The 2017 Medtronic Bakken Society Induction Ceremony at the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
On Thursday, August 10th, Joannie and I once again had the honor of photographing the 2017 Medtronic Bakken Society Induction Ceremony held at The Bakken Museum. The Bakken Museum is located about a block west of Bde Maka Ska Lake in Minneapolis, MN.
The 2017 Bakken Society new inductees.
This is one of our favorite events to photograph of the whole year! It’s black tie, very elegant, a beautiful location, super friendly people, and always with an incredible dinner from D’Amico Catering. The list of great things goes on and on! Joannie and I been blessed to have been at this wonderful event as it’s official photographers for 20 years now!
In addition to being the official photographers for this very special event, I have been capturing it on video for the past several years. While shooting video is not something I do a lot of, I do have the skill set to pull it off. That said, I’m still going to keep “my day job.”
Each year, The Bakken Museum’s own Christopher Lundeen and his crew change a classroom at The Bakken Museum into a banquet room. The theme, colors, menu, and decor change every year. It’s always a really beautiful event!
The 2017 Bakken Society banquet room decor.
This year for the first time, we added off and on rain showers to the mix. It was a sneaky rain too! One minute it was beautiful, then for the next five minutes, some rain. Then sunny again for a while, then a much longer (and harder) rain a bit later.
Thankfully the only one to get pretty wet was me as I stood outside trying to stop the rain from shorting out our high-speed strobes! Other than a wet photographer and some damp shoes, it didn’t really stop us from getting very nice portraits outside in the gardens.
The Bakken Society Induction Ceremony
The 2017 Chairman of this year’s special event was David Simon, a 2013 Bakken Fellow. Once again the MC for the evening was Paul Citron, a 1980 Bakken Fellow. Paul has been the MC for as long as I can remember. Also speaking during this year’s induction ceremony was Omar Ishrak. Omar is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic, Inc.
Earl Bakken, the Founder and Director Emeritus of Medtronic, watched the proceedings from his home on the Big Island of Hawaii via a live video feed from the event.
The new inductees for the 2017 Bakken Society are Walt Baxter, Kelly Coleman, Patrick Helm, Doug Hettrick, Nicole Kirchhoff and Kurt Smith.
The list of accomplishments, inventions, patents, and stories of these six individuals is truly amazing! These are just some of the people (and many others at Medtronic) who make a tremendous difference in people’s lives all over the world.
The Bakken Society fellows at the 2017 induction ceremony.
So, here are the highlights of the beautiful 2017 Medtronic Bakken Society Induction Ceremony. Joannie and I look are already looking forward to next years event.