ThinkChicago Students Go Front Row at Lollapalooza
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| ThinkChicago students get a behind-the-scenes tour of Lollapalooza’s main stage Saturday afternoon. |
The flying balloons. The neon lights. The bright orange stage banners in Grant Park shining against the blue sky backdrop.
Among the swirl of colors at Lollapalooza on Saturday afternoon, one group of about 100 college students stood out with their blue backpacks with white “IBM” letters printed on the center. If you listened carefully, you would pick up on the accents: Boston, New York, California.
ThinkChicago: Lollapalooza 2013, an initiative from the music festival producers, Chicago Ideas Week (CIW) and the City of Chicago, brought the bright young minds from the country’s top business and technology programs together for three days of showcasing what the Windy City has to offer as a permanent home.
“It’s a way to bring talented students from all over the country who are interested in technology and entrepreneurship to Chicago to see all the great opportunities that we have for them here, both from the tech world and then just to show off our quality of life here, show off the great cultural capital that Chicago has,” said Eric Phillips, deputy policy director at the mayor’s office.
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| Reinwolf rocks out at Lollapalooza. |
From Thursday through Saturday, the students enjoyed a hybrid experience, from visiting Google’s office and talking to Siri’s creator to taking the Chicago architecture boat tour and rocking with The Killers.
The Lolla producers invited them to a behind-the-scenes tour of one of the world’s largest music festivals Saturday, introducing them to how technology and music intersect.
The tour reached a climax when the group won a front-row view of the Reignwolf’s one-man rock show. The students cheered and screamed with thousands of music fans, snatching selfies and shaking their heads as Reinwolf played an upbeat guitar solo.
Bri Chapman, 18, rushed to get her friends to snap a photo of her holding the ThinkChicago placard in front of the stage.
“I love it!” said the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student, who joined the program to learn more about entrepreneurship and networking. “I’ve met so many other talented students who might be potential co-founders. … Lollapalooza is a great way for us to be friends.”
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| Bri Chapman, 18, smiles for the camera at Lollapalooza. |
For Bruno Faviero, 20, the program completely changed his view of Chicago.
“I had never been to Chicago … I just thought it was kind of a big, sketchy city,” said Faviero, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student. “Now it’s one of my favorite cities.”
He said he was struck by the city’s blooming startup scene. As the managing director of StartLabs, a nonprofit that nurtures collegiate entrepreneurship, Faviero said he wants to start a company in the future – and Chicago might just be the perfect nest.
“There seems to be a lot of talent here, a lot of potential,” he said. “It seems like a great place to be during this time.”
Faviero wasn’t the only student to express that sentiment, Phillips said.
“I feel like we are making a great first impression on them.”
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Written by: Jia You
Photography by: Jia You
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