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 3,138 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.

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 22.
• During the fair, judges and community members (like you!) will review the projects online and leave feedback, ideas and emojis.👏👏👏

• In 2022, over 735 middle and high school students, in teams, are presenting 194 original projects. In 2023, 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.

Want to be an active member of the Emoti-Con community? Try the Scavenger Hunt: activities, challenges, and reflection for students.

1. ⭐ Emoti-Con 2023 Project Fair Guide: Introduce Emoti-Con to your students with this presentation. It includes all of the details and resources you will need to create and submit an excellent digital media & technology project.
2. ⭐ Emoti-Con Project Application Worksheet: This worksheet has every question from the application so you and your students can prepare your responses before filling out the live form. Here's an example Project Page too!
3. ⭐ Wix.com Project Webpage Template: Our friends at Wix Education developed an amazing free template webpage for Emoti-Con teams to show off your project, along with a video tutorial.
4. ⭐ Project Fair Slides Template: How can your students best show off their project idea to the judges? Feel free to copy and remix this Google Slides presentation template and upload it with your application.
5. ⭐ Mouse Open Projects: Not sure how your students will turn their idea into a prototype? Mouse has released several free, DIY design & digital making how-tos activities for making apps, 3D models, easy game prototypes, and more.
6. ⭐ Get Live Support: Emoti-Con has a few volunteer educators who can work with you and your students to get a project ready for the Project Fair. Email us (Emoticon@mouse.org) and we will schedule a time to meet online.

• 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 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.

To contact us, email Emoticon@mouse.org or follow us on social media.