MalmoJamsToo

Event coordinator (2014 Nov—2025 Jan)

At Malmö

Planned, hosted and evaluated 13 game jam events. Hosted and managed regular sketch jam events. Worked with Media Evolution, MINC, Game Habitat.

Posters

These posters were ones I made for the annual Global Game Jam events we had from 2016 onwards.

About the initiative

Malmö Jams Too began with close friends of mine (around 2012 with Jaffar S. and Samanta M.), who formed this as a way to share knowledge and as a means to relax through creative meetups. At first it was a group of interaction design students, but we warmly welcomed others to join our sketch sessions. I joined about two months (in July) after it became a regular event, and have been present for about every event thereafter.

For the most part there were weekly sketch jams until around 2017, where it changed regularity to about once a month. The change better accommodated our schedules and also allowed us to make better jam experiences in general. There were also game jams, and we became the de facto host of the annual Global Game Jam since 2016.

From the website: The goal is to bring creative people together from all disciplines: professionals, students and hobbyists who want to collaborate and share their knowledge and experience. We believe “jams”, which are gatherings where people engage in creative activities, are great experiences that achieve our desired sense of creative community.

We loved being at Starbucks in Malmö, though we later switched to Condeco after their departure. Most of the schedules are announced through Discord, our website and through Facebook. Game (and creative) jams had a mailing list for previous participants.

Here are photos from one of the first sketch jams held and the first game jam we held for tabletop games.

Sketch jams

The sketch workshops or jams that we hosted were really meant to be a starting point of larger discussions. We wanted to openly get more collaborations going, find more ways to have creative sessions and to open a door to sharing what we may have recently picked up or learnt.

The sketch jams did follow a set format, though people had a lot of freedom in improving on it in different ways. For awhile we had a mashup theme, where two themes were placed side by side and participants were able to be inspired by either or both themes. Sometimes the conversations were used as inspirational starting points.

We also had a sketchbook which contained a single collaborative sketch which was passed around the table. This also had it's own theme sometimes, or incorporated any inspirations during the jam itself.

We coordinate our community through Discord, our website and (originally) from a Facebook group.

Planning and hosting jams

Hosting usually means one (and preferably more) of us come to the events and help manage the schedule, assist with any requests that help enhance the experience of the event and to provide a sense of the community we are trying to foster.

So when we are planning for the event we consider a lot of different factors. Logistics is important in how comfortable we can make the participants. Finding enough space, transport and accessibility to the venue, access to the venue's facilities and how to attain food. We also list a generalized overview of the schedule (for game jams particularly). As we also care about the welfare of our participants we also ensure that everyone follows the same House Rules for every event. We also may bring extra materials or tools to allow participants who have no equipment or experience with these types of events to freely join in with us if they would like.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, GGJ21 was an online-only event. We discovered virtual meeting places like Topia.io though.

I brought too many materials once, for GGJ20.

Jam evaluations

Links to each evaluation that I have written are found below for further reading. GGJ14 did not have much of an evaluation, so it is not included. All evaluations can be found on the website.

A lot of the evaluation is a retelling of the events from the perspective of the host(s). I reason out what went well and what we can focus on to make better for future runs.

A list of the games are also present with our own given award titles from attempting to play each game. These are mostly a nod to each participant that we notice their hard work. In the past we even printed out these as certificates that we gave out with the handwritten award titles and their names attached.

At the end of each evaluation we look at the statistics we were able to know (most of which are taken from the registration for each jam event). I implemented this using Chart-js, which makes it all look really great. And absolutely reusable for future posts with the same past data. For the in-person events we also had a photo reel which showed some of the event's happenings.

Global Game Jam (GGJ25) - Theme: Bubble
Global Game Jam (GGJ24) - Theme: Make Me Laugh
Global Game Jam (GGJ23) - Theme: Roots
Global Game Jam (GGJ22) - Theme: Duality
Global Game Jam (GGJ21) - Theme: Lost and Found
Global Game Jam (GGJ20) - Theme: Repair
Global Game Jam (GGJ19) - Theme: What home means to you
Global Game Jam (GGJ18) - Theme: Transmission
Global Game Jam (GGJ17) - Theme: Waves
Global Game Jam (GGJ16) - Theme: Ritual
Malmö Jams Too (MJT15) - (Physical) tabletop games. Theme: Time Travel frenemies
Global Game Jam (GGJ15) - Theme: What do we do now?