Kick . . . by Snively '11
Greetings and salutations! If I’m a good judge of time, and I like to think that I am, all y’all prefrosh are starting your summer internships and getting excited to finally make it to campus in just three short months. Yay!!! Either that or you’re gearing up and anxiously awaiting the release of the MIT Application at the end of summer. I know during the summer leading up to MY freshman year I haunted these blogs and I expect many of you will do a fair amount of reading as well.
Before I go too much farther, I suppose I should introduce myself. It’s been forever since I’ve blogged and many of you may not have heard of me. Hi. I’m Snively, I graduated in 2011 (MechE) and have just completed my first year out in the real world. That’s right, electricity bills, rent, gas, insurance, and all that other boring stuff.
You know what’s not boring though? My job. My job is very much not boring and I think you’ll agree. I build interactive exhibits for museums AND design/build interactive walkthrough adventures. The company I work for is called 5 Wits and the CEO is MIT alum Matt DuPlessie. Each year Matt gives back a little to MIT by being a lab instructor for 2.009 and I give back a bit by being a lab instructor for 2.00b (toy design). We also sometimes use the 5 Wits shop to help fabricate portions of projects for these classes.
In addition to all this MIT/5 Wits collaboration we also host a group of MIT interns each January. This year we had five. See, here’s me and them:
Awwwwww. They were awesome and we helped introduce them to the design/brainstorm/prototype process
So, why am I telling you all this? Why the sudden blog entry after a year of nothing? Well, 5 Wits is building a new show and we need YOUR help.
Our shows take about $200k to build through to completion and we’re jumping on the Kickstarter bandwagon to see if we can raise some funds that way. This blog entry is a humble request for you to check out our Kickstarter page, watch the video, read the description, and decide whether you’d like to contribute. I make an appearance in the video at 3:03. It’s also a request to share the kickstarter link with EVERYBODY that you know. The more eyes the better.
There are a variety of award levels and most involve free tickets to the show. It’ll definitely be finished while you’re at MIT so you’ll be able to go check it out if it gets funded.
As a special “MIT Admissions” bonus if you decide to help contribute, I’d be more than happy to give you a behind the scenes tour when it opens AND, prior to that, Skype/Google hangout with you for 1/2 hour discussing admissions, MechE, or whatever you’d like. Donate and you get thirty minutes of my time for your trouble.
I hesitated a bit when considering posting this because it’s a bit spammy but when I considered the close ties we have with MIT, the interns we host each year, and the fact that 5 Wits is an awesome example of a place you can work after you graduate, I feel a bit less scummy about asking you to check out the Kickstarter.
So, check it out! Also check out Bryan’s blog entry from years back when he visited one of 5 Wits’s shows. Remember, behind the scene tours and Skype dates await you!