If you’re currently looking at your June calendar and trying to squeeze the entirety of Chicago into a 48-hour “smash and grab” mission, do yourself a favor and stop. Delete the return flight. Book the extra nights.

We are hurtling toward a week in Chicago that represents the most significant convergence of design, commerce and intellectual capital our industry has seen in a generation. Between the institutional gravity of NeoCon, the street-level adrenaline of Fulton Market Design Days and the high-concept curiosity of Chicago Design Week, the city is hosting a workplace revolution. And you cannot witness a revolution during a long lunch break.

For years, the industry’s center of attention was a single building on the river. Today, that has fractured into a beautiful, multi-district ecosystem. You have THE MART, which remains the “Grand Dame” of contract furniture and a critically important venue for solving large-scale corporate, healthcare and education environments. But then you have Fulton Market, where more people are turning to learn how the workplace is changing in real-time across in converted warehouses and new showroom buildings.

If you try to do both in two days, you aren’t actually experiencing much of anything; you’re just participating in a very expensive cardio session. You need at least one dedicated day for THE MART to truly digest the macro-trends, and a dedicated day for Fulton Market to absorb the boutique, tactile shift that is redefining how we work. To rush between them is to miss the nuance that separates a good product from a market-defining one.

Then there is Chicago Design Week. This is where the industry stops talking to itself and starts talking to the world. It’s where architects, urban planners and digital artists are going to collide and tackle the “why” behind the “what.”

When you add a third or fourth day to your trip, you begin engaging with the intellectual scaffolding of your profession. You’re attending talks on neurodiversity in the workplace, the physical footprint of AI, and the actual future of urban density. These aren’t just cool seminars. They will literally help you shape the future of your business.

We talk a lot about the “Third Space” in office design — those informal areas where the real work happens. June in Chicago is the industry’s Third Space. The most consequential meetings you have will likely come from a chance 20-minute conversation with a CEO you’ve been trying to reach for months.

When you rush your trip, you kill serendipity. You kill the ability to say “yes” to the impromptu dinner or the off-site gallery opening. By arriving for new preview events at THE MART on Sunday and staying through Wednesday (or even Thursday), you give yourself time to actually  digest what you’re seeing.

I’m practicing what I preach. Before the madness officially kicks off in the Windy City, I’ll be on the ground at the INDEAL Champion Conference this week. This is where the real drivers of the industry, the “champions” who bridge the gap between INDEAL, dealer management and manufacturers, get down to business. It’s the perfect primer for the scale of Chicago, and I’ll be bringing a full event recap of the conference insights to you as soon as I return.

The industry is in a state of flux, and Chicago is the place where the new rules are being written. Don’t skim the notes. Stay the extra days and walk the extra miles. The return on investment for that extra hotel night might just be the most profitable decision you make all year.

I’ll see you in Chicago.