While students listened and mingled with the big names at the #140cuse Conference, Isaac Budmen retreated to the back corner of the waiting room. He waited in line quietly for a cup of freshly brewed coffee, staring at the ground and shaking his head.

‘It went all right,’ he said, reflecting on the speech he gave to the crowd just moments ago.

Upon hearing this, his friend Steve Rhinehart turned around.

‘That’s an understatement,’ said Rhinehart,a graduate student studying information technology.Budmen’s speech had not only gone all right, but won him a speaking slot at the June 140 Characters Conference in New York City. The conference features a variety of big names in social media talking about the humanity of online connections.

Budmen, a senior information technology major in the School of Information Studies, has received some fame across campus as a result of his start-up company, Little Tinker Co., and he now boasts a Twitter following just shy of 400. With the motto ‘We build sweet sh*t,’ the company creates physical reactions to events in the digital world. Budmen founded the company in January 2012 with best friend Chris Azar, a senior in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. The company recently received a $5,000 angel investment from the Emerging Talks held in the Syracuse Technology Garden.

Elizabeth Ruscitto, a graduate student of information technology, coaches Little Tinker through the Student Sandbox in the Tech Garden.

‘Isaac has a big brain,’ said Ruscitto, who said she feels like she gets to play big sister to Budmen. ‘You can see his delight in connecting anything offline from the digital to the physical.’

Budmen becomes animated when he talks about his company,gesturing with his hands his ideas for connecting the digital and physical worlds. He created a model rocket ship that dispenses gumballs when passers-by check in to its Foursquare location in Hinds Hall’s New Explorations in Information Science office. Along with serving as the bridge from digital to physical worlds that Budmen desired, the rocket ship also serves as a reflection of the NEXIS nickname, ‘Starship.’

‘I’m pretty anti-education,’ Budmen said, quickly adding, ‘but I like learning. I’m super pro-learning and super anti-education.’

Education getting in the way of learning was the topic that Budmen discussed at #140cuse. He presented his anti-education pitch while standing mere feet away from Elizabeth Liddy, dean of the iSchool.

The topic of education presented an internal struggle for Budmen. Despite his anti-education stance, Budmen placed high value on the work he was able to produce from the support and resources made available by the Student Sandbox. The Sandbox was designed to promote entrepreneurship and free-thinking, an ideal embraced by Budmen.

While passionate about Little Tinker, he rarely discusses his own contributions. Instead, he sings the praises of Azar’s web-developing capabilities and teammate Chris Becker’s programming prowess. He carries himself in an unassuming manner, but his talents have not gone unnoticed.

Looking at Budmen, few would have assumed that he was a business founder. In a sea of novelty clothing, Budmen wore a gray, long-sleeved waffle shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Budmen describes himself as a ‘comfortable foot attire enthusiast’ on his Twitter page, and it was evident April 19. He walked around the conference in a pair of simple leather boots that had seen a good deal of wear.

Budmen is no stranger to conscious and purposeful disruption. Little Tinker’s Emerging Talk presentation involved a web application the team created called #DrinkUp. The team handed out beer to any conference attendees with proper identification.

‘Before that, we were debating,’ Budmen said, laughing. ‘Like, ‘Uh, this is probably going to piss off a lot of people.”

The way he saw it, though, this was not a bad thing. Budmen cited Philip Kaplan, entrepreneur and founder of F***ed Co., for the source of one his favorite quotes: ‘If you have a product that isn’t causing some controversy, you probably don’t have a product at all.’

Emerging Talks ended up awarding the team with a $5,000 investment, and Liddy herself enjoyed a beer from the #DrinkUp table.

Despite his anti-education stance, Budmen credits iSchool facultyfor the support they’vegiven him, including Anthony Rotolo, iSchool social media professor. A Liverpool native, Budmen was inspired to come to the iSchool largely in part to the influence of Rotolo and Liddy.

Other faculty members Budmen credits include Mike D’Eredita, start-up professor and Student Sandbox employee, and John Liddy, son of the iSchool dean. John Liddy works at the Student Sandbox as well and is coach to the Little Tinker team. Working with Budmen often, he recognizes a certain attitude in the student’s psyche.

‘He’s a doer,’ John Liddy said. ‘He’s like, ‘I don’t really care about the grades. It’s my idea. It’s who I want to be.”

cedebais@syr.edu

Published on April 29, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Chelsea: cedebais@syr.edu | @CDeBaise124