The Innovation Trail spent its Saturday listening to your stories, about what you make, using our brand new listening booth.
And boy, does what you make run the gamut: from tactical firearms, to dot matrix printers, to connections between people, the folks at BarCamp Rochester are an industrious bunch.
Here are the stories of just a few of the people we met, about the cool stuff they make.
Brian Boucheron, the robot artist
"It's really neat the sounds it makes, all the motors going, the pen rapidly hitting the paper - that's what got me into drawing with robots."
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wxxi/local-wxxi-991793.mp3
Eric Lee, the high-school obsolescence enthusiast
"I was cleaning out the utility closet and beneath layers of dust I found this antiquated piece of technology and I just thought it looked so amazing ... I wanted to breathe life back into it."
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wxxi/local-wxxi-991797.mp3
Brian Vogel, the hang gliding tinkerer
"The first time I went hang gliding I took a tandem flight and we got up to about to about 5,000 feet and I could see the Great Lakes, and Rochester looked about the size of a postage stamp ... you just start running and you're in the air."
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wxxi/local-wxxi-991794.mp3
Want to see how it all went down? Here are the photos that we took throughout the day, of the kind folks that told us their stories, and our crew in action.
Your chance to tell your story
We'll be going through the rest of the stories we collected on Saturday (in all, we collected 24 stories - every slot was filled, and no one bailed on us during the day!). Eventually some of the stories will air on WXXI as part of a series of audio postcards about what people in Rochester make. We'll also post them to InnovationTrail.org.
In the meantime, you'll have another chance to tell us stories about what you make next week: we'll be taking the booth on the road again, this time to TEDxRochester.
Interested in hosting the Innovation Trail listening booth at your event? Contact the Innovation Trail's editor, Rachel Ward.
