Hey everyone – We’ve been a bit quiet since starting to plan next year’s Train Jam event, and it’s time to let you all know what we’ve been up to!
Event Information
Train Jam 2017 will be taking place from February 23, 2017 until February 25, 2017.
As always, we will be departing from Chicago’s Union Station and arriving in Emeryville, CA, which is just outside of San Francisco, California. Amtrak will provide shuttle buses for Train Jam attendees to complete the rest of the journey into downtown San Francisco.
We will be be renting out a space in Chicago on February 22, 2017 for attendees of Train Jam 2017 to pick up their information packet, hang out, and meet each other, and will announce more information about the location closer to the date.
Thanks to the folks over at GDC, the Train Jam GDC booth will be returning for a third year! Every Train Jam attendee who submits a game will have their game available to play at the official Train Jam booth. Purchase of a Train Jam ticket does not include access to GDC and your attendance at GDC is not required for your game to be shown at the Train Jam booth.
So Much Train
We have the whole train! Amtrak has finally come on board (pun totally intended) with Train Jam and has been assisting us with all of our Train Jam planning for 2017. This includes facilitating the rental of an entire train just for us jammers. We now have three coach class cars, two sleeper cars, one restaurant car, and two observation cars all to ourselves. This has given us a lot more freedom with the planning, options for attendees, and is generally amazing!
This also means that we have many more options for sleeper car rooms! In addition to the regular Coach Class and Superliner Roomettes that we had available for the previous three years, we now also have Family Style, Handicap Accessible, and Deluxe bedrooms available. Please refer to our FAQ to find out more information about what these different rooms include.
Diversity Initiatives
Thanks to our friends at Intel and Cards Against Humanity, we have been able to push our diversity initiatives further than ever before. We have two official focuses on diversifying the attendance of Train Jam 2017 – Geographical diversity and Gender diversity. We have opened up our application process for both of our diversity initiatives, and these applications will be open until 11:59pm Sunday November 20, 2016 PST. Recipients of travel assistance and/or a Train Jam ticket will receive notice by 11:59pm Tuesday November 22, 2016 PDT. The links to the applications can be found below:
Public Ticket Sale
The public sale of Train Jam 2017’s tickets will start at 4:00pm Thursday November 24, 2016 Central European Time. Here is a handy reference of what that means around the world! Tickets will sell out fast, so be ready! We limit all ticket purchases to 2 per order.
Sponsors
We have an amazing lineup of sponsors who are helping us make Train Jam 2017 a phenomenal year. Without our sponsors, Train Jam would not be able to exist. Words cannot describe how much our sponsors mean to us – Thank you, sponsors!