GSummit 2014 @ San Francisco - Intro

Hey there folks!

So after a total of more than 14 flight-hours I arrived in San Francisco for my first stint at GSummit, the world's biggest event on the topic of Gamification.

It was then that I decided it'd be fun to post a daily update on the summit, if not for everyone else to read, at least for me to reminisce when I decide to attend next year! :)

It all started when I woke up late as usual and had to rush to the bank for my US dollars and to the airport for a check-in I was unable to do online. From the start I knew I was in for some serious time spent on bureaucracy while traveling, 'cause I was welcomed with a US Customs form I had to fill out before landing on US soil.

On my first excrutiating 7 hour flight to Philadelphia, I had a chance to work on my project for Gabe Zichermann's Advanced Gamification Design Workshop and to finish this book: The Lost Empire of Atlantis, by Gavin Menzies - an awesome breakdown of the myth of Atlantis.

In a methodical and pretty much no-nonsense way, Gavin Menzies basically proves that the myth of Atlantis was based on the awesome civilization of the Minoan people. This Crete based civilization was largely responsible for the technology boom of the Bronze Age and proof has been unearthed of their presence in all of the Mediterranean, Ancient Egypt, India, Britain, Germany, Norway and America. Yes, America. In 1500 B.C.
Their civilization blew up with the eruption of Thera's (Santorini) volcano around 1450 B.C. and with it so did the world's Bronze Age. Amazing book.

So, back on topic, upon landing in Phily I went through a two-hour long passage through customs and security for the transfer flight. Yup, a mixture of excessive security and lack of personnel made me wish for portuguese security, and that's saying much!

Next, I had the chance to grab some lunch at Chickie's and Pete's and was amazed to find out that this was a "small side of fries".

They grow'em big here in the US!

Anyhoo, I slept most of the way from Philadelphia to San Francisco and checked-in easily enough at the hotel. Only to find out that I forgot to buy a European to US socket adapter. How idiotic is it that we need to use different sockets? Makes as much sense to me as using Imperial measurements... :D

Now, while posting this, I'm wrapping up my preparations for tomorrow's workshop and hoping I do not oversleep due to jet lag. So here's to me resting up and stay close for tomorrow's update!

Cheers!

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gamification in portuguese

And so it came to pass that in May 6th I took another step in my quest for a better understanding of gamification. This step had two main objectives:

1. to understand who're the key players on the subject in Portugal;
2. to hear about gamification Portuguese.

It consisted of me participating in a User Experience Design & Gamification workshop organized by APMP and led by a gentleman called Rui Cordeiro.

I must admit that I was a bit skeptical about this workshop. I was quite content with saving my money for other flights. Such as this. 

And my skepticism was mostly due to two reasons: first was the fact that I hadn't heard much about gamification being done or discussed in Portugal, and therefore was expecting beginner's level content; second was my very portuguese habit of doubting other portuguese talking about stuff that came from abroad. Yes, we can be a little conceipted.

But the truth is that when you think about it, if the goal is, like my friend Ricardo says, "to become the parents of gamification in Portugal", it might be useful to at least get to know the playing field. Worst case scenario you learn a few things and hurray for networking! It bears notice that it was after this conversation that the need to also blog in portuguese came up.

So, it was with all this in mind that Murphy decided to slap me across the face.

As I walked in I was faced with a really heterogeneous group: professionals from several fields, ages, genders and of course musical tastes! But most of all, I was faced with this gentleman.

Rui Cordeiro is, as is stated in the workshop page, a game designer with more than 20 years of experience, that after a sucessful career making videogames at some of the biggest companies in the field (Activision/Blizzard, Gameloft, Sony, 2K Games), decided in 2010 to start looking at what he calls "...the 'intrusion' of games in life and other 'things'...". Since then he became an expert in UXD (user experience design), working internationally with topics such as Gamification, Design Thinking and User Centered Design.

And I knew nothing about this.

So it was that for almost 3 hours I was presented with some content I already knew from the online courses I took, delivered with a clarity, enthusiasm and sheer mastery that put me in my place. Also, to hear about gamification in portuguese is another experience in itself, particularly the terminology - "stuff" (cenas) was priceless.

In the second set of 3 hours I got my first real exercise in colaborative gamification design, with a less than expert approach at using Design Thinking and positive and constructive feedback at the end.

Also of notice was the fact that my lunch hour was spent mostly talking about gamification, discussing the subject and of course fooling around. Networking made fun. ;)

To sum it up, it was a day well spent at ETIC that renewed my faith in this subject in Portugal and my will to leave a mark in it. 

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a penny for my thoughts

According to Wordpress's Daily Post (I know I'm running pretty late on the zero to hero challenge!), my thoughts are worth at least a penny so... let's get to putting them out there!

Seeing as the idea of this blog, or at least it's main focus, is to get my ideas about gamification on the public ear (kind of a journal about my learning process on all that is gamification), I think I should probably start by defining what it is. At least for me.

So, after careful consideration and some shame-faced copy/paste, I came to this definition:

"gamification is the use of game design elements and techniques in non-gaming contexts to drive user engagement"

Basically this definition extends on Kevin Werbach's, as given in his highly successful MOOC "Gamification", with a particular focus on the "what for?", and that is to driving user engagement.
What this means is that a lot of people have looked at games, and more recently at video games, and analysed them in order to understand what design elements and techniques turned them into such powerful drivers for user engagement. I think Jane McGonigal explains that analysis like no other, you should definitely take the time and watch the 4 minutes below.



After this it's hard to deny that games are a force that could and should be leveraged in other contexts. Stripping them down to their basics, you have elements like experience points and milestone achievements that translate to progression to mastery and feedback/reward mechanisms, as well as several forms of activity loops, or engagement loops, that can be abstracted out of the gaming context and applied to a non-game context in order to get results similar to those they'd have in the games themselves.

So, back to the definition I proposed in the beginning of this post, is it generic enough? Or is for example Gabe Zichermann's focus on problem solving the right approach to targeting the "why"? Is user engagement too narrow a focus?
What I've found out by discussing this in community forums, is that the main goal of any gamification effort is indeed to get users more engaged and to get them to achieve a given set of objectives. No matter what train of thought each opinion took, that aspect was almost always present.

One could argue that objectives such as learning a trade, particularly when enterprises are the case, are the true goals of the gamified process. And that's true, regarding the targeted process. However what gamification itself does is to make the achievement of such objectives more appealing, more engaging. It keeps users on the path to achieve those objectives by keeping them motivated, evolving along with user progression and shortening the time-cost for the process in question. Even if that cost is just psychological.


In fact, what user engagement does is precisely that: it shortens the psychological time-cost of the gamified process. This is akin to the state of flow developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, where for example a writer forgets the world around him when he is this "productivity heightened state", aka "in the zone".

So, in conclusion, one might say that gamification's goal is to get users "in the zone". How? By using proven elements and design techniques taken from games in order to drive user engagement.

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state your name and purpose...

I've always felt that boring stuff would be easier to get done if I thought of them as a game.
On the rare occasions when my mother got me to tidy up my room, I'd be all talking to myself "come on, throw that paper ball that you just crumpled while putting away into that basket! Ok, just one more! Now from further away! Now with your back to the basket! Wow! You sure are sexy!". I think that's why it always took forever...

So, without further ado, I'd like to present myselfit, and myself since we're on it, and state what's the deal with this blog.

Hi! My name is Manuel! 
I'm a portuguese dude from Lisbon, just wrapping up my twenties and finding myself wondering what I've done so far and what I should've been doing. Or what I could have been doing if I wasn't always wondering what I should be doing. You see the problem...

So, my evil plan is this: to be so darn interesting and funny that people won't be able to resist reading my posts and following my blog and laughing their arses off. 

What will I talk about? Well, I plan to focus on gamification (hence the until-now-seemingly-random introductory paragraph), but since I tend to digress, I'll just say "gamification and music and other stuff".

Why gamificaiont? gamifctianon?!... you know, it's the funniest thing: I've been reading articles and watching videos and taking online courses about this thing for two years now, and my fingers still trip over themselves while tiping it!
So... ga-mi-fi-ca-tion. Why this? Well, to me gamification is not only epically logical as it fits almost perfectly with my way of thinking. That and it naturally seams two of my biggest topics of interest. They're three actually: games, people and technology.

Tech comes in last on purpose: first because unlike Gartner, I don't think it should be a defining trait of gamification, despite being, alongside the "engagement crisis", one of its hypers (not sure if this word exists...). Second, it comes in third also on my "love it" scale - I'm a programmer 60% by necessity and 40% by choice. I like to think about the technological solutions and to participate in their development, but only up to a point. I'm more about the brainstorming and the high-level definitions, both in taste and in talent. Also, not one for details.

Now onto my goals: am I gonna be a star in the gamification community? Not sure. Will I be average? Not sure either, but it sounds kinda meh.
What I do know is that I think I have a natural knack (is it redundant to say it like that?) for it, both from my past as a gamer - I'm still a gamer but it sounds better if I look distant and insightful - and my scouting background (badges plus non-formal learning... seems familiar?). And of course, it's about the people. For the people, by the people, with some people and so on. That is, I want to get to know everyone that gamifies. In the world.

So on a final note: I aim to misbehave... and if I talk about gamification and create a cool network of people in the process it'll be great I guess!

Catcha later Space Cowboys!

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