Hiya, Internet! I’m Holden, the organizer of Molyjam Los Angeles. I posted a bit ago on the blog to talk about an awesome event we had with GameDevDrinkUp, but I’ve neglected to share much about my perspective on the event. So let me take care of that.

Towards the middle of March, I found out via a buddy on Facebook that there was going to be a game jam based on @PeterMolydeux tweets in San Francisco at the end of the month. I had traveled up there for the Global Game Jam in January and started planning a trip to go back. But just for the hell of it, I decided to see if any of my friends in LA were interested in doing it here. I put up a Facebook event and left for a family wedding in Florida the next day.

I woke up the next morning with a message from Anna Kipnis asking if she could make my event the “official” LA one. Sure, why not? I figured I might get a dozen or so people interested and it’ll be a fun time. A few hours later we were at 20 confirmed attendees and I started to worry a bit. I kept checking the Facebook page throughout the day and saw how quickly the newly-dubbed “Molyjam” was speading. It soon became clear the jam had outgrown my living room, so in between rehearsal dinners and photography sessions, I started calling up hotels, universities, and conference centers around LA to see if I could find a space available to rent. The jam was only two weeks away. (more…)