Emoti-Con is a celebratory end-of-year showcase for New York City middle and high school student digital designers, app makers, developers, gamers, artists, media storytellers, and activists to present their original innovations with support from a community of peers, educators and tech industry mentors & judges.
Emoti-con catalyzes change by bringing together students & tech industry leaders who share a passion for transforming the world with technology. This unique setting shows tech professionals the value of recruiting NYC students into tech career pathways.
This year, over 4,000 students at 72 NYC Public Schools are receiving a semester of Mouse’s Computer Science and Human Centered Design training.
On June 13, students, teachers, and tech professionals will gather to network, share career pathways, and present incredible student projects.
Emoti-Con is NYC's annual Youth Digital Media & Technology Challenge- a project fair for students across NYC who believe in digital innovation as a tool for positive change in the world around them. Since 2009, more than 2,250 teens (87% BIPOC and/or Latin/x) have participated!
Emoti-Con is a culminating celebration of the creative work produced all year at the informal programs of organizations within the Hive NYC Learning network and at public schools participating in CS4ALL NYC, the Games for Change Student Challenge, Mouse Design League and many other DOE programs.
Emoti-con: From Live to Virtual
From 2009-19, Emoti-Con was a live, in-person event at the New York Public Library each spring. Because of COVID-19, Emoti-Con is now entirely online (until it is safe to meet in person again).
What happens at a Virtual Project Fair?
At a *VIRTUAL* project fair:
- Students uploaded projects online.
- Emoti-Con created a webpage to display each project.
- The virtual project fair runs online for 12 days starting May 23.
- During the fair, judges and community members (like you!) will review the projects online and leave feedback, ideas and emojis.👏👏👏
Who are the students?
- In 2021, over 450 middle and high school students, in teams, are presenting 145 original projects. In 2022, we expect even more!
- Emoti-Con creates a forum for celebrating the ideas and innovations of youth with identities that have been historically excluded from media/tech industries.
What kinds of projects do students submit?
- 📱 Coding Projects, Apps
- 🤖 Physical Computing
- 👾 Games
- 📦 3D/CAD Prototypes
- 🎤 Videos, Podcasts, Music
- 🎨 Digital Art, VR/AR
- 💻 Websites
- 📣 Social action campaigns
- 💡 Anything digital/tech!
Important!
- Emoti-Con is all about IDEAS.
- Projects can be in any stage of the design process.
- Students with great IDEAS for an invention will write them down or draw a picture of it, they don’t have to be able to code it or build it!
🏆 The 5 Emoti-Con Award Categories🏆
- Most Social Impact: Makes meaningful change within a local or global community that it serves.
- Most Innovative: Combines creativity, ingenuity, and forward-thinking design or production.
- Point of View: Reframes issues, interactions, or experiences in a way that enlightens the audience.
- Most Entertaining: Engages users in playful or artistic ways.
- Best Pitch: Displays superior design documentation, storytelling, and project demonstration.
Emoti-Con Organizers & Collaborators
Emoti-Con is the largest event of its kind amongst informal learning programs in New York City. Emoti-Con addresses the need for cross-institutional collaboration and provides the much needed venue for youth to get to connect through their common identity as youth media producers and technologists.
Steering Committee: The event has been developed through a unique collaboration between youth designers, an alumni committee and NYC youth-serving organizations from the Hive NYC Learning Network who form the Emoti-Con Steering Committee: Code Nation, DreamYard Center, Global Kids, Mouse, the New York Public Library, and Parsons School of Design.
2021 Supporters: We'd like to thank our supporters at Best Buy, the Pinkerton Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the NYC DOE's Department of Instructional and Information Technology (DIIT). Their support demonstrates a commitment to growing design-thinking and innovation skills among youth and educators citywide.
Organized by and for Young Designers: Young people play a significant role in the design, planning and implementation of Emoti-Con through participation in the Design Fellows program at Parsons, the Emoti-Con Aluminati on the Steering Committee, and (when the program is live) the youth emcees working with Global Kids.
💖 Stay in Touch 💖
To contact us, email Emoticon@mouse.org or follow us on social media.
