We are going to hold a "mini" OLPC Game Jam on Saturday, December 15th. It will be a mini-game jam because it will only be a one day event, not three. It will focus on developing games using Squeak. Perhaps "SqueakJam" or "OLPC SqueakFest" may be the better titles . We hope to build up to a full-fledged game jam within several months, complete w/ organized teams, prizes, and media coverage. Most software developers in the Kathmandu Valley work in Java or PHP, not Python or Squeak. I think it will take several mini-jams before there is enough expertise here in Squeak for a full Game Jam.

We will invite programmers, artists, and educators. The first part of the day will be a training workshop on how to develop activities with Squeak and in the later part cut them loose to make their own creations. We want to get the non-programmers to create their own Squeak activities, not just contribute from their area of specific expertise.

Surendra and Luke will be the lead instructors. Serendipitously, Bert Freudenberg will be in Kathmandu helping OLE Nepal speed up our activity development using Squeak and to better integrate our activities into Sugar.

Prashant Manandhar of Prime College has generously provided us use of a computer lab w/ 30 workstations for the event. We will make sure that every participant gets their own machine to develop their own activity. System Administrator Ram Krishna will support the event. Principal Naresh Shrestha has also been extremely supportive.

If you will be in Kathmandu on Dec 15th and are interested in participating, reserve a seat by sending an e-mail to register at olenepal dot org

This will be fun!