From a gathering of ~50 people in 2010, Minecon 2015 with 10,000 attendees created a new world record for the biggest convention for a single game.

Minecon 2015 Experience

Do you want to know what what it feels like to be at Minecon?

Minecraft Modding Workshop

Devoxx4Kids was fortunate to give Minecraft Modding workshops to ~200 kids at Minecon 2015. Feedback from all the parents and kids was quite outstanding. Glad we were able to ignite spark in some kids and get them excited in programming, and open source tools like Java, Eclipse, and Minecraft Forge.

Here are a couple of tweets:

My son’s first Java program is a Minecraft mod. Thanks @arungupta. #Minecon2015 pic.twitter.com/dKfeXDZcNv

— Alberto Escarlate (@cacheop) July 7, 2015

Thanks @arungupta for a great intro to modding! #MINECON2015 pic.twitter.com/CcNJSEQUbK

— Jim Sewell (@tinyit) July 4, 2015

All the instructions for minecraft modding are at minecraftmodding.org.

Many thanks to Mark Little and his son Adam, and my son for helping with a successful workshop. Its very important that kids feel comfortable to play with open source tools, and be willing to hack!

Using Mods for Teaching Panel

I also got the opportunity to lead a panel on Using Mods for Teaching with @DorineFlies, @YouthDigital, and @_moonlapse.

Here are some of the questions we addressed:

1. How are you involved with modding?
2. How many students/kids have you reached out so far?
3. What languages/platforms do you use?
4. Can modding be the right medium for first introduction to programming?
5. What is an appropriate age to start modding?
6. What can be done to fundamentally change STEM education in schools?
7. What would you like from Mojang to improve the modding experience?

The panel was recorded and should be made available at youtube.com/user/TeamMojang/videos. I’ll update this blog when the exact link is available.

Minecraft Youtubers

One of the big craze, and genuine one, in the Minecraft world is about youtubers who produce video of game plays and most of them have 1m+ subscribers. Several of them were attending Minecon and we were fortunate to meet a few of them:

 

As Lydia walked around the main hall, most of the kids were super excited to meet their favorite youtubers!

Minecon 2015 Cape

Every Minecon attendee also get a cape that their in-game character can wear it and show-off the fact you attended a big celebration! Theme for this year was Iron Golem and it looks like as shown:

Minecraft Characters with Snaak

We also met the team behind Snaak and played around with creating some of the Minecraft characters using it.

 

Minecraft and HoloLens

A re-run of HoloLens and Minecraft video was also shown during one of the keynotes, and a preview is available here:

Here is the complete opening ceremony animation:

Minecon 2015 Photo Album

Check out some pictures from our trip:

And the complete photo album:

To me the highlight of the conference was meeting @SeargeDP. If there is one name that is responsible for starting modding in Minecraft, that would be him! Many thanks to him for giving us a chance to deliver minecraft modding workshops at Minecon.

And then, of course, meeting @lexmanos who is the lead developer for Minecraft Forge. We’ve authored an O’Reilly book (targeted at 8+ years old kid) and video on this topic. Several Devoxx4Kids chapters around the world have delivered workshops using the instructions based on Minecraft Forge and explained at minecraftmodding.org.

Check out a nice credential about book from one of the parents we met:

And last, but not the least, many thanks to the Mojang team for keeping the release cadence and supporting different modding communities.

Minecraft is truly a revolutionary game and allows to introduce Java programming to kids at a very early age!

Hopefully we get invited to Minecon 2016 again