summit, Sandy wanted to recreate that feeling, so that’s how we end up there in the big room at the back, drinking the night away with a pile of gifts on a table off to the side.

With tapas, you can’t go wrong. There’s always something for everyone, and our menu in particular is delicious. Highlights include the vegetable paella, bacon-wrapped dates, and beef tenderloin toro, which we affectionately call the “meat hooks”, as the skewers hang from metal hooks on the table.

For me, the greatest dish of all, however, was the goat cheese baked in tomato sauce because there is truly no way to go wrong with bread, tomato, and cheese no matter where you’re at.

After several rounds of tapas are brought to the table, we get started on the gift exchange. I end up number 13. It’s not the best number, but I don’t mind being middle of the pack. There are some pretty good gifts in the bunch, such as:

• A Lego bamboo set
• A figure of Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece
• Gilmore Girls slippers
• A copy of Booze & Vinyl: A Spirited Guide to Great Music and Mixed Drinks
• A tiny metal roasting pan for garlic and such ingredients

But the really popular gift is a magnetic, wireless phone charger, which is stolen fourteen times. I think the cutest gift, though, is the one Amanda made, themed around her adorable dog, Bacon. Laura’s the real winner out of all of us!

Giving Back to Drupal

At our summit in 2023, Sandstorm gave back to our community with a volunteer activity. Of course we’re going to do the same this time around for Day 2–but a little bit differently.

Sandstorm loves Drupal. It’s our CMS of choice for so many projects, but to many in the company, contributing back to Drupal is a bit of a mystery. Some of us (like me) have participated in Drupal Contribution Days at DrupalCon, which means I’m one of the more qualified among us to talk through what Drupal contribution is like.

What better time is there to be curious?

After a brief training, everyone breaks out into small groups to start combing through the issue queue, searching for a ticket to complete. Cameron is the first to succeed by creating a merge request to update a READ ME file. I make a small contribution by adding a screenshot to a ticket in need of one while Sandy, Janna, and a few others on the marketing team look to assist in creating a new logo for the upcoming Drupal Canvas. The lovely Shawn Hopkins goes into more detail about our contributions here.

It’s a shorter day compared to Day 1. Many folks have flights to catch, so they say their good-byes and take their leave shortly after our Chipotle buffet lunch is served. We clean up the room a bit and then head out once our time is up.

It’s always bittersweet to say goodbye. I hang back last until I need to catch a train to a client meeting a few stops away, which means I get to watch everyone pile into the elevator and the doors slowly close. Despite the fatigue from all the traveling, brain-working, and hanging out, I feel invigorated by spending time with such an amazing team and can’t wait to do it all again next year.