3 full days event with 3 hours of average sleep per day. Most of participants had professional experience in design, programming or game development, but this was their first hackathon experience.

I placed huge effort in designing the on-boarding experience of the participants, entering the event, getting to know one another, mixing the groups, creating a base group for creativity.

In order to direct the event in a socially meaningful way, I designed extra challenges to their work. Challenges like "Develop game element that will show social acceptance" or "Design a game for a person with some disability" or "Develop a collaborative multiplayer game" : gave very interesting results.

The first Global Game Jam event for teenagers. Organized globally by the GGJ-Next non-profit organization. We had the one and only event in entire Israel, and had a lot of expectations around it. This was the leading gaming hackathon event for that year. Its success was crucial to show that Jerusalem city can maintain its involvement around gaming and new technologies.

We ended up having 60 participants (15-19 years old), with 15 mentors with a wide range of skills, 

Participants created 7 games with 100% of the music, graphics and programming written during 2 days.

Teenagers proved that when they are correctly challenged - they are willing to work really hard for a cause!

In the picture, Amit Saban, a 17 years old successful entrepreneur, with a web development agency and an NGO.

Shachar Oz: Production, Planning, Running Event

Neta Frank: Production

Michal Gross Pinsker: Production

Yoram Honig: Manager

Mentors: Doron Weiss, Alon Tzarafi, Alon Kaplan, Ayelet Sapirshtein, Noa Lahav, Lekar Roni, Gal Orian, Chagay Shomrony.
60 Participants