Project Summary
This is an annual event where were coordinate with other Division of Continuing Studies departments to showcase our services while providing family fun. We typically showcase workshops, VR tech and our games. We also create gaming activities so that normal families can experience immersive technologies without having to buy in. We typically guide attendees our divisions departments and services so its a great marketing event for our entire division.
Project Dates : Last Saturday in April
Specific dates
Rutgers Day 2017
This was the first time I coordinated RU Day for our department. It involved me pitching fun ideas of creating demo stations that would allow normal people to experience VR for the first time using our department Oculus. I also set up twitch streaming for all the kids to enjoy being a streamer. This also gave parents a way to clip and share their family’s experience in VR. Not only was this eye catching in the program brochures, but it also was physically eye catching. We had people waiting 1-2 hours in line to try this out. This was most people’s first experience with VR. After their experience, we had our team around to answer questions and give folks our contact information. We also took screenshots and video clips from our twitch accounts as a digital memento for participants.
Setting up the streaming, twitch channels, waivers for underage players, researching OBS and getting everything to work, troubleshooting all the VR equipment took about a month to put together. I also had the task of making the cute OBS template below.
Since this was a brand new event type and it was the first time our division tried something like this, I had to work out most of the details before pitching it for approval. I got to come up with what this experience would look like, how many minutes each player got, what games they would be playing, the tie in for our departments, different approvals and legal safety waivers for underage players, how many people would be needed to man each station, how to sanitize each station between players, physical requirements such as power, internet, physical borders for each play zone, how to explain the rules for each game in a short amount of time, and other logistical operations.
I also had to book and make sure the physical location could accommodate what we wanted to do in the space. I drew up some basic floor plans of what this would look like.
I ended up being the producer, tech specialist, project ma manger and the event coordinator for this project. Not only did our first RU Day with this specific VR set up go well, I was able to lay the foundations for our VR room. Where we made all these technologies available for all students to use for free.
2018
More of the same stuff. Except we made a central theme with the rest of the coordinated departments. We collaborated with a team of 6 total departments. Not only did I make sure that our department had new games to showcase and to show other VR games, I also made sure everyone activities fit together. This much cross collaboration over the course of a few months turned into our best Rutgers Day Event yet. I poured everything I had into making sure I planned this correctly for everyone’s department, it was such a relief when it was over and everything worked out! My past prep work was also done for this event. Thankfully with my past work, a lot of the same assets could be reused. We also got the process flow and logistics of the day worked out.
I also want to shoutout to my teammates at GRID and everyone that volunteered to work on a Saturday to man our booth. I was surprised to see the turnout. The events couldn’t have worked so well without everyone’s help and physical presence the day of the event.
2019
Same as the previous years event. Different games and better planned. This had become easy to coordinate with each department and we worked on marketing on showcasing our stuff to the our Rutgers community. Another year of high turnout! The event ran smoothly and I took on more responsibility on the logistical side of coordinating all the tech, tvs, tables and everything to be arranged ahead of time. The event became a fine tuned machine at this point.
2020
Unfortunately this year was canceled. Our ideas for a Minecraft world took place. I worked on making sure our assets were ready to go for next years event.
2021
Using preexisting Minecraft assets for other workshops and projects I worked on, we were able to open up our Minecraft server for everyone to enjoy! We figured this was the easiest way for at home enjoyment. We even created a mini site to pull all the departments together, showcase some events planned for the summer and created our own skins for kids to download and enjoy!
We were able to pull of the planning for this event in the span of 2 days. It took a bit of time to pull it together, but it was worth the trouble. I used miro to scope down what we could feasibly put together, as the team and I were in the middle of 2 other projects. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t over burdening the team and putting too much on my plate.
I called all of our past collaborators for a meeting, made meetings with specific agendas, laid out all the requirements and important dates and deadlines. After ward, I suggested what we could pull together, using pre-existing worlds, and assets to cut down on production time. Creating a mini-site pulling it all together was also something the team and I could do after we finished 2 projects.
The Minecraft server is up and running if you would like to visit, please follow the instructions on the website!
Please check out the minisite at
https://ruday21.netlify.app/
