Day 1 - after 11am

One hour into the conference and we got a well deserved networking coffee break.

I finally had the chance to talk with Dr. Marigo Raftopoulos. I had one of the most rewarding 20 minutes of the event by talking to her about the experience she had with a teacher of her son around 15 years ago.

In Australia, one of the most “progressive” countries in the planet, a teacher, told Marigo: “Not every kid lives up to their potential”.

For me, a #gamification expert specialized in #education this was one thing I hadn’t heard before.

A professional in the field of bringing up the potential of people, was telling me this.

Fortunately, this is the kind of thoughts that drive us forward. This is the kind of world we as #gamification experts are trying to fix.

11:30 am.

Right after our coffee break was over, Joris Beerda presented his keynote on How the Octalysis group empowered the sales team of Procter & Gamble showing outstanding results. As a case study, not much we could’ve drawn out as new techniques, however the results of the project were absolutely outstanding as all Octalysis projects.

11:50

Melinda Jacobs’ flight was cancelled as she was flying from New York and we were unfortunately unable  to see her keynote that day. Thanks to that we had extra minutes with all the speakers from that block, so:

12:10

Toby Beresford came up with a keynote that left most of us breathless when learning how much impact a leaderboard that started with a list of experts from his own perspective in 2012.

For a full list of my insights, check this link 🙂

Fast forward, he became a UN consultant and is active in SKY News as a social media expert. Skills he has transferred into Rise.Global a Social media success tracking platform that serves today as the host of the Gamification Gurus Power Top 100. Yes, it’s the same list from 5 years ago, just that now it works on itself and measures our participation on the #gamification industry through social media.

12: 30

Jan Storgards from REACTOR started his keynote on the struggles from a #gamification solution provider on how to tackle an emerging market of startups that most of the time are focused on deploying their software and leave key features out of the scope where #gamification could actually be well exploited.

One of my favorite takes from the keynote came up as a beautiful phrase that sums up what REACTOR will do for your company and simply put, a phrase we all should use to deploy great solutions and avoid bad clients:

We will add cinnamon to your coffee but we won’t make coffee for you.

Time for lunch. Yep, still Tuesday guys… stay with me 😀