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Antonis Triantafyllakis from Poland with Purpose: Gamification Meets Sustainability | Episode 375

 

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Gamification Global Gathering 2025 conference, underscoring its focus on sustainability and the strategic partnerships formed to ensure its success, including a significant collaboration with the Octalysis Group. We welcome back Antonis, a returning guest and gamification expert. We episode dive into impactful projects, including “Climate for All,” a successful initiative that was recently recognized by the European Commission.

Antonis Triantafyllakis is a past guest (we also had an in-person chat in Madrid). This time, we are here to discuss the Global Gamification Gathering 2025!

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

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Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob:
Hey, this is Professor Game, where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply engagement and loyalty. I’m Rob Alvarez. I’m a consultant, I’m a coach and I’m the founder here at Professor Game and I’m also a professor of gamification and game inspired solutions at IE University, IE Business School, efmd, EBS University and other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, struggling with engagement in your business and are looking to find out how to make your users stay with you. You will find our free community full of resources quite useful. You can find it for free in the links below in the description. So engagers, welcome back to another episode of the Professor Game podcast. And we have a pretty special episode today, not only because Anton is the return guest, but also because he’s a return guest from the last time that we spoke actually in person and recorded that interview. It was my first and currently at least last time to record an interview live. And not because I’m in a conference or whatever, but because you were literally in the neighborhood here in Madrid. So, Antonis, how have you been? What’s up with your life?

Antonis:
Well, it’s always a pleasure to see you and talk to you. So I’m happy to be back on Professor Game. What’s going on in my life? Well, the last time we talked, I referred to a project of mine called Climate for All, in which with five partner organizations, we’re developing analog games that build skills on sustainability and we’re focusing on that on. On youth. And it’s a project that is beginning in Europe, but aims to become global. We’re now one year in this project. So we finalized our games and they will soon be published on the platform. But also big news, the project won an award, so the games are not even out yet. And we are awarded by the European Commission’ Education for Climate Coalition as one of the inspiring green competence projects in Europe.

Rob:
Climate for all. Amazing, Amazing. Congratulations, by the way. That is great news. Good to know that it’s not only been working, which is already, like already getting something working, it can sometimes be a challenge, right? Just getting it out there and making sure that it’s working, that there is a live game actually happening, but it’s also been recognized by the European Commission. That’s absolutely fantastic news. Congratulations on that. Anthony’s and I said at the start that this is a special episode for again, for many different reasons. One of them, not the smallest one, is because it’s the first time we interview again since we met that time, face to face. Also because we’re not going to do any sort of follow up to your projects. Like we were curious and excited to know about what’s going on with climate for all. However, we’re also looking forward to finding out about the conference that you are a part organizer of and something about that conference as well that might be interesting for the engagers, hopefully. So Antonis, can you give us the gist of let’s start by naming it your conference for now.

Antonis:
Sure thing. So yeah, I already described my nonprofit hat, so to speak. But also I moved to Poland and I started a new company with some brilliant, brilliant people that we’re working together with. The company is called Gamification Global and it aims to be using gamification as a force for good. And one of the things that we’ll be doing is organizing an annual conference. So in February we’re organizing our very first annual conference. We call it the Gamification Global Gathering 2025 on sustainability. Because every year we intend to be focusing on a specific focus area of impact and this time we’ll focus on environmental sustainability. So we have about 40 speakers coming to Krakow, Poland in February 21st, 22nd to give different types of talks and workshops that are related in one way or another to sustainability and using gamification to achieve that. And yeah, we have some really lovely speakers. You know one very well.

Rob:
I know some of them for sure. I don’t know if I know myself. Sometimes people say, oh, you know, one of those speakers, like, well, I don’t know if I know myself that that’s something for somebody to judge. Definitely not me. But yes, I will. I’m excited to be a speaker in the conference. I’m excited to go to Krakow for many reasons, not the least of them because of the conference. And if you want to find out more, if you want to get your tickets with a discount, I’m gonna say this more than once during this, this interview. Gamification Global gathering. Right. So ggg3gs25 in professorgame.com ggg25 you go there, you find your tickets and you get a discount on the, the most expensive ticket I think is what you mentioned what we call corporate. Right. Because we think corporates are the ones who have the money.

Antonis:
Yeah, true. So yeah, we have three ticket tiers. The, the top one, we call it the enterprise one and it’s focusing on, on businesses, corporates and the professor game discount will give you €50 off that ticket. But yeah, we, we Also have the standard ticket which is focusing more on, on nonprofit organizations, universities, the public sector, freelancers and in general who, who feels like this is a ticket for them. And we have a third option that is the most accessible one because we do want to make it accessible. So we’ll have a very low price ticket for students and low income individuals that is more or less subsidized by the enterprise tickets. So we’re trying to do a full.

Rob:
Circle impact thing and I think this is something that we spoke about probably for other reasons is who has access to each of these tickets. So say you know, I work at X company and I want to go there. Does that make me an enterprise customer? Or you know, I’m also have a freelance business on the side. Like how does that work? Do I have to accredit my freelance ness or like what, what is that about? Essentially if somebody once says you know, I can’t afford the corporate ticket, what do they have to do to get any of the other two?

Antonis:
Well, we do it on the basis of trust. We know that people will choose what is affordable and appropriate for them. Each ticket comes with different perks of course. So the higher ticket doesn’t get you the same exact experience as everybody else. It gives you something extra. So it’s worth to pay extra for that. That said, yeah, it’s, we’re basically not a trust people know their needs better than me or you or any third party could assess anyway. So if this is a ticket for you, this is, you can afford the perks that comes with the ticket. Go for that. If this is the other one, then go for the other one. That said, yes, we do focus that the top ticket will go to corporates, to businesses that can basically afford to send a few of their employees, managers, representatives in the conference to benefit the most from the conference. And the others are focusing on different target groups that are described also on the ticket description.

Rob:
Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, we talked about this so I was guessing it was something along those lines. But anyways that is definitely the answer. So that is a, definitely a reason. I am very excited about, you know, attending conferences. We’ve discussed many times how you know, in these conferences it’s very exciting. You said there’s 40 speakers or there’s going to be plenty of other people. Let’s say even if just half of them are into gamification like 100% and the other ones are more into sustainability, it’s getting to meet or getting to reunite with 20 other fellow gamification experts or more because you’re the organizers as well. So there’s going to be more to get to be around. This is something I always enjoy. Like one of the things I really like about these conferences is that however, however, people are always asking as well, if this is going to be a gathering of people who are going to be talking sort of to the choir. If I go there, am I going to be meeting other people who are into gamification already? Are there also going to be other people? Yes. 20 or probably more of the speakers are gamification experts. Who is going to be in the conference? Who are you targeting with this conference?

Antonis:
As I said, the focus that we have is on impact. And in order to have long term impact and not just have a momentary impact by getting inspired by other gamification speakers, it needs to go beyond the conference. And that is our aim because we also noticed what you mentioned, that we participated ourselves in different or organized other gamification conferences. And it almost always ends up being a marvelous gathering of gamification experts learning from each other, inspiring each other. But it just stays within this bubble. As beautiful as bubble is, it doesn’t exit.

Rob:
So don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy that. Like, don’t get me wrong. But, but yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Antonis:
But if we want to have a long term impact, then it needs to, to go beyond that, that beautiful bubble. So we’re aiming for the speakers with their talks and their workshops to be providing solutions in relation to sustainability and, and the attendees to be the beneficiaries of those solutions. So if, for example, you have a business and you’re worried about your next ESG report, which is mandatory now for every big business in Europe, or you want to have a strategy for sustainability and you want to use gamification to engage your audience more, to make the process more efficient, to improve your marketing. If you have a learning program and you want to make it more, more interactive, more engaging, using gamification as a means for achieving sustainability, then you are the proper attendee. If you’re a company that has its requirements that I mentioned, or if you’re a representative of the government and when you find companies or gamification experts that could improve your process for sustainability, there is a huge process in the public sector right now going all over Europe to make Europe carbon neutral until 2050. We have the 2030 agenda. We have so many different goals that are outsourced to local governments for the most part that, you know, it’s, it’s quite, the local governments are quite in a pickle so they will need experts to, to basically make that happen. So we’re bringing those experts right on the sport. So if you are a company, if you’re a public sector representative, if you are a nonprofit that wants to benefit from gamification for their own process, because nonprofits do a lot of work for sustainability, but they could use, you know, a little bit of extra for, for engagement or effectiveness, which is gamification can offer, then that’s, that’s a space for you. And we’re aiming to be a cross sectorial space for partnerships. So that’s why I mentioned different target groups, because we are targeting different groups, but each group has its own needs. And we believe in this convergence that there is the ultimate goal, there is this epic meaning that you have at the end, sustainability. There is the how, which is gamification, that can improve every process that can lead you there. And then there’s the who, which is who’s coming to this conference and they are the people that want to achieve this goal using this how, which is gamification.

Rob:
Amazing. Amazing. And again, I’m just going to share it now and I’m going to mention it again because I’m very excited about this. I’ve delivered many workshops. Antonis knows this. Many of you know this as well. I’ve delivered many workshops at universities, like to students at universities, to professors at universities, online, face to face. I’ve done many of these things. What I have not done is been actually participating as actually an organizer of this. Of course I organize my own content, that kind of stuff. But I’ve never been sort of part of helping it happen, you know, being, you know, getting directly the help from, in this case of Antonis to organize a workshop, which is what is happening in Poland literally the day before the conference. If you are interested in going to the conference, just an extra day is something that you can do to come to a workshop with me to help you again with all these things. You know, you’ll get to meet all those experts, you get to go to this workshop with me for several hours where you can get a lot of value for understanding how to create engagement, loyalty and all these things, especially around sustainability. And if you want more info on that, I can also give you the link to to get there, which is professorgame.com Poland workshop. Yes, it is in Poland. I didn’t want to write Krakow because I know it’s difficult for many to write and there’s many different ways to write it as well, depending on where you’re from. So Poland workshop. Poland workshop. Professorgame.com Poland workshop. All of these links, as I always say, are going to be below. If you’re seeing this on YouTube or if you’re hearing this on any of our channels, you’ll find in the show notes all of the links. You know the GGG25 that I mentioned before, so you get access to the discount and to the conference. All of that is going to be available there. And I was asking about the audience because this is very interesting, you know, finding one of the things that I’ve found difficult and one of the reasons why it’s. It’s been. I’ve been doubtful of organizing workshops like this is because if I go to a conference where there’s fellow gamification enthusiasts, don’t get me wrong, I am sure I can also deliver value to them. But the percentage of change that I can achieve with people who are already doing gamification is going to be much smaller then with somebody who, you know, has an interest, maybe has done some small things there. You know, the impact is much higher. Getting new or quote unquote, new people into this is where, you know, is where the impact is at at least in this, at this point. You know, it’s not like getting people into marketing. Like everybody knows what marketing is. If you have. There’s many degrees that offer this in gamification is different. So that’s why. Another reason why I’m very excited about this and talking about the audience and this is something that always gets me very, very curious because. Well, actually I’ll backtrack before that. Thank you for organizing a conference. Big thank you for that. I know everyone I’ve seen organizing this, I know it’s a huge pain and the comparison and I don’t want to get you to back out of this at this point because it’s already January, so I think it’s a bit late for that. But you know, the effort versus what you get from it is usually not a great, not a great financially at least. I don’t know, like from a satisfaction standpoint and all that, that’s very individual and internal. But from a financial standpoint, usually it’s not a huge thing. Right. I don’t know again about branding if that’s something that you get, how to measure it anyways, from a financial standpoint, which is, you know, we all have to work to be able to put food on our plates to pay the rent and all of that. It’s not a huge thing. So thank you very much for organizing the Conference Antonis and all of your fellow colleagues who are working on this. I know several of them. So having said that already, I’m always curious because we were discussing about the audience and, you know, back in the days where I tried to say this before and again, I forgot what the name is of the Gamification World Conference probably was gwc, I remember was the. Were the initials. It was being organized here in Madrid until 2017 was the last one, I think, or so. And before that there was one by Gabe Zuckerman which was very global and more than only the globality of it, which of course I love, but arriving to quote, unquote, the masses, as you were saying, sort of the people who are not involved in gamification, at least from the outside, because it didn’t get to go to that. When it’s. It was in San Francisco, it looked like it was. That was actually the people it was reaching.

Antonis:
Yeah.

Rob:
But after I saw that, and that was back, you know, almost a decade back, or probably even more than a decade at this point in 2025, it seems like others have not totally been able to get on that boat, at least. I haven’t attended many conferences that are able to get, you know, more than a few people who are from the outside because it’s difficult. How, if you can or want to reveal anything of this, how are you achieving this? How are you aiming to get these different people? I think you gave us some clues in what you said before, but I don’t know, how are you doing it and how are you faring as well? We’re, you know, almost less than two months away from the conference at this point, so I’d love to know how’s that going and what are you. If you can reveal anything, how are you doing that?

Antonis:
Well, yeah, I’m not going to lie. This is. This is a difficulty, this is a challenge, and we are facing it and we’re learning from it as well. Initially, we were, let’s say, almost naively confident in our own networks. And in practice, we realize that our own networks are within that beautiful bubble that I mentioned before. So it wasn’t working as well as we thought. So in the spirit of the conference, which is essentially, you don’t have to become yourself a sustainability or a gamification expert. You can go to the experts and work with them, and through partnerships, you can achieve a lot more results than you would have on your own at a much shorter time, more effectively, more happily even. So, yeah, after our initial hurdle dealing with our own network, we thought, hey, why don’t we outsource at least partially this. So now we’re basically working with people who already have expertise in sales, already have the, the networks that we cannot reach on our own. And yeah, we’re hiring them. We’re making different kinds of partnerships. So we’re reaching out to our audience in different ways, directly and indirectly. We’re also doing our own marketing efforts, investing on social media, ads and all that. But nothing is as powerful as using people who are already on the spot, who are already in the network that you want to, to basically approach. So that’s, that’s our current approach and is working better than.

Rob:
It’s working better. That’s a good answer. I love it. That’s part of the iteration. Like, I’m sure this is the first year. Then you will maybe focus on another exact, you know, topic for the conference. But it’s a way to learn, you know, essentially. But. And you gave us some clues as well on how it’s going. It’s going better. I’m not sure exactly on that, what level that that looks like, but I’m excited to know, you know, your efforts are being somehow rewarded by you know, getting at least more people into the conference that you were getting initially. Hopefully we’ll have a crowd over there of excited people. Yeah. Antonis, what is different about this conference? Or why would somebody say, oh yes, actually I want to go to gamification global gathering 20, 25 and not go to whatever other thing because my budget is for one thing and this is the, the thing that I’m going to go to this trimester, whatever period of time they’re thinking of, that’s where you’re going to go. Why would they make a choice like that one?

Antonis:
Well, we already got into one of the most distinctive aspects of it, that it’s not a gathering of gamification experts just blessing each other and be happy to meet each other and just stay there. We really focus on impact and we want it to have a long term impact. So this convergence of different target groups that will achieve sustainability in this case or any of their gamification goals through partnership in the long term is already a distinctive factor, I think. Then there is the other thing that I notice is problematic usually in conferences around gamification or sometimes conferences in general, is that they aim for a very broad goal and end up not really hitting it because it’s not specific enough. So in this case we have a theme, we are focusing on a specific theme which is environmental sustainability. And that’s also another differentiating factor that I don’t see elsewhere. It’s usually an aspect of gamification. When we’re talking about gamification. Conference is usually an aspect of gamification. Some kind of mechanics, some kind of framework, some kind of, I don’t know, niche within gamification, but it doesn’t go beyond that, which is what can you use gamification for? So in this case, we’re using gamification for environmental sustainability and we already have a thematic focus. So yeah, I think impact is the biggest difference we’re aiming for and with the help of the speakers and our partners will hopefully achieve.

Rob:
Absolutely, absolutely. I love that you’re talking about impact, which you know, as you were saying before, it has this epic meaning and calling. And also if you go to the. I’ll mention that in a second. But if you go to professorgame.com ggg25 you’ll see this. Right, that I’m gonna mention in a second. There’s the impact. There is this sort of meta thinking of gamification on. Well, we’ve thought about these things through the typical lens of organizing a conference, but where people who are in gamification. Why don’t we think of this through the lens of what we’ve learned from games? And you get experts to do the things and look like. One of the things I’m playing right now is the witcher, for example. Oldie but Grady. Right. And you know when people need to get a monster killed in these villages and they try to do it themselves, usually they get themselves killed. Right. They need to hire a witcher or just stay away from the places where these monsters are hanging out. Right. If you can’t afford the witcher, you better just hide at home, essentially. And you did this like the strategy of hiring the witcher or many witchers or whatever that looks like is exactly what you guys are doing. So I love that. That gets me even more excited about seeing what are you guys doing and getting all these insights. But what I was mentioning before, if you go to the page of the event, there’s sort of a co organizer. I’m not sure. Let me actually go into the page and see exactly what that looks like because it is what you were saying before. It is part of that epic meaning and calling. It says in partnership with. And this is no small partnership. Right. In the world of gamification there are many exciting and great people and I don’t want to rank them in any way, but you can definitely say that these people from the Abdalysis group, from Yukai Chow’s group have a huge amount of visibility. However you want to see it, right? Let’s see. One of the. When I always tell my students and I talk about the octalysis group for whatever reason and this might be outdated information, I’m not sure, but I’m still convinced of it. They are the single largest gamification consultancy or gamification solely focused consultancy in the world. I would say there’s nobody that’s only doing gamification consultancy that’s larger than them. They have I don’t know how many at this point, but 10, 15 or 20, probably more. I don’t know. There’s nobody who has that many consultants. Right? There’s freelancers, there’s as many as you can find. There’s people who have small companies or they have a platform and do this and they have a bunch of. But people who have consultants consultancy. I don’t know of anybody else who has these many. So exciting partnership. Do you want to share anything else about that fantastic partnership?

Antonis:
Yeah, I think it stems from what you started with Epic Meaning and Calling, which is one of the core drives of the octalysis framework, which is one of my most favorite frameworks as well in gamification. There are several that I enjoy using, but this is the most actionable and that’s why I like it the most. So yeah, one of the eight core drives that motivate humans to take action is Epic Meeting and calling. And that’s the one that I usually find missing from conferences, from consulting gigs, from anything. I find this missing and this is why we start with this. So yeah, Epic Meaning you’re calling and we have not just the partnership with the Oktalasis group, but Yukai Chow is our keynote speaker. So yeah, we’re starting our first conference with Epic Meaning and the guy who came up bells and whistles the framework that begins with Epic Meaning, you know, so I really cannot express how happy I am that after so many years of being inspired by you guys work, I get to work with him and we get to have him as a keynote speaker and we get to benefit on a more broader sense, but also through this cross sectoral partnerships that we’re aiming for through our partnership with the octalysis group.

Rob:
Absolutely.

Antonis:
We’re also using the octalysis framework to gamify the conference itself. Because what is a conference gamification that is not gamified itself, you know. So yes, if you want a conference that has a long term impact that applies to your epic meaning and calling, and that is gamified itself. I guess this is a good place to go.

Rob:
I am definitely sure I can tell you I’m gonna be there. So I’m definitely going to be inviting everybody I know who might be excited, especially people who are around the area. Right. Because it’s. It’s, you know, here in Europe, it’s relatively easy. But if you’re in, you know, Germany, if you’re in Poland, if you’re anywhere in the area, it’s relatively easy to access, I would say. And, you know, I’d definitely be very, very excited to go there. Another of the reasons why I’m very excited about the conference, and it has nothing to do with the conference, is because it is in Poland. And as many of you might already know, because I’ve mentioned this before, half of my family, literally, my mom’s side of the family is from Poland. She was born in Warsaw, though she left when she was super young. So she’s one of those strange Polish people who don’t. Who never learned how to read while she was a young girl. So, you know, this is not common in Poland. Right. Because for many reasons, everybody learned how to read. And when she gets on a bus and she asks where the bus is going, people, like, insult her because it’s like, what’s going on? You’re making fun of me, right? You’re Polish. Because she speaks very Polish. But, you know, anyways, I’m very excited about that. I’m going back to Krakow. This will be my second time in Poland in general and in Krakow as well. So I’m very excited about that too. Antonis, is there anything else we should know about the conference, about your excitement, about the conference, about what you’ve been doing lately that is exciting in your life before we share once again the links and where people can find out more and say it’s game over.

Antonis:
Well, you didn’t mention Poland. And Krakow is a beautiful city to visit. It’s a really beautiful city to visit. I live here now and I can’t get enough of it. It’s a really beautiful city to walk around. And it’s really funny that you mentioned the witcher, because, you know, Poland is the country of witcher.

Rob:
That is true. I hadn’t thought about it, but yes, definitely. And it’s not only done in Poland, it’s based on a Polish legend myth. I’m not exactly sure how to call it.

Antonis:
Slavic mythology, but yeah, from the Polish side mostly. And yeah, I guess the first thing that I’m gonna do with you when you come here in Krakow is to take you to the Witcher Tavern and have our dinner there. Oh, love, that is actually a thing. Kraken specifically is full of thematic cafes and taverns and being the country of which you know you can help it, you have can’t.

Rob:
Can’t avoid it. Can’t avoid it. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So Antonis, thank you very much for being here. Engagers once again, if you’re interested in knowing more, if you just want to get your tickets to the conference, go to professorgame.com ticketsgg25 if you’re interested in the workshop as well, you go to professorgame.com poland workshop. But you don’t have to write any of this down. Wherever you are hearing us right now, you can find those links in the notes in the post, in whatever you are viewing us. All of the links will be there. So you can definitely go and get your discount for the conference, access to the workshop if you’re going there as well. And thank you once again, Antonis for showing up, being here on Professor Game. However, Antonis and Engagers, oh by the way, love the T shirt, Antonis and I know where it’s from if anybody can guess because I think it’s in some hidden pictures somewhere in the webpage from podcast episodes or something. If anybody can guess that, send me an email or send it to Antonis and we’ll give you something special related to the conference. Right? That is my promise. Anthony’s you don’t have to fulfill this. I will fulfill the promise. Right? Anyways, Engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. Hey Engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game podcast. And since you’re interested in this world of creating motivation, engagement, loyalty using game inspired solutions, how about you join us on our free online community at Professor Game on School. You can find the link right below in the description, but the main thing is to click there. Join us. It’s a platform called School. It’s for free and you’ll find plenty of resources. There will be up to date with everything that we’re doing, any opportunities that we might have for you, and of course, before you go on to your next mission and before you click Continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

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