An Epic Adventure

Visiting a very creative business campus full of dragons, planets, and imagination

I am on the grounds of Epic, a major health care software provider. If you’ve used MyChart, you’ve used their product. Their campus is a rolling demesne in the Wisconsin plains outside of Madison, a Disneyland for techs and coders—with several themed sub-campuses (campi?) that include a fantasyland of knights, dragons, and wizardry schools; a storybook land of Jules Verne, Willy Wonka, Alice in Wonderland, and the Brothers Grimm; several space-themed buildings with heavenly bodies from reality and fiction, down to a Cantina where scoundrels, droids, and browncoats would feel welcome; a prairie campus with a treehouse and a farm; and a New York themed building with a subway tunnel that leads to the Mayan temple where Indiana Jones was looting relics.

I’m here for a convention of vaccinated Epic administrators, and but it’s also a sort of vacation, as they expect you to explore their offices and see how they keep things running so smoothly. Everyone seems to have a private office; not a cubicle in sight. How refreshing. None of the psychopathic “clean concept” office design which forbids having any visible decor that might suggest a personality. There are cafeterias all over, themed conference rooms, and comfortable spots to work alone, in groups, or openly so others can find you. But I’m not here to sell anything. It’s just refreshing to see a business treat workers like human beings they might care about. But enough about that. Let’s get on to the fun stuff.

Guests arrive at the Deep Space learning center bottom ground floor, “Magma,” and the other levels are Rock, Dirt, Grass, and Sky. There is coffee and good food. Up on the Sky level there’s a grand piano. As I write this, a guitarist is plucking away beneath a biplane mounted on the ceiling. I can’t share every photo here, but you’re welcome to peruse my Instagram. (Where you can see me riding their restored antique carousel, among other things.) One side of the Learning Center has a cave marked “Precious” and the other “Ice Caves.” If you explore downstairs, you’ll find Sméagol looking for a nasty fishes:

On the other side is a cuddly yeti who you can post with giving you a hug. (You can search Instagram for that, and many other undignified photos of me behaving like the child that I am.) Exploring the campus is fun in itself. There’s not a lot to see on a prairie. You stare across the expanse at the clouds and occasionally you see a thirteen-lined ground squirrel or a tree if you’re lucky, but they’ve made it a feast for the eyes. Here’s the Grimm building. There’s a faery circle in back.

They have paths you can walk, and dozens of “spotted cow” bicycles to borrow. I took a bike and pedaled around campus. Most people walk. No one looks harried or hurried. Part of that is we’re in Wisconsin. People are a bit more chill here. I lived in Minneapolis for several years and I missed the peculiar midwestern attitude that’s relaxed, polite, with that guarded, passive-aggressive form of hospitality to strangers, and strong sense of local pride. It’s not misplaced. Madison and Milkwaukee may not be metropolises, but they’ve got nothing to feel lesser about.

Some of the buildings are less wild than others; the wild west building with Miss Kitty’s saloon auditorium is one of the milder ones:

As they’ve grown, it seems like they’ve taken it as a challenge to see how creative they can be. The Wizard School campus with the Fortress is somewhere in the middle, and it’s got dragons:

The silver dragon in the stone circle.

Notice the catwalk on the turret? Of course I made a beeline for it. There’s a guest book you can sign in the cozy work room with couches that leads to the stairs. Notice the sign. The landings are clear plastic with fake cracks in them, so if you’re afraid of heights, beware…

But it’s worth the climb. Both for the view and the secret guardian of the castle:

They really have a lot of fun designing their buildings. They are still growing. There were bulldozers and graders working on a new campus, and the Storybook Land campus is barely finished. And they keep getting more audacious. Check out the Jules Verne and Oz buildings:

The kraken is also inside the building, with its tentacles exploding through the floor and up all three stories of the stairwell, with portholes and hot air balloon imagery al around. The Wonka building has an elevator painted to look like it’s glass, with pipes running down the hallways labeled “chocolate” and candy-themed conference rooms. Alice has a Cheshire cat staring out the window and the Red Queen’s playing card designs all over.

Of course the Wizard School has a “Crooked Alley” reminiscent of that other one. There’s also a Kings Cross building based on London’s train station, and a building with New York themed designs from a subway to a Nathan’s hot dog stand.

When I first mentioned the themes to my friend Johnny, his first question was “what about Star Trek and Star Wars?” Well, a company can push their luck, when they have a product called Hyperdrive, and Paramount likes to protect its trademarks. There’s no HoloDeck or anything else, but there is a Cantina that evokes a desert planet:

But what if your tastes don’t run to popular culture franchises? Well, you can head to the treehouse between the prairie campus and the star campus, taking the “Indiana Jones Tunnel” to get there… And try to steal the idol while you’re there. (Turn the sound on!)

The treehouse is in a quiet spot in a small wood with a rickety bridge leading up to it. I found two people working inside, and let them be. But it was nice to walk around a small woods, after climbing the towers and seeing just how far the prairies roll.

There’s much more to see, and they give public tours, so if you’re ever in Madison, head south to Verona and spend a day. Ride the slide and the carousel. See how some businesses spend their money to make their employees happy, and wonder why more don’t.