WEBINARS & OFFICE HOURS
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Date |
Time |
Event |
Event Description |
Registration Link |
|
9/29/2026 |
10:00 AM PT
3:00 PM CET |
Assemble your Party:
Assemble your Party: |
Building an ambitious VR experience in eight weeks requires a clear plan from day one, and that starts with surrounding yourself with the right collaborators and getting aligned on project goals early. In this opening session, Start Mentor Tevfik walks you through the full competition structure so you know what to expect at every step of the process. He details the two entry paths for building a new app or submitting a major update to a shipped title. Along with explaining submission requirements for the November 18 deadline, he shows you where to find mentor support throughout the competition. After the program overview, you will move directly into live matchmaking to connect with potential collaborators. This structured time gives you space to establish team roles, select your game engine, align working schedules, and plan your repository setup. After this session, you'll walk away with:
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Coming Soon! |
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10/1/2026 |
10:00 AM PT
3:00 PM CET |
Fast Essentials:
Fast Essentials: |
Maybe you don't have an idea yet. Maybe you have one and aren't sure it's the right one. Either way, eight weeks is too long to spend building the wrong thing. This half-workshop, half-working session with the Start mentor team turns a rough idea into a focused concept that fits your track, your team, and your timeline. You'll learn how to generate a few options instead of locking in the first one, how to tell which one fits your track, and how to define the one core interaction your entry is built around. Updating an app you've already shipped? We'll run the same process on the feature you're adding. Then you'll pitch in breakouts and get real feedback, so nobody leaves without a direction. What you'll walk away with:
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Coming Soon! |
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10/5/2026 |
10:00 AM PT |
Focused Features for Functional Fun |
It is easy to let your feature list expand during early planning, but fixed competition deadlines require disciplined scope management. In this session, Gabe Heiland, Head of Growth Insights at Meta, joins us to share practical frameworks for defining a minimum feature set tailored to your genre. They walk through player motivation data, genre expectations, available development hours, and production constraints so you can deliver maximum value within your schedule. By looking at real performance insights from Meta Quest titles, you will see how successful developers decide which features to build first and which ideas to save for post-launch updates. This perspective gives you a clear strategy for trimming feature creep before it stalls your progress. |
Coming Soon! |
|
10/6/2026 |
10:00 AM PT
3:00 PM CET |
Kill Your Darlings:
Kill Your Darlings: |
The most common reason entries never get submitted is simple: either they got too big, or the team simply ran out of time. In this working session, Start Mentor Sidney helps you turn a good idea into objectives you can actually finish by November 18. You'll learn how to build quick litmus tests that show which features earn their place, and how to set gates on your assumptions so you know the minimum you need to prove before building further. We'll also help you decide between a new build and a significant update to something you've already shipped. A few hours of planning now can save you weeks of development later. And yes, you'll have to kill a few darlings. |
Coming Soon! |
|
10/7/2026 |
10:00 AM PT |
How to Win: |
Building a technically impressive app is only half the battle. To submit a winning entry, you need to know exactly how the judges score your work, so every feature you build helps your final score. Join Start Mentor Sidney for a plain-language walkthrough of the competition rules and judging criteria. You'll learn what each criterion rewards, what each division and track is looking for, and what gets an entry disqualified. Then you'll use user stories and personas to pin down who you're building for, so your entry is aimed at someone specific instead of at everyone. Sidney will also cover the habit that separates entries that land from the ones that stall: building in the open. That means asking for feedback early and playtesting with people who aren't your friends, before you think you're ready. |
Coming Soon! |
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10/8/2026 |
3:00 PM PT |
Hands Tutorials Best Practices |
Hand controls will be new to most of your players. Teach too little and they're lost, but teach too much and they're bored before the fun starts. In this session, Ming Xia from Meta covers the common mistakes and best practices for teaching new players to play with their hands. The first 30 minutes of a game can have the biggest impact on retention, so your tutorial can make or break your game. What you'll walk away with:
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Coming Soon! |
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10/12/2026 |
10:00 AM PT
3:00 PM CET |
Monday Unblock: Idea & Scope
Monday Unblock: Idea & Scope |
Hitting a technical or design roadblock over the weekend can quickly throw your weekly sprint off schedule if you do not address it immediately. Getting direct feedback early prevents wasted development time and keeps your build moving forward. Bring your concept, project scope, production schedule, or early build directly to Start Mentor Tevfik for live technical guidance. They will review your current progress and evaluate whether your scope remains realistic. You will also get direct assistance to resolve immediate development blocks. If your original plan fell apart once you began writing code, this working session gives you a dedicated space to adjust your feature list and reset your goals. |
Coming Soon! |
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10/13/2026 |
10:00 AM PT |
Agentic Workflows for New & Existing Apps |
Getting an AI agent to help you write code is one thing. Getting one to do real work inside your app is another. In this session, Dilmer and Yuchan walk through agentic workflows for new builds and existing apps alike. You'll see what an agentic interaction looks like when it's actually useful, where it tends to break, and what it takes to run one on Meta hardware. |
Coming Soon! |
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10/14/2026 |
10:00 AM PT
3:00 PM CET |
Fast Essentials:
Fast Essentials: |
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Coming Soon! |
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10/15/2026 |
11:00 AM PT |
Dev Showcase: |
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Coming Soon! |