Spotlight Expert & GSummit SF 2014 Speaker: Andrea Kuszewski

As we move into our next installment of GSummit (June 10-13 in San Francisco), we look at some of our speakers and experts that have helped shape the gamification & user engagement space. This week’s Spotlight Expert is Andrea Kuszewski (@AndreaKuszewski) — Researcher & Manager, Scientific Vortex Group. Andrea has been one of our top rated speakers at GSummit multiple…

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Adam Penenberg: How Games Inspire Breakthrough Thinking

In late 2013, Gabe traveled to 12 cities worldwide for GSummit Global, a series of full-day workshops and meetups to bring GSummit closer to gamification fans. As a part of GSummit Global, we also released 10 new webinars and videos by gamification and engagement professionals. We will be releasing them publicly as we keep counting down to GSummit 2014.

Adam Penenberg is a journalism professor at New York University, author of “Play At Work” and editor of PandoDaily, and in this seminar he talks about examples of games in non-game activities from historic methods of teaching human anatomy to modern companies gamifying training.

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Games for Change 2014 Grows In Popularity

It all started in June 2004. This was the very first Games for Change Festival ever, it was held at New York Academy of Sciences in New York City. The goal? To investigate whether or not games could become serious games, ones that could be used for educational purposes and to inspire social change. Unfortunately only forty-two people attended…

However, this year’s Games for Change Festival will prove just how strong this movement has become. It has been projected that more than 800 people have attended in-person and an additional 10,000 people will have attended the event through streaming this past week. The festival also nabbed a great ally in their quest for social good by partnering with the Tribeca Film Festival for this year’s event.

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Connecting Culture and Playful Learning with Jake Orlowitz of Wikipedia

as Jake Orlowitz of Wikipedia explained the many challenges faced by Wikipedia editors on the Gamification Revolution webinar. Last week, we featured the grantee to discuss how Wikipedia is utilizing gamification to train potential editors while reinvigorating its veteran editors.
Watch the full interview below to learn about:
  • What inspired Jake to propose and build the gamification project?
  • How Jake convinced the board of directors to implement the project?
  • What game mechanics were utilized to impart core editorial principles?
  • What were the quantitative and qualitative feedback upon implementation of the project?
  • What is the future roadmap upon successful implementation?
Be sure to also catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution this Wednesday April 9th at 1 PM ET:



Download this episode (right click and save)

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Brenda Romero on Teaching Controversial History with Gamification

When Brenda Brathwaite Romero’s 7-year old daughter came home talking about the Middle Passage, she clearly didn’t understand its significance to American and black history. Instead, she thought of those slaves as going on a cruise. Romero needed her to understand the truth.

As a long-time game designer, Romero (then Brathwaite) gathered together some game pieces and 3 x 5 cards and on the spot created a prototype for a game she called The New World. By the time she and her daughter were done playing the game, they were both crying. The historical events impacted them in a new way. Not only did they understand the facts, they began to gain a deeper respect and empathy for those players of history.

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Spotlight Gamification Expert: Kevin Werbach

As we move into our next installment of GSummit (June 10-13 in San Francisco), we look at our past GSummit speakers and experts that have helped shape the user engagement space. This week’s spotlight Gamification Expert is Kevin Werbach–Associate Professor at The Wharton School at UPenn and teacher in the massively successful online Gamification Class on…

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New for GSummit SF 2014: Hands-on Labs for ALL Conference Attendees

With the consistently sold-out success of our Certification Workshops at GSummit each year, we decided to add a workshop experience to the regular conference agenda FOR ALL ATTENDEES to participate it. We call them Hands-on Labs and they’re going to be one of the best aspects of this year’s event–guaranteed! Each of the 90-minute Labs will offer a limited group…

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unicef tap project

UNICEF’s Tap Project Will Donate Water for Smartphone Abstinence

This year, the campaign for UNICEF’s Tap Project is challenging us to set our phones aside for a few minutes in exchange for a clean water donation. Just to give you an idea of the challenge: spending a mere 10 minutes away from your phone provides a full day of clean water to a child in need. The longer you go, the more water is donated.

“Some of us can’t go for more than a few minutes without checking our cell phones. Imagine what it’s like to go days—or longer—without safe drinking water” says Caryl Stern, President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

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