A few months ago, we introduced you to some of the enterprising members of the inventors’ club, an after-school program at Rundlett Middle School funded by a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant. As it turns out, we weren’t the only ones who wanted to pick the students’ brains – Quirky, a company the group has submitted several potential invention ideas to, invited the group to their headquarters in New York City, and 10 students and seven adults made the trek during April vacation.
The students were given a tour of the building, where Quirky builds and tweaks invention prototypes, and also scored an invite to “eval night,” where a group of Quirky employees evaluate the latest submissions received through their website, Quirky.com. They were also asked for their input during the meeting and later got to discuss some of their own invention ideas over dinner.
“They love young minds,” Paulette Jaques, inventor and instructor of the club said of Quirky’s employees. “About 90 percent of the employees there are 25 or under. Most of them are really young.”
Nobody from the Rundlett crew got hired – as far as we know – but they did get to see how the operation works, visiting a variety of different workrooms and a test kitchen, where a refrigerator stocked with Red Bull was a popular stop, Jaques said.
“It was cool how the building emphasizes collaboration,” Sebastian Hart-Meyer, a budding entrepreneur if ever there was one who said he was “big into stocks” and referred to a classmate as a “former business partner” during an earlier interview, said. “There were no cubicles, just a lot of glass and stuff like that.”
The next most cogent observation about the Quirky building’s awesomeness came from Benjamin Sky, who was taken by the view from the men’s bathroom of nearby Lamborghini and Bugatti dealerships.
What good is a trip to New York City without some time to explore? The excursion included a trip to Wall Street, enjoyed by Hart-Meyer but panned by Sky, who said “it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.”
Other highlights? The students found themselves eating McDonald’s food in Times Square one evening at 11:30 p.m. (that’s dinner time in New York city, anyway, isn’t it?) and a group of boys including Spenser Ferguson, Reid Ljungholm, Sky and Meyer encountered a group of French girls and communicated with them using nothing but cheesy pick-up lines translated through Google Translate. Don’t know how to say “Do you have a map because I’m lost in your eyes?” in French? These guys do!
Overall, though, the trip will be remembered for Quirky’s involvement, as the company actually paid a portion of the expenses to get there and invited the students into their world.
“They welcomed them, guided us through everything,” Jaques said. “They made us feel very comfortable.”
