OU ESPORTS CLUB & GAMERJIBE ESPORTS CAREER FEST DETAILS
WHEN: May 18, 2020 – May 22, 2020
TIME: Look at the link below for daily agenda/schedule
WHERE: www.gamerjibe.com
HOW DO I SIGN UP? Sign up through the LinkedIn event page below. (LINK BELOW)
WHO IS IT FOR? All gamers of any type, those interested in the esports industries for career opportunities, graduating seniors, and alumni.
WHAT / OVERVIEW / TL:DR: The OU Esports Club and Gamerjibe have teamed up to promote a revolutionary event not only as a response to current global impacts but for any events that need immersive virtual functionality. This five-day career fest will feature panels and a job fair for the specific esports segment as a showcase of its versatility and potential and an absolute need for our developments within our organization. It will feature companies that are seeking candidates for jobs, allow networking, and facilitate presentations for all those who attend and have an interest.
This event will be open to the global and general public. We see the absolute worth and value of this tool for everyone in many different use cases and want to help elevate the profile of Gamerjibe for genuine innovation to provide a solution that we feel is absolutely necessary. If you would like to see more about their platform as well as my opinions on some practical application potential, then please read further.
WHAT JOBS AND COMPANIES WILL BE PRESENT: There were will be jobs in the various business operations needed within any organization type from ambassadorship to professional office types in both the US and abroad. Details on this will be further announced through Gamerjibe’s social media channels in the following weeks.
EVENT PROMO
CAREER FEST AGENDA (subject to change)
SIGN UP TO ATTEND HERE!
WANT TO VOLUNTEER?
WHO IS THE OU ESPORTS CLUB?
The University of Oklahoma Esports Club is a 3.5-year-old registered and licensed student organization with a community of over 1,100+ community members across OU, the region, and with our collegiate peers. We are a community of gamers for gamers at the core, with heavily elevated energies if members choose to do more. The OU Esports Club serves as a home to all gamers from all backgrounds. Whether you play first-person shooters(FPS), massive online battle arenas(MOBA), PC or console, or if you just want a community of like-minded peers, we are for you. We have energies in formal as well as casual competition, streaming energies, as well as production and journalistic practicum opportunities. However, if you want to join and stay in the shadows it is absolutely encouraged!
DEEP DIVE - WHY THIS PLATFORM SHOULD BE SIGNIFICANT FOR EVERYONE
In the beginning of the spring 2020 semester, I received a random email from Gamerjibe. They had been working on a platform to develop virtual event facilitation using 3D environments. Within the first five minutes of the pitch, I was hooked. Before I met my first student on this journey back in fall 2016, I had very clear top level missions in mind. First, how do I entertain and develop opportunities for currently enrolled students? Second, how do I get prospective students to see the value in what we’re doing? Finally, how do I get the students who are passionate about this into this industry? Basically, copy and paste any university’s mission.
For the duration of the almost four years that we’ve been working on this, I’ve never had a really appropriate answer to career placement opportunities. The industry as a whole in the United States isn’t quite mainstream yet, but job opportunities in the industry are available; however, our specific campus doesn’t actively develop curriculum for it, yet. This means resources like career services, recruitment, and more don’t have it on their radar quite yet. This is something everyone developing collegiate esports energies can easily see in the future as the topic gains more and more traction on university campuses. This is especially the case for the developers that actively innovate dynamic esports programs versus the ones that just use it almost exclusively as a recruitment only opportunity. It’s no longer about having esports, it’s about what you do with it.
So let’s dive into this tool, topic, and opportunity from two angles — first, from the standpoint of COVID-19-impacted business models and global reach and the need to build stronger and a more immersive means to interact in general, then, looking at the energies that make up the bulk of modern day community interaction, gamer culture, and the high anxiety or heavily introverted demographics.
SO WHY IS THIS DIFFERENT? WHAT IS THIS?
WHAT ARE WE SEEING ELSEWHERE?
I do not want to portray Gamerjibe’s platform as a response to changes with the global pandemic. I would much rather portray it purely as a solution to virtual event programming needs. The current landscape changes are only bringing the topic to the forefront. Anybody who actively hosts conferences of any sort is actively seeking opportunities to still execute on programming despite the loss of physical ability. This has absolutely been frustrating and caused many to approach the topic of adaptation using tools that were right in their face, easily executable, and flex technologies that were already in place. Many of us have seen these efforts realized through a landing page of prerecorded videos, links to documents and brochures, and maybe a webinar link, individual zoom links to function like “rooms” at a conference, and so forth. To me personally, these serve the purpose of execution or even supplementation to a world where we could have physical events. Gamerjibe’s solution represents the opportunity of providing a new method of virtual event facilitation during the pandemic impacts.
GAMERJIBE SOLUTION
Take what you know about traditional conferences, career fairs, and recruitment expos and copy and paste everything but smell, taste, and touch. So, think virtual representation of booths and vendor displays with rich teleconferencing tools baked right in. This means video, voice, textual chat. It features quick access to digital business cards, especially when LinkedIn is used as the sign-on method. Being able to host active conversations with multiple people as well as single direct conversations are all present as well. Think of a presenter speaking to an audience, a one-on-one interview, or a group of people asking questions to a single rep; it can do that. Now think about marketing brochures and physical swag bags. This can be facilitated by simple visual representation of actual marketing material and even a clipboard to sign up for things. With a simple click on these items, you can have simple links to PDFs, a landing page web address, or forms to coordinate and share even more when the event is over or reps just aren’t available.
OK! WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?! SHOW US ALREADY!
ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN MORE
Want to see a live demo, ask more questions, and hear more? On May 12th, 930AM-1030AM CST we will be hosting a live stream featuring myself, Mike Aguilar, the Lead Advisor of the OU Esports Club, along with the amazing team from Gamerjibe. This will be facilitated by Cris Reed of The Next Level Experience. Stop by and watch, listen, and ask us questions as we talk through some further points and vision of their amazing platform and the opportunities it presents.
FROM THE EYES OF GEN Z AND TECH SAVVY MILLENNIALS
At the time of this article I am currently 38 years old. I represent the first wave of the millennial generation, which is often defined as having grown up analog and maturing into adulthood digitally. We are the technological bridge generation in that spirit. Additionally, Gen Z represents the generation born into a fully digital world from birth. As the standards for which we interact with the world around us have changed and evolved with the dawn of technologies like high-speed internet, smartphones, and social media, the standards of how business is conducted for the newer generations has needed to adapt. In the modern age, Gen Z has always had information at their fingertips, is used to interacting with others purely digitally, often turns away from traditional phone calls in lieu of textual-based messaging, and thrives in online communities where identities are shadowed, communication is less invasive, and they can lurk and consume information at their own will.
So imagine the prospect of a traditional in-person career fair and how it can feel very counter-intuitive to these generations, how they deal with communication outside of their close circles, and how confrontational it can feel to walk up to a stranger and start a conversation without any real introduction. This can also trigger tons of social anxiety due to all of the stimuli from the busy conference floor in tandem with the mental ramp-up to a direct interaction with a stranger. Many of those with these concerns and hesitations often roam career fairs, listening in on others’ conversations only, not raising hands during panels due to fear of judgement and how vulnerable they feel, and collecting free swag and marketing material by the end of the day.
A tool like Gamerjibe’s virtual event platform serves as a sophisticated answer to a lot of these hurdles, but not all. It translates to the digital generations as it looks and feels like a game but still facilitates a large chunk of opportunities that are presented in a physical event. It is personally the best solution I have found as a means to facilitate virtual event programming for the demographics I cater to in gaming and esports communities and cultures. I am a member of these exact demographics and suffer from these exact hangups myself. While I have plenty of extroverted energies now, it takes a ton of effort to go to public events like this.
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OTHER OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION (or in general)
As mentioned before, due to the global pandemic, many business operations have had to adapt and evolve. For event planners, this has been exceptionally true due to the loss of physical programming opportunities. With higher education specifically focusing on reaching Gen Z-age demographics currently for creating outreach for recruitment, career fairs, and expos, focusing on programming that speaks to their tech-savvy foundation is key to setting institutions apart. This is true regardless of the current state of the world.
So aside from hosting an event in Gamerjibe’s platform, let us talk about other opportunities. In the context of reach, a tool like this amplifies the range and a university can recruit. The financial demand and logistics of travel for outreach becomes easier to facilitate, or it at least can supplement existing energies. This opens a university’s recruitment energies to new markets and also as a more cost-effective way of seeing if new regions may be interested in what your university has to offer by offering more than just marketing material, web links, or the expenses of physical presence. Furthermore, this can enable students who are interested in your university to interact during a recruitment campaign without the financial burden of travel.
Another opportunity this presents is in the context of cost savings for hosting and companies attending career fairs. Depending on the size of your university, the big production career fairs can have extensive price tags, physical space allocation limitations, and also be hindered by the lack of a diverse showcase of companies due to the cost of logistics involved for them to be present to recruit from these types of events. On the flip side, it can also open up opportunities for representation from smaller companies on a global scale that don’t have the budgets to travel extensively to headhunt a big pool of graduates except through job sites and social media.
The final focus of potential opportunity I want you to think about is departmental-specific engagement programming. Most colleges actively develop programming for their own specific recruitment, development, and engagement needs. Resources like this can help with space limitations, interdepartmental collaborations, and budgetary constraints as well. Think about a research presentation day that can be hosted and facilitated to a larger audience than ever before for recognition and achievement, execute a lecture series that can expand the pool of guest speakers, and create more frequent opportunities for diverse networking programming.
MORE ABOUT GAMERJIBE
Gamerjibe is the virtual events platform for the digital generation. They’re building the next-gen events platform where brands, influencers, and fans can easily organize and attend immersive and interactive 3D events. With Gamerjibe, you can run your next networking event, esports watch party, or conference that participants will love and can attend from their favorite web browser, all while going easy on your budget and carbon footprint.
