GDG Toledo Meetup

"Don’t overthink it. Just make it playable."

Dates: April 17th – April 26th (Virtual)

In-Person Day: Sunday, April 26th @ The Loft 419—336 N Superior St, Toledo, OH 43604 (Optional, but recommended. Thank you Loft 419 for the co-working opportunity!)

The Mission: Polish your existing project into a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

🛠️ Welcome to the "Spring Cleanup"
For the April Jam, we are tackling the "Project Graveyard." We know you have a half-finished game engine or an old idea from years ago. This isn't about starting from zero; it’s about making your old ideas playable.

This is the Anti-Crunch Jam. Our goal is to finish something small and fun without burning out.

🏃 The MVP Constraint
To eliminate feature creep, this jam follows a unique "Cleanup" constraint: You must take an existing project, idea, or codebase and create a playable MVP. It doesn't have to be "finished"—it just has to be playable by others in a browser.

💰 The Cash Prize!
The winner of the Spring Cleanup Jam—as voted on by the community—will receive a $100 CASH PRIZE! (Venmo or PayPal) Sponsored by OJ Tech and Anthony Wayne Innovation and Design.

🤖 Tech Stack & AI Policy
Unity, Godot, JavaScript, HTML5—if it runs in a browser, it’s fair game. Please label your submission:

🛠️ Category A: Human-Driven (Assisted): You wrote the core logic.

✨ Category B: Vibe-Coded (Generated): You used LLMs like Cursor or Replit Agent to breathe life back into the idea.

📝 Submission Details

The Local Legend Metric: How many miles are you from the Maumee River?

The "Before" Story: Tell us how old this project is (e.g., "I started this when I was 12").

The "MVP" Interpretation: A quick sentence on what makes it "playable" vs "finished."

🚀 How to Start

Sign up on itch.io: https://itch.io/jam/toledocodes-april-game-jam

Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/Jje5zWPfnh

Dig Up Your Project: Find that code! The jam officially kicks off April 17th.

Meet us at Loft 419: We'll be hanging out in person on Sunday the 26th to help you debug, polish, and submit!

Agenda

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Hosted By

Greg Miller, GDG Organizer

I build equitable apps and websites. I love designing and building interfaces where our implementation and use are planned with no ambiguity. I am a proactive member of teams and tech event organizer for the Toledo GDG.

Vagish Vela, GDG Organizer

Jeremy Schroeder, GDG Organizer

Jeremy is a well-rounded developer who enjoys programming for the web. At work, he's developing next-generation Next.js applications for Fortune 500 companies—offering over 20 years of marketing knowledge, and over 15 years of developer experience (if you don't include his days with Visual Basic for MS-DOS as a 13-year old in the 90's).

Apart from his full-time gig, Jeremy has been working to develop Spaceport, a full-stack web framework that embraces modern JavaScript, CSS, and HTML—wrapped into a server-side workflow that uses Groovy to manage the business logic. He's also developing several SaaS solutions, all using Spaceport.

Justin Beaudry, GDG Organizer

I am a Toledo boomerang. I spent a decade building for high-growth startups and large enterprise in the SF Bay Area and Austin before making the deliberate choice to move back home. I’m here to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley scale and the talent in Northwest Ohio.

What I am doing now:

Directing Engineering: Leading teams at Actual Reality Technologies and EmpoweredAI to build generative AI solutions and high-throughput data systems.

Building Community: I founded Toledo Codes and the AI Collective Toledo Chapter. While I have transitioned out of leading the local chapter, I am now focused on expanding the AI Collective across the Midwest.

I’m always down to talk about the transition from legacy dev workflows to AI-first systems, how we continue making Toledo a destination for world-class tech, and what happens to our relationship with code as we move toward orchestrating complex language and world models.

Complete your event RSVP here: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-toledo-presents-gdgtoledocodes-april-game-jam/.