With the web summit Get it Gamified only days away, I want to introduce you to some of the panellists and our topic for each call.
Let’s start with Beyond Badges: Creating a sound gamification strategy. This session will be held on the 6th of February at 4pm GMT, you can still register to attend on this link.
With recent research from Gartner saying the 70% of the Forbes Global 200 companies will be implementing some form of gamification in 2014 and their previous statements that 80% of gamification projects will fail to reach their target, it is important to look at the strategic drivers of Gamification.
I am joined by some of the great thought leaders in the gamification world: Mario Herger from Enterprise Gamification Consultancy, Toby Beresford from Leaderboarded and Andrzej Marcewski, gamification blogger, to take a closer look at strategic options and constraints for companies.
A closer look at the panellists and why I believe they are great experts on gamification:
Mario Herger is founder and partner of Enterprise Gamification Consultancy LLC. He had been Senior Innovation Strategist at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, California and Global Head of the Gamification Initiative at SAP where he had worked for 15 years. He also co-founded in 2013 and leads the Austrian Innovation Center Silicon Valley (AICSV).
In his work as head of the Gamification Initiative at SAP he has encountered and supported gamification efforts in the enterprise from multiple levels and departments, like Sustainability, On Demand, Mobile, HR, Training & Education, Banking etc. He has driven the awareness around gamification by organizing and leading innovation events around this topic, holding dozens of one- or two-day gamification workshops, working with gamification platform- & service-providers and game studios, consulting and advising organizations, and by incorporating gamification into SAP’s strategy.
Personally I have been reading the blog by Mario on a regular basis and it is an excellent resource for case studies examples and thorough thought leadership. I also highly recommend his Enterprise Gamification course on Udemy, which I found excellent. It highlights key considerations to make about enterprise gamification strategies and gives relevant examples of their application.
Toby Beresford is a professional web software entrepreneur with a specialism in gamification and social media. He is the CEO and founder of Leaderboarded ,which hosts the Gamification guru’s leaderboard. He is the current chair of GamFed.com and the organiser of Social Data meet up and Gamifiers meet up. He writes and edits the gamification industry blog: Gamification of work and contributes to .net magazine and Sky News as a social media expert.
Previously he was founding chair of both the DMA Social Media Council and the Facebook Garage London. He sold his Social Media Agency, Nudge, to Canadian firm Syncapse in 2010. Toby made a name for himself as a leading creator of branded social games on Facebook including Sony’s Playstation’s “Buzz! the Friend Quiz” with over half a million of players, and Reckitt Benckiser’s “poweRBrands”. He also won a hackaton as judged by Mark Zuckerber with his Tube Warning Facebook App. Over the past 15 years he has also been involved in creating social network software for non-profits and enterprise web apps including Pharmaceutical, HR and Healthcare.
Personally I have met Toby on a few occasions at the Gamifiers meet up and he is a very knowledgeable, yet very approachable expert. I love his work on the gamification leaderboard at least it give us all some measure of how we are doing.
Andrzej Marczewski is a self-confessed gamification evangelist and blogger on the topic of gamification. He is currently ranked in 2nd place on the gamification guru leaderboard. He has down significant work on player types and has designed the user type test, where you can find out which type of gamification user you are.
He is a web developer since 2000, and now manages the Intranet for around 9000 Capgemini UK employees as part of the web team. Since 2010 he has been writing about all things gamification. Since then he has advised several small companies, self published a book on the subject and given several international talks about it. Gamification has become as much of a passion of his as games have been all his life. The potential to improve almost any warp of life using the lessons we can learn from games and psychology is truly exciting. Mix this with a love of social media, technology, SciFi and super heroes and he could be happily described as a bit of a geek!
His book “Gamification – an introduction and a bit more” is probably the first book I ever read on the topic of gamification and it had me immediately fascinated in the topic. It is a great introduction if you are new to the field and want to understand some of the basics. I highly recommend his work on player types and how to construct gamification strategies to appeal to the majority of users in your organisation.
I am seriously looking forward to be joined by these top gentlemen and ask them about Gamification strategies and how they see them impacting the world we work and live in. They are in my view the royalty of this industry, so I am keen to learn from them as much as I can, they are true thought leaders. Join us on the 6th of February, reserve a place ASAP.
