CURTIS HENRY
Distribution Manager
Orbitist has one main goal for its future.
“We eventually want to create the greatest travel content in the world,” said Gunner.
Four Fredonia students have spent their semester working on an internship project for a start-up company called Orbitist. The team of four consists of Vincent Chimento, senior geology major; Kristen O’Connor, junior English and media management dual major; Hilton Weeks, sophomore English major; and Josh Wolfson, senior business management major. The company is headed by CEO and founder Nick Gunner, who graduated from Fredonia with a bachelor’s degree in communication in 2011.
Part of creating the best travel content for anywhere in the world is creating content for smaller, lesser-known places. This semester, the group went to work on creating a web app of the Concord Grape Belt, which lies off the shoreline of Lake Erie and runs through Chautauqua County, for the Grape Discovery Center in Westfield.
“This has been unlike any other internship I’ve ever had,” said Wolfson. “Nick gives us general guidelines, and we really get to dive in and take it whichever direction we’d like. It’s been a really interesting experience.
“The entire process of throwing the app together and getting it to work took about a month, maybe a month and a half,” Wolfson continued. “We put so much work into it, so to see it go live is just awesome.”
The web app was created entirely by the four interns working together. Orbitist makes use of available resources in the area, specifically the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Chautauqua County Research Center, located in Westfield, and the Fredonia Technology Incubator facilities.
Orbitist’s web app shows scenic driving routes through the grape belt, images based on each location and stories that accompany each spot. Other social media applications, particularly Instagram, are embedded within the map. It can be accessed by going to orbitist.com and searching map number 1718.
While it is apparent that apps and maps like these won’t generate huge amounts of income for Orbitist, Gunner says projects like these are all about the website’s potential.
“Creating detailed maps, like this one in particular, clearly isn’t something that’s too profitable,” says Gunner. “But it’s still a cool idea to have maps that show any one of these particular smaller regions all the way around the world. This is just the start of hopefully getting to that point.”
The students interning at Orbitist this semester were granted a unique internship that tied into their specific majors.
“For me, the internship was for [geographic information systems],” said Chimento. “It was really different, and it gave me opportunities I wouldn’t get elsewhere.”
“It exposed me to the business side of Orbitist and how things work behind the scenes,” said Wolfson. “Marketing, who is buying what — that sort of thing. It’s hard to get experience before graduation, but Orbitist granted me that experience.”