Saturday, August 06, 2005

REACH

One of the best things about Boeing is REACH. I don't know if I've mentioned them before... but it is one of the best things a company can do.
What is REACH? It stands for Regional Events and Activities for College Hires. While trying to make a cool acronymn it seems like some of the "meaning" of the organization was lost in translation. REACH is really just all the young people in Boeing. And once a month we have official events. Like, last night we had a huge BBQ and bonfire (well... a fire at least) on the Beach. REACH is at every major Boeing site too... and right now we're having a "cross-site visit". What does that mean? It means there are some young-Boeing-folk from St. Louis, Long Beach, and Philadelphia hanging out with us in Seattle this weekend.

Anyways, when you graduate college and move to a completely new place to start your job... it can be tough to meet new friends. REACH basically fixes that. We have weekly unofficial Happy Hours (which, in Boeing, we refer to simply as HH), and I spend a lot of time with other REACHers anyways, because they're a good portion of my friends now.

Fortuntely, there are people that are WAY more into REACH than I am... they're called the REACH Officers, and they organize everything (along with some of the more motivated members). So, I get invites to go to the Horse Races, to Beach Parties, on wine tasting tours, Rafting, and all sorts of awesome events.

But apparently not everyone had as much fun as I did last night.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does that mean someone had a few more drinks than everyone else?

Anonymous said...

Hey there... I have enjoyed reading your blog. I have recently been accepted for a student coop with Boeing IDS in St. Louis for an initial 3 month period.(I live in Seattle). I really want to accept the offer, however my primary concern is having a rather lonely experience. Now that I've read about REACH, I am feeling quite happy about moving down there, but I wanted to learn more about it. Since they will be paying for furnished housing down there (YES!!!) I assume that I'll be around a lot of people just like me who want to get out in the city on the weekends and just have fun. But as for REACH... what other kinds of events have you been a part of... or what kinds do you know are quite common. (Ex. concerts, movies, shows, etc). Also are there any main REACH websites I can go to for more info? I checked Boeing.com with a search but couldn't find anything newly made... I suppose I can continue searching on google.

Thanks for your info!!!

Adam Phillabaum said...

Hi anonymous.

REACH is enterprise-wide... and I know the REACH in St. Louis is pretty active because we just had a "cross-site" visit. Basically some REACH members from all over the US came up to Seattle and hung out with us.

As far as I know, there are no external REACH websites, but once you're in the firewall there is a place where everyone can talk and whatnot. At least we have that in Seattle... I don't know if the other sites do.

The place where I made a lot of friends was by going to an "unofficial REACH happy hour". Every week a group of people go to a different bar in the area... and unwind after work. If there isn't one of those in St. Louis... I would definitely recommend it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the information--- I went ahead and accepted the offer. I think it'll be a great experience and very rewarding. (Rather than the routine of taking another quarter of difficult classes!) Thanks again.

--- Arun

Anonymous said...

is there a REACH website for St. Louis I can access??

Adam Phillabaum said...

There is an internal Boeing website for REACH, but I don't think there is a publicly available REACH site.