The strategic partnership project “Game On: Developing Educational Board Games for Young Entrepreneurs” continues its course, and we are now more than halfway the total duration of the journey! From 22nd to 24th of November, the team of Shokkin Group International met up again with representatives from Ticket2Europe, Awesome People and Solidarity Mission for the third transnational project meeting of this year, which took place in Örebro (Sweden).
We started in the morning of 22nd of November by taking a look back at the meeting’s agenda, which main objectives were to present the work done to date and point out strengths and areas for development in the project; give an on the spot feedback on game concepts and finalize game versions; discuss results of game design process and game tests and agree on an action plan for the promotional period and design common event approaches.
After freshening up, we focused on our first intellectual output (IO1), the manual on educational board game development. In our previous meeting in Estonia last July all partners presented the results of their research and focus groups in terms of board games and entrepreneurship education in their countries. Also then, we established tasks and deadlines, and in this last meeting we made an overall review of the pending tasks needed to be finalized before the design and publication of the resource, which is schedule for mid-December 2019. We also made a review of the pending administrative and visibility tasks and agreed on new deadlines.
The next step was to present the work done since July and to discuss the process by pointing out strengths and areas for development which appeared in each one of the working teams. After producing a small visual summary and agreeing on common support measures, we proceeded to the really interesting part: testing the created games and giving feedback to one another! This block would not only take the rest of day one, but also the full of day two.
We started out by testing one of the games developed by Shokkin Group International in Estonia: “Company Games”, a game aimed at young entrepreneurs which challenges players to survive the period of 6 months managing their own enterprise while developing it into a sustainable business with social impact.
After providing feedback on the mechanics and dynamics of this first game, we moved on to “Roads 2 Entrepreneurship”, a very original “5 in 1” board game developed by Awesome People for teenagers to have a first approach with the concept of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial pathways (networking, knowledge, experience, mentorship, planning and resilience)..
The third tested game came again from Estonia: “Pitch Perfect”, a super fun, quick game about creative thinking and pitching skills that consists of brainstorming product and service ideas to satisfy a specific need of a target group. We had a blast testing it among the team and developing crazy prototypes of products at the same time that we improved our public speaking!
In the afternoon of day 2 it was time for “Stars-Up!” to be tested. This game, developed by the team of Ticket2Europe has the aim to develop a start-up from inside, working by organizational fields of action. Shortly after we also explored “The Tree of Pitch”, developed by the team of Solidarity Mission, which had the objective of learning the steps of how to pitch a social entrepreneurship idea. After all the tests were carried out, we still had time to apply changes and remake/adjusts our game prototypes.
Day 3 (the last working day) was dedicated to wrapping up and looking into the future. Regarding the board games prototypes, we set specific deadlines for each one of us to keep testing our developed games as many times as possible keep improving games mechanics, as well as to have final rules ready and translated to our national languages and have the print to play version ready and sent to the international team by mid-January.
We also presented the next activity in our timeline, the international training course for educators and youth workers that will be implemented in the beginning of March in Estonia. The goals, participant profile, practicalities and dissemination activities of the training course were presented and agreements were made regarding preparation of infoletters, participant selection and ticket purchase.
Already reaching the end of our meeting, we made a common revision of the overall dissemination activities expected from each partner and from the consortium as a whole, including online and offline dissemination activities (promotional dissemination events, local entrepreneurship weekends, open presentation events).
Finally, we revised the plan for the last transnational project meeting (TPM 4) that is to be implemented in Greece in July 2020. The team agreed on the structure of the meeting and on the concrete dates. The meeting came to an end with the creation of a common and detailed action plan for the next months and agreement of the next Skype calls.
Of course, aside from all the working hours, this meeting was characterized by the usual but still amazing hospitality of our colleagues from Awesome People, who welcomed us once more in their homes and hearts and made us discover even more of Örebro and the beautiful Swedish culture. It was a pleasure to share yet one working meeting with you, and we are looking forward to the next phases of the project!