GAMBIT Equal Pay Challenge digital game jam

[Darren Torpey]

Hi jammers!

FYI, Rik Eberhardt and co. are hosting a "Digital Game Jam" at the GAMBIT Game Lab the weekend of March 24 & 25! They're trying out a new style of jam, targeted towards external competitions and challenges, in particular those hosted at Challenge.gov.

Here's Rik's description of the event:

===

We will be making games to submit to the Equal Pay Challenge, sponsored by the Department of Labor and the White House. You're welcome to bring your own team or form a team on site or even work individually.

More details about the challenge are here:

http://equalpay.challenge.gov/

The short version is: "The National Equal Pay Task Force wants your help in building innovative tools to educate the public about the pay gap and promote equal pay for women."

The longer version is that we will be creating games that will either take advantage of the data that is provided by the Dept of Labor or other resources to educate players about the pay gap. The organizers ask that the games work to achieve at least one of the following goals:

• Provide greater access to pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity

• Provide tools for early career coaching

• Help inform negotiations

• Promote online mentoring

GAMBIT will be providing food. Representatives of the Department of Labor will talk to us about the topic when we start, and will watch our presentations of the games at the end of the jam. I'm working on having regular check-ins with a rep so that if participants have questions, we can ask them.

We're following the standard weekend jam hours: Saturday 9am to midnight, Sunday 9am to 5pm. Participants are welcome to brainstorm on their own before the jam and bring as many ideas as you like into the jam space.

I'll be sending out more details and a signup page next week after GDC. Please spread the word about the event and look for another email from me on March 12th!

Rik Eberhardt

Studio Manager

Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

rebe...@mit.edu

617-324-2173

===

~Darren

P.S. - Yes, we'll be running more "Boston Game Jams" this year -- should have an announcement fairly soon!