ORGANISING A WOMEN IN GAMES MEET-UP

Our Ambassador Jules Drejer recently organised the first Women in Games Meet-Up in Berlin. Here she shares how she did it…

My name is Jules and recently I had the pleasure of organising the first Women in Games Berlin coffee meet-up together with the amazing Mafalda Duarte [the Women in Games Ambassador Co-Ordinator].

With all the remote work I was craving to meet other WiG members and people from the industry. I have just started my adventure with game development and so far all my contact with others has been online, and don’t get me wrong – I really enjoy WFH (there is nothing better than working in my favourite pyjamas) but I just felt extremely lonely.

I very spontaneously sent a message to the WiG Ambassadors chat group about wanting to meet up for a coffee. This can be scary! I am a rather shy person myself so I do admit it took me a few tries to actually press the ‘Send’ button!

But you cannot imagine my excitement when I woke up the next day to a message from Mafalda who was visiting Berlin at that time!

Organising a very spontaneous meet-up was interesting. I am not a native Berliner and the city is still rather new to me but we managed to get everything organised rather quickly – the place, time and date, invitations, and event site. You don’t need any fancy means to organise your own meeting! It is really that simple and took us just a few days.

Of course, we had an Adventure – the cafe turned out to be closed. When Mafalda messaged me that she was at the place we were supposed to meet up and it was closed, my heart skipped a beat (for real!). But I took a deep breath, opened my trustworthy Notion page of cool places in Berlin and found another cafe in the area.

In the end, it all worked out more than successful. The place we went to was much bigger and had a funny name and the vegan blueberry croissant was really good.

It was also amazing and so refreshing to talk to the amazing people in the industry. When we all left to go in our own directions I felt so inspired to create, learn and, of course, organise more meet-ups.

Organising the meeting was scary at first, after all, you take responsibility for the event but I believe the best way to deal with the stress is to focus on smaller spontaneous meetings. Just send the message and see who is in the area. You don’t need conference rooms, just find a cosy place to sit and talk.

And the best plot twist of it all is that the first, original cafe wasn’t closed. It wasn’t open either. Apparently, there are two cafes with the same name on the same street. But in the end, it all worked out and I can’t wait for the next Berlin coffee meet-up.

Congratulations to Jules for organising and hosting this Meet-Up. We actively encourage all of our Ambassadors to arrange similar events and network with other like-minded women and allies. Our Ambassador Programme – powered by Keywords Studios – now features over 1,000 women and allies in 70 countries around the world. Find out more about joining the Programme here.