# Finding Pinball's Next Generation **Source:** Pintastic New England **Type:** video **Published:** 2022-08-16 **Duration:** 30m 29s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1q4Cns1bO4 --- ## Analysis Ryan Slomek, a media arts educator and pinball operator from Syracuse, presents strategies for building youth pinball communities through classroom integration, accessible venue design, and digital engagement. He emphasizes community structure (goals/etiquette, leadership, resources), practical classroom applications across subjects, and the importance of digital platforms like TikTok to reach younger audiences who avoid traditional pinball social media channels. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Kids avoid Facebook and Instagram; TikTok is where youth audiences engage with pinball content — _Ryan Slomek cites age demographic data showing users under 20 avoid Facebook, with TikTok as primary platform for youth engagement_ - [HIGH] WPPR (World Pinball Player Rankings) and traditional tournament structures are not effective for building youth pinball communities — _Ryan Slomek argues that kids have urgent timelines and negative tournament results discourage continued participation, contrasting with adults' long-term ranking perspectives_ - [HIGH] Skillshot Arcade (Syracuse) operates one night per week for public play, with remaining time as event rental space — _Ryan Slomek describes business model designed to maximize family-friendly accessibility and avoid liquor licensing complications_ - [MEDIUM] Pinbox 3000 provides discounts to schools for educational pinball projects — _Ryan Slomek mentions 'they provide discounts en masse' when reaching out to schools for classroom integration_ - [MEDIUM] Project Pinball is successfully placing pinball machines in children's hospitals to provide entertainment resources — _Ryan Slomek offers 'shout out to project pinball who's doing a really good job of making sure that's happening at children's hospitals'_ ### Notable Quotes > "The pinball community is the best part of pinball in my personal perspective." > — **Ryan Slomek**, ~2:30 > _Frames the entire presentation's philosophy on why community-building matters in pinball_ > "Kids don't know what to grasp onto because all of those synapses are firing so fast because we get so enthusiastic... if we can break pinball down into the different elements that really get us excited... we can allow the kids in our communities to grasp onto the ones that interest them most" > — **Ryan Slomek**, ~18:00 > _Core pedagogical insight on how to engage youth by deconstructing pinball's appeal rather than overwhelming them with enthusiasm_ > "It's okay if pinball is not the main reason people are in this space... they get socialized... they're more likely to be drawn to these things later" > — **Ryan Slomek**, ~29:00 > _Challenges conventional arcade thinking; argues incidental exposure is valuable for long-term community growth_ > "We're in a battle for attention right now... whether that means that a kid has $10 and they have to choose how to spend it, or they're staring at their smartphone... we have to find a way to sort of become useful" > — **Ryan Slomek**, ~41:00 > _Articulates the core challenge of youth engagement in competitive entertainment landscape_ > "Facebook is for old people... TikTok is where all the kids are having fun together" > — **Ryan Slomek**, ~38:00 > _Highlights critical gap between pinball community's primary platforms (Facebook/Instagram) and youth communication channels_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Ryan Slomek | person | Media arts educator, pinball operator, founder of Syracuse Pinheads lifestyle brand and Skillshot Arcade; presents on youth community-building strategies at Pintastic New England | | Syracuse Pinheads | organization | Lifestyle brand and vending company turned pinball community organization founded by Ryan Slomek in Syracuse | | Skillshot Arcade | organization | Pinball venue in Syracuse opened October 2021 by Ryan Slomek; operates one night weekly for public play, remainder as event space; family-friendly, no liquor license | | Project Pinball | organization | Organization placing pinball machines in children's hospitals to provide entertainment and community resources | | Pintastic New England | event | Pinball convention/event where Ryan Slomek presents; features code of conduct and community-building programming | | Pinbox 3000 | product | Cardboard/functional pinball machine used in classroom education; manufacturer provides school discounts for educational projects | | Hurry Up Challenge | organization | Pinball community content creators building TikTok and Giphy presence with pinball machine content; includes Bex and Jordan | | East Side Moms | organization | Syracuse parent community group that Skillshot Arcade markets to for birthday parties and family events | | Syracuse Gamers | organization | Local Syracuse gaming group; collaborated with Skillshot Arcade for Pride Pinball night mixing board games and pinball | | Orion Robert T. Smith | person | Youth community member at Skillshot Arcade; job shadow participant who created Spotify playlists tied to venue jukebox; emerging leader in summer programming | | Simon | person | Student of Ryan Slomek; participating as teaching assistant in upcoming summer pinball/Twitch streamer program | | John | person | Former student of Ryan Slomek from summer camp; founded Syracuse Gamers gaming culture community | | Bex | person | Community organizer from Hurry Up Challenge; participated in digital presentation to Ryan Slomek's class | | Jordan | person | Community organizer from Hurry Up Challenge; participated in digital presentation to Ryan Slomek's class | | Kevin Manning | person | Representative from Buffalo Pinball; participated in digital presentation to Ryan Slomek's class | | IFPA | organization | International Federation of Pinball Associations; manages World Pinball Player Rankings (WPPR) | | Manly's Pebble Kevin Hill School | organization | Independent pre-K through 12 school in Syracuse where Ryan Slomek teaches and integrates pinball into curriculum | | Brodie Even Talk Pinball | organization | Pinball podcast that featured Ryan Slomek discussing venue opening during pandemic | ### Topics - **Primary:** Youth engagement and community building in pinball, Classroom integration of pinball machines across subjects, Digital communities and social media strategy for youth (TikTok vs Facebook), Alternative tournament formats for youth participation - **Secondary:** Pinball venue design and business models (event space vs barcade), Leadership development and mentorship in local pinball communities, Accessibility and resource availability for youth in pinball - **Mentioned:** Code of conduct and community standards for inclusive spaces ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Highly optimistic and enthusiastic presentation focused on solutions and success stories. Slomek demonstrates genuine passion for pinball community-building and youth engagement. Acknowledges challenges (time management, competition for attention) but frames them as solvable through intentional community design. No significant criticism of pinball industry or community. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Youth resource scarcity challenge: pinball machines are expensive ($2,000-$5,000+) creating barriers to youth ownership and accessibility; Skillshot Arcade addresses through venue model and event-based access rather than purchase-focused consumption (confidence: medium) — Slomek describes student asking parents for $2,000 to buy machine; notes 'kids don't have a lot of resources available... it's really expensive to buy machines, it's expensive to maintain machines'; positions Skillshot's event space model as solution - **[community_signal]** Ryan Slomek demonstrates systematic community-building approach: Skillshot Arcade operates weekly public nights, hosts private events, partners with local organizations (East Side Moms, Syracuse Gamers), and integrates youth mentorship (Orion, Simon) into operations (confidence: high) — Detailed description of Wednesday 5-9pm public hours, event-based business model, birthday parties, Pride Pinball night, and leadership development for young community members - **[sentiment_shift]** Positive reception of pinball integration in educational contexts: Slomek reports 'unanimously loved' response to Pinbox 3000 project in sixth grade art class; parents initially concerned about cost but students enthusiastically engaged; physics class successfully used pinball for real-world data collection (confidence: medium) — Parents 'hated me because now the kids... were asking where they could get $2,000 or $5,000' for machines; physics students successfully used flipper solenoid data to calculate ball trajectory algorithms - **[community_signal]** Syracuse developing as emerging youth pinball hub with multiple interconnected community initiatives: Skillshot Arcade venue, classroom integration programs, summer programs, Twitch streaming content, and mentorship pipeline (confidence: high) — Slomek describes integrated ecosystem: broadcasting class live streaming, summer Twitch streamer program starting next week, job shadowing opportunities, classroom pinball machines, and multiple student participants (Orion, Simon, John) - **[community_signal]** Pinbox 3000 and Project Pinball providing institutional support for youth pinball engagement: Pinbox offers school discounts; Project Pinball placing machines in children's hospitals to expand resource availability beyond commercial venues (confidence: medium) — Slomek: 'Pinbox 3000... they provide discounts en masse' for schools; 'shout out to project pinball who's doing a really good job of making sure that's happening at children's hospitals where there aren't necessarily entertaining resources' - **[design_philosophy]** Alternative tournament philosophy for youth: replacing traditional WPPR/IFPA ranking focus with casual, family-friendly events (holiday bash, multi-game scoring) that reward participation and progress rather than competitive placement (confidence: high) — Slomek explicitly argues WPPR not effective for youth, describes holiday bash alternative where families play together and scores count for IFPA but without tournament pressure; discusses rewarding 'good game' or multiball rather than placement - **[event_signal]** Pintastic New England implementing community standards through visible code of conduct at venue entrance, establishing clear behavioral expectations and creating unified communication about community values (confidence: medium) — Slomek praises Pintastic approach: 'they've done one of the most useful community building... resources, which was they have a code of conduct which everybody sees as soon as they come into the venue'; replicates model at Skillshot Arcade - **[market_signal]** Skillshot Arcade targeting parents/family demographic through East Side Moms community group for birthday party bookings; business model positioning family events and casual socializing as primary revenue driver rather than dedicated pinball play (confidence: medium) — Slomek describes marketing strategy: 'we spend a lot of time marketing to... East Side Moms in Syracuse... we end up booking a lot of birthday parties'; hosts 16-year-old and 8-year-old parties where 'most of these kids have never been around pinball machines' - **[community_signal]** Student community members (Orion, Simon, John) emerging as peer leaders and co-educators within youth pinball community, creating scalability for programming and reducing adult dependency for engagement (confidence: medium) — Orion operates as job shadow becoming 'probably more dedicated to my business than I am'; created Spotify playlist marketing initiative; leading summer program. Simon designated as teaching assistant. John founded Syracuse Gamers after hearing Slomek's camp presentation - **[announcement]** Skillshot Arcade launching 'Pinball Wizards and Twitch Streamers' summer program starting next week with 4-6 students attending daily for 3 hours, covering pinball culture, play, maintenance, and Twitch streaming with daily live streaming on Syracuse Pinheads channel (confidence: high) — Slomek describes program details: starting Monday, 4-6 kids, 3 hours daily, curriculum includes pinball culture/play/maintenance and Twitch community building, daily streams on Syracuse Pinheads channel, with Orion and Simon as student leaders - **[technology_signal]** Pinball community underutilizing youth-focused digital platforms; gap between pinball's Facebook/Instagram dominance and youth preference for TikTok and Giphy creating engagement opportunity (confidence: high) — Slomek cites demographic data: no users under 20 joining Facebook; TikTok as primary youth platform. Highlights Hurry Up Challenge's successful TikTok/Giphy strategy as model for reaching younger audiences --- ## Transcript Hi everybody. We've got a guest from Syracuse where he's got multiple businesses and organizations for the betterment of pinball and maybe the betterment of youth. We'll find out about that. So Syracuse Pinheads, Skillshare, and an operator, vending operator too. That's always interesting. And by day, or part of day, media arts educator, Ryan Slomek. Welcome. Awesome. Thanks, Dave. So this whole presentation is about building communities specifically with youth culture. And I just want to state that when I was planning on this presentation, I was thinking maybe that my mom would show up. And the fact that there's a room full of people that I've met all from different parts of the pinball community really means a lot. So I want to thank Project Pinball. I want to thank my friends at Wizards and Skillshare. I want to thank my friends from the Hudson Valley region, my new buddy Ashton, who is ready to take my money. But pinball community is the best part of pinball in my personal perspective. And I think that it's really easy to find people that are around my age demographic and older. But getting kids into pinball is something that has proven to be difficult, despite the fact that I work in the industry. And I wanted to just kind of talk a little bit about that, share some case studies and kind of go from there. So first of all, who the heck am I? Dave was kind enough to give a little introduction, but just to elaborate on that. So I was an operator. I owned a vending company called Syracuse Pinheads, which has turned into sort of a lifestyle brand. In October of 2021, this past October, opened the Skill Shot Arcade, which is a pinball venue in Syracuse. We're open one night per week, and the rest of the time we rent it out as an event space so people can come and have their own gatherings there. I've been lucky enough to be sort of featured on a variety of different sort of pinball media avenues. So I was recently on the Brodie Even Talk Pinball podcast talking about opening a venue during the pandemic. The National Press Photographers Association did a piece about me a few weeks ago for the Multimedia Production Lab. But the thing that makes me qualified, or at least makes me think I'm qualified to do this presentation, is that since 2006, I've worked almost exclusively with youth at a variety of different organizations. Most recently, the Manly's Pebble Hill School, which is an independent school in Syracuse, New York, pre-K through 12. But I've worked for, say, Est Education, Camp Good Days, the Boys and Girls Club, and a variety of others. just kind of working with kids specifically in media, arts, and technology. And one of the nice things about that is it allows me to bring stuff into the classroom that might be non-traditional, I'll say, most notably pinball machines, which we'll talk about today. So what are our goals for the presentation today? We're going to sort of dissect community. We're going to talk about what community means and the way in which I sort of envision it, why youth pinball communities matter. There's a lot of value there that I think we can bring to the youth by bringing pinball machines to them. We're going to talk about classroom, we're going to talk about the business, we're going to talk about digital communities, which I think is sort of the most underserved portion of our culture in regards to reaching out to youth. And then we're going to talk about sort of truth in building your own communities. And I'm going to preface all this by saying I have lots of skills. Time management is not one of them, so we're going to do our best to fit this in within our 30 to 45 minute timeline. So what is community? According to Oxford Languages, it is a feeling of fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. And I think Pintastic does a great job of sort of demonstrating all these things. Throughout the weekend, you have all this programming that hits these sort of three main points. It has a specific sort of attitude and culture that's built with it. It's got, obviously, the interest is pinball. And then goals expand sort of outside of just gaming. and it hits all these sort of different elements that community can accomplish. And there's sort of different needs of communities. So the way I've sort of broken it down is communities have specific goals and social etiquette that is tied to them. It's got leadership structures that are defined and resources that are available to its community members. So goals and social etiquette. People want to know how they should expect to be treated inside any sort of community that they're a part of. If I go to a hard rock show, the idea of somebody dumping beer on me and screaming in my face is a lot different than if I'm at a, I don't know, like a pre-K music performance. Everybody has different ways in which you're going to react in all these different venues. And people want to have a knowledge of what that etiquette looks like prior to sort of joining any community. If you go to the YMCA, it's going to be a very different place than if you go to your local bar downtown. People want to know what they'll accomplish with their time when they're there. And eventually they get to a point where they want to know how they can participate to add value to that community, to help with those goals, to help with that sort of social etiquette. And the important part about this is that when people feel comfortable in communities, communities tend to grow. And specifically in youth culture, I'll talk about why that's really important. But sort of keep that on the back burner. Number two is leadership structures. When people step into a new environment, they want to know who stewards the community, who sort of owns it, who's somebody that they can talk to if they have questions. and then most importantly how they can take on some sort of leadership within those communities and we see these in our pinball communities all the time where maybe one person starts actually just having conversation about the local in the capital region where one person is sort of maintaining all those machines and now somebody else has come through and said hey I'll join you on Saturdays and now Saturdays have become a tech day for that venue and those sort of grow because people know the leadership structure they know who to get to and then they find opportunities to fill the void and to be able to join that sort of leadership structure. And why is that important? Because it all comes down to effective communication. If communication is effective, if people know how to operate within these spaces, communities tend to grow. And then available resources. In this case, we're talking about likely the access to pinball machines, or more importantly, maybe the access to knowledge about pinball machines, pinball operations, pinball communities, pinball tournaments, so on and so forth. But people want to know what unique resources can a group provide. I learned recently that in the 1960s, Los Angeles was known for its square dancing communities. It was huge. It had its own magazine. People wanted to square dance. They found a place to go. In pinball communities, we think about what resources are available, what knowledge, what games, things like that. They want to know what they can offer to the group. That's why pinball collectives are growing so much all over the place where people start something and then other members are added. And then eventually, how can we make the resource available to more people? The goal is always growth. And why is this important? Because resource availability, once again, helps to grow communities. But if we look at these three things in regards to teen culture, youth culture, whatever we want to define it as, kids are a little lost. That's why it's so important to have important role models in all these places, because kids are trying to figure themselves out. That is our journey as community builders, is to make sure that when youth enters our community, they have good things to look forward to. So if kids feel accepted within their place, they're more likely to return to it. We're going to talk about vying for attention later. And kids have a million places to go. When it comes to entering a pinball community, we need to make sure that they feel comfortable being there. In regards to leadership structures, kids are always on the hunt for positive role models. And everybody has that capability within them And we want to make sure that those leadership structures lead to positive role model ship And then also the idea that we kids we think about you know the idea that like youth marketing is huge But in reality kids don have a lot of resources available They don't have like endless bank accounts. Those of you who are, you know, parents might disagree with me. But kids don't have the access that adults have, especially in pinball communities, when it's really expensive to buy machines, it's expensive to maintain machines. You know, I have one student who recently came to Skillshare and then went home and was like, all right mom I need to borrow two thousand dollars I'm going to buy a pinball machine we're going to put it right here it's going to be great we're going to talk this through a little bit but we want to make sure that we can make these resources available and actually shout out to project pinball who's doing a really good job of making sure that's happening at children's hospitals where there aren't necessarily entertaining resources but now we can put pinball there we can sort of start that dialogue so why does pinball matter specifically in regards to youth communities because I would argue that pinball can relate to anything every single thing we do, we find a way to tie in pinball somewhere. I don't know how it is for you guys, but anytime somebody asks me a question about anything, I find some sort of pinball anecdote to pop in there. And it's a beautiful thing because we can sit there and we can have conversations about pinball and we can tie it with everything, but we can also go on for hours. I've been at this show for the past five hours and I have not had a conversation that's been less than three interactions with anybody because we can talk about pinball at mass. But when you think about that in regards to talking about it with kids, we as adults are able to deconstruct all the different elements of pinball that interest us. But when we throw all of that at a child, they don't know what to grasp onto because all of those synapses are firing so fast because we get so enthusiastic. In the previous panel, one gentleman asking questions about, you know, different sort of relays just getting louder and louder and louder and more enthusiastic because he's so excited about that. with kids they see that enthusiasm but they don't entirely understand where that passion comes from but if we can break pinball down into the different elements that really get us excited or that we can see whether it's engineering artwork problem solving strategy finance entrepreneurship themes local culture history competition any of those things we can allow the kids in our communities to grasp onto the ones that interest them most and then we can have maintained consistent dialogue log, which enters them into the space, makes them comfortable. We start a conversation at something that provides interest for everybody and then sort of moves it forward. So as a teacher, I'm lucky enough to be able to have pinball machines in my classroom, to be able to bring them in and sort of demonstrate to my community of about 500 people about the value of pinball. And it's one of those things where depending on who your leadership is will determine how long those machines actually last in your space. I would argue, and as you'll see in this presentation, that educators in general are inherently collaborative and they need assistance. They want assistance. They want creative ideas. And if we're willing to collaborate with educators outside of the ones who are just in the classroom, you know, bringing ourselves in and making ourselves educators in the classroom, we'll be able to sort of grow this youth culture in some pretty cool ways that ties in with some interesting stuff. So I teach a broadcasting class, which I consider modern broadcasting. We're talking about live streaming. We're talking about podcasting. We're talking about YouTube channels. And for my live streaming unit, the way I introduce students to it is we live stream over Twitch with whatever sort of pinball machines there. So this was last school year, us live streaming on No Fear. Everybody sort of gets different jobs. Some students are in charge of commentating and interacting with people at home. Some are in charge of sort of running our tournament inside. Some are just sort of looking at statistics. But with this, we're able to use pinball as one part of the lesson and sort of move it forward. Equally, in sixth grade, we've used Pinbox 3000. Shout out to them. They're great. They love working with schools. And if you reach out to them and say, hey, I want to do this project with my local organization, they provide discounts en masse, which is pretty great. But if you're unfamiliar with the Pinbox 3000, it's a cardboard pinball machine that's fully functional. They have a booth here. So if you, you know, these are examples. You can get templates from them or whatever. But we identified the goal in our sixth grade art class is we want to teach kids Photoshop, and we wanted to make sure that they understood how to use those tools. And this was the perfect vehicle for it. It also taught them user interaction and ways in which they could sort of make something where they could get real-time feedback as to how their creations functioned, which was pretty cool. And it was just unanimously loved. All the parents hated me because now the kids, once again, were asking where they could get $2,000 or $5,000 to put the next pinball machine. Outside of completely my wheelhouse, AP Physics, I know nothing about it, But I worked with our physics teacher who wanted to find ways to demonstrate real world physics principles in the classroom. I offered to put a pinball machine in there. We spent a lot of time looking at all the electricity going through the flipper solenoids. She got the data that she needed, gave it to the students and said, all right, you guys need to figure out, according to your analytics, where does the ball need to be on this particular flipper to hit this particular target? And they went through and they did all their algorithms and figured it out and ended up being right. But we're able to use pinball in this sort of real world context. But it's not, these are just examples that I've been lucky enough to get off the ground, but it can fit anywhere. So if you're teaching English and you want kids to talk about industry stuff, copywriting, my new worst idea ever was creating bad fan fiction about characters in different pinball machines. You know, go to math and have kids determine score strategies, look at the geometry, talk about personal finance, how do I save up to buy one, how do I figure that out. Social studies, looking at pinball history, asking Dave to help you. Looking at the power structures of the IFPA if we want to create a political debate. Doing database questioning about patent research. So on and so forth. It can fit into all of these different places. In our own business at Skillshare, we have specifically designed our business away from what we're seeing in the rest of upstate New York. Barcades tend to be the new hot thing, which is great. But for us, we wanted something a little more low impact where we didn't have to worry about liquor licenses or anything like that. So we decided to do more of an event space that has kind of a family-friendly approach. And one of the things that I was really excited about when I walked into Pentastic today is that they've done one of the most useful community building, let's put everybody on the same page, resources, which was they have a code of conduct which everybody sees as soon as they come into the venue. you. Everybody knows what is expected of them. Everybody knows what's appropriate and what's not. And we did the same thing at SkillShot where when you walk in, you know that this is the way we operate. As my colleagues there will tell you, not everybody finishes every game that they start, so we're still working on that one. But people treat each other respectfully, they treat the equipment respectfully, and they understand that we, if we see something we don't like, we have the agency to be able to step in and to stop it. So a few things in regards to what we've done. And I won't necessarily say these are controversial, but these are decisions that I feel are useful when thinking about building youth community. So one of the things that's really huge in pinball is tournament pinball, which is great. But as adults, we think about things like our placement in the IFPA over long spans of time. We're able to sit there and think about, like, all right, if I do this well in this tournament, I'm going to be top 5,000. And then when I play in my next tournament two months later, I'll be able to jump up to 4,500. Kids' timelines are much more urgent. So when it comes to having a tournament four times a year, if a kid comes and has a bad tournament and it leaves them with a negative feeling it not beneficial to them and it not going to help grow the community So I would argue that the Whoppers are not the thing that we need to focus on to build youth community Whereas thinking about alternative ways to have tournaments so we did one where we had a holiday bash where people came with their parents, they went around to different games, sort of played together, wrote down their scores, their scores came in, they played the right number of games, they counted for the IFPA, but it wasn't really a huge tournament for them, but it was more just getting them together and being able to enjoy the space. And thinking about ways in which you can do something competitive where maybe we're rewarding people for just having a good game or learning how to make it through all three or getting multiball as opposed to just thinking about the end result of here's where I line up in my top hundred participants. Number two is that we really work hard to make sure that the space is available to kids as often as possible. Our business model is based around the idea that we're open every Wednesday from five till nine, but the rest of our time is open to events. And we spend a lot of time marketing to, we have a group called East Side Moms in Syracuse. And that is all the parents on the east side that are looking for things to do with their kids. And we end up booking a lot of birthday parties. On the left side, you'll see one of our most recent ones. We had a 16-year-old birthday party. And then just last week on the right, an 8-year-old birthday. Most of these kids have never been around pinball machines and arcade equipment. It takes training to show them, here's how you hit the start button. Here's how you pull the plunger. Here's how you play all three of your balls. Here's how you make sure that you're not playing somebody else's ball. but once they start to pick that up they get really excited number two uh and sort of feeding into that idea is it's okay if pinball is not the main reason people are in this space so a lot of times we think oh my god i spent so much time building a pinball arcade why you know are these people just sitting there having a drink on the side talking when they could be playing theater of magic uh if we can create the spaces and get people in there they're surrounded by it they get socialized they're more likely to be drawn to these things later and what we've noticed is when we do events that maybe people are coming and having cake and talking with their friends, they're still more likely to come back at a later date just to play the game. So on the left side, we did a pride night most recently where we filled the space with board games. And we worked with a local group called Syracuse Gamers. And people came in and they played board games or they talked to their friends or whatever. But by the end of the night, everybody was playing pinball. And we ended up getting a few sort of new pinball addicts by the end, which was great. On the right side, we had a birthday party that was a sweet 16, and the young lady was really excited about vinyl record collecting. She was super into One Direction. She was really into retro technology, and her mom's like, she's never played a pinball machine before, but this seems like it'd be a cool place to have it. And once again, get the kids in there. We decorated, we gave her 45s out of old vending machines and sort of socialized them into the space, but by the end of it, they start to appeal to the pinball as opposed to the pinball being the number one thing. Real quick anecdote with this one, which is for Syracuse gamers on the left side, John was actually a student of mine from summer camp. He had come to an animation camp where he heard me talk about pinball and things like that and ended up sort of creating his own gaming culture with Syracuse Gamers, which is really exciting because these things tend to sort of grow. When you do a little quick study, anybody who's in the room who wants to embarrass him, you'll see one Orion Smith in the center wearing a bright pink T-shirt. But Orion is somebody who is probably more dedicated to my business than I am. Every Wednesday he's there from five till nine because we've brought him on as a job shadow. And the thing that I think is really important is that oftentimes people think like, oh, this is a passion that I have. What am I really going to offer to the universe with it? But in reality, we all have things to teach. And Orion comes every Wednesday to learn about what it's like to operate a business, to learn little things about repair, to learn about the culture that we're trying to build, to make suggestions. And we talked a little bit earlier about this idea of this leadership growth. One of the things that Orion brought forward, which was great, was he was looking at Spotify and he was looking at our jukebox and he thought, hey, what if I created playlists that were the same songs that you can have in this jukebox? And we've started to use that as a marketing tool where every once in a while we'll post a sounds of Skillshare playlist where people can listen to the music they can hear in our space at home through Spotify, which is pretty cool because it allows us to sort of have that massive outreach and that was an idea that came from our community growth and our idea generation within there. The other thing that's done though in building Orion as a leader has been really useful because next week, starting on Monday, we're operating our first summer program out of that space. We're doing a Twitch streamers and, I apologize, pinball wizards summer program where students are going to come in. I think we have a group of four or six kids who are going to be there three hours a day. They're going to learn about pinball culture. They're going to learn how to play. They're going to learn about maintenance. But most importantly, they're going to learn about Twitch. They're going to learn about online communities. And we're going to every day live stream on our Syracuse Pinheads channel for the end of it so people can get utilized for that. I could do that program on my own, but kids are going to always look up to the older kid. And having Orion in the room is going to be an invaluable resource because he is a natural leader that has come out of this process, which is really exciting. And there's another student, Simon, who was in one of my classes, who's going to come as well as a teaching assistant. And we were able to sort of grow that and now have it. So we're only going to have four for our first week, but hopefully next year we'll have eight, 16, what have you. We can only sort of grow from there. I think the most underserved group, though, because we're always thinking about, let's get kids in front of pinball machines, pinball machines, pinball machines. And one of the things that the pandemic has really demonstrated is that when we can't go out, we can't go to the pinball machine, we have to find some way to keep that culture going. And building digital communities, I think, is one of the best ways to do that. But one of the problems we have as pinball people is that the two main platforms that we use tend to be Facebook and Instagram. And whenever, if you've ever taught a middle school class and they say, hey, do you have a Facebook? And you say, yes. Their instant response is, Mr. Zlomek, Facebook is for old people. And if you look at the statistics, they're not wrong. For the most part, nobody under the age of 20 is joining Facebook, yet that is the main communication mechanism we have for pinball. Instagram tends to shift a little bit younger, but still tends to hit that sort of 20 to 35 demographic. But TikTok is where all the kids are hanging out. And there's some questionable statistics about the amount of time they spend on TikTok. But I want to give a few shout outs specifically to Hurry Up Challenge, who has been really growing their TikTok presence to make sure that pinball exists in those spaces. So on the left side, you'll see their TikTok. This was me hanging out with them at Allentown Pin Fest, where they were making TikToks about the Weird Al Yankovic machine, which is really cool. But they've also started to populate Giphy. And if you're unfamiliar with what Giphy is, It's a website that you can create and upload animated GIFs. So if you ever have a retort that you want to be a little bit more animated and sassy, you can go on there and kind of pop it through. And they've really built it to the point where their outreach on Giphy is huge. People who have no idea what Pinball are are using these things, and it's sort of getting it out into the ether, which is really exciting. All right, so let's talk about truths in communities. And this is the let's be honest, let's be upfront. Building communities is really hard. It's very difficult. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of required strategic intentional efforts. You have to know what you're doing. You have to be dedicated. You have to be consistent. Not everybody has the energies for that, and that's okay. But if you're going to try to build youth community, you have to make sure that you do it in a sustainable way, in a way that's sort of consistent for kids to keep coming back. Number two is you have to have a willingness to volunteer time and resources. In this case, most of the time it ends up being pinball machines, making sure that people have something to play. But it can also be just your knowledge base, making sure that you accessible in some way for people who are interested Maybe it live streaming so that people can just reach out to you when you working on a game or changing a game to add a ball as we saw with the previous presentation The other thing is we in a battle for attention right now. Everybody is being pulled in a million directions. So whether that means that a kid has $10 and they got to choose how to spend it, or they're staring at their smartphone and they got to figure out which place they want to draw their attention to, we have to find a way to sort of become useful. And I think the tactile nature of pinball makes it so that we can lure people in and keep them there. For me, that's a really important thing is that I get there, I work on things, I'm disconnected from my sort of daily life. And that's the attention part that works for me, but it doesn't necessarily always work for students. So we're in a battle for attention, we're in a battle for that sort of headspace. And then lastly, building trust. We're dealing with students. And as I'm, you know, I don't know what all your professions are, but the idea of just being like, I want to build a youth community, and I'm a 35-year-old man. Huh, how do I do that? It's kind of a strange thing, and we need to make sure that we build trust in a community before we just assume that we're going to be able to sort of benefit it. But the harder truth is that people want to help you. There are a million resources out there, whether we recognize it or not, in order to make these communities more effective. So two examples, on the left is Kevin Manning from Buffalo Pinball on the right are Beck and Jordan from Hup Challenge. Both of them were very kind to come and do digital presentations to my students in my classes. Just, hey, what are you up to at 11 o'clock on a Thursday? I don't know. I should be doing work. You want to talk to my class? I would love to talk to your class. And they're willing to sort of volunteer their time. This Zoom access has made it so we can sort of have specialists in our room at any time. But also more than that is communities all over the place exist that are seeking new ways to keep youth engaged in a healthy manner. So just a few that I've just thought about. YMCAs, public and independent schools. A lot of people think that schools are sort of these walled off places where curriculum is very defined. And in my experience, schools are the most collaborative, I'll say second most collaborative environment that you can get into. I'll talk about the first in just a second. But if you have schools near you that are public and you want to offer that as some sort of Wednesday program where you bring in a game you talk about or you come in for career day or whatever, schools want that collaboration. They want people with new ideas. And one resource that not a lot of people know about is the National Association for Independent Schools. And just to explain what independent schools are, is they're schools that are not tied to a national curriculum. A lot of people think about them as religious institutions, which is true, but there's also a ton of different schools for example my entire school's philosophy is based around the idea that we're building a discovery of learning there's schools that are based around filmmaking or outdoors activities my favorite ones are ones that are built around food but the national association of independent schools nais has schools all over the place especially for those live those of you living in new Robert Englunds there's a ton of independent schools that are sort of looking for uh looking for new ways to you know interact and they're not tied to curriculum, so you can do whatever you want with them. As I said, schools are the second most collaborative environment. I would argue that libraries are the most collaborative environment you can possibly find with the most amount of flexibility. So if you're interested, if you have libraries near you, especially ones with makerspaces, reach out, see if they're interested in doing something. Museums, seasonal summer camps, so on and so forth. But the hardest truth of all of this, and I don't know why you're here. Please, at the end, I'll have time for questions. But the hardest truth of all is that you might actually be successful at building community if you try. And in my time from 2006 to present, and more specifically 2016 to present, as I've been trying to build pinball community, I'm amazed at what I've been able to do just by sort of doing things here or there. It's always been wonderful. And if you have any interest in doing it, I strongly suggest reaching out to different resources in your community. You bring the pinball machines, they'll bring the people, and we'll see what happens. So thank you guys so much. Thank you. Does anybody, yeah, so if anybody has any questions and you want to go over to that microphone to put them forward so it's good for the stream. Oh, great. Howard Levine. Man on the scene. Strolling up. Great presentation, Ryan. My question is for the birthday parties for the younger kids where you're much more educated on how to operate a small machine. In that type of environment, is there a way to get the kids to be more educated on how to operate a small machine? birthday parties for the younger kids where you're going to be educated on how to operate a pinball machine? In that type of environment, how do you do that? Is that as a group, like showing a group where you're walking up to each individual? Cool. How you do that? Yeah, so the question was about how to sort of train people on pinball etiquette, is that what we want to call it, and sort of the function of a pinball machine when they're there. So my goal is always to try to get kids to teach kids. So if I know somebody in the environment is familiar with them, I'll kind of make them the leader in that moment and ask them to show it off. So oftentimes, Orion, I'll say, hey, Orion, you want to go work with this group? And he'll get a group of two or three to sort of give an overview on how the machines work. If it ends up being me or somebody else, I like to sort of just break it down to simple steps to begin with. First, press the start button for as many players as you want. Make sure the scores are correct. Plunge the ball, flip it, see what happens. and then from there they'll kind of check in with me throughout the night. I'll set little goals. Like, all right, so when you hit this target, I want you to come talk to me. And then they hit that target. I've done that. What should I do next? And we'll have them kind of build that from there in little increments. I think those check-ins are really important. One of the things that I think is really important, too, is that, like, people find it kind of annoying, but, like, Stern's videos on the front that show, like, here's how you put change in, here's how you press start, here's how you plunge have been, like, remarkably helpful. Does that answer your question, Howard? Yeah. And I think that goal orientation is huge. Like any time that you can make sure that somebody has a goal to reach for. So you're doing it individually with the players? Like you're not, it's not a massive... I'll try to grab like the kid who is most excited first and, you know, try to get one or two of them to kind of figure it out and then have them show the rest of their peers. Yeah. Thank you. Cool. I can't do the whole question. It's okay. I can just, you know, talk at length. All right. What are the youth asking? Do you have any questions, frequently asked questions that you should answer since you're answering questions? The two most regular questions that get asked by kids is how much does that thing cost and how heavy is it? Quite regularly those are the ones that come through, which is kind of fun. One thing that I didn't talk about in this though, and I think John Chad does a really good job of talking about it in his new book, is the fact that like this generation of kids is like, well, it's the last two generation of kids are the ones who've never really had arcade infrastructure at all. You know, so like when I was growing up, I was there for the sort of end of it. And I have all these wonderful nostalgic memories of playing pinball machines and arcade games with my dad when, you know, we were at the mall and decided that we needed to digest Taco Bell before leaving. So in regards to, you know, them, like they're not used to this arcade culture. And unless you come from a place with like a really successful like arcade spot, most kids have to kind of get acclimated to it. So I like to talk about the history a little bit about it. And you get a lot of, when I was a kid, I did this. And kind of go from there. Cool. Yeah, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. _(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 4d9999e3-54b5-47c3-a5cc-c7b81704432b*