I have read several reviews of the conference (like Andrzej Marczewski’s at gamified.uk and Manuel Pimenta from Novabase), and one thing we seem to agree on is the sense of community that is starting to breed around gamification. It’s been several years since the industry was “formally” started, and lots of things have happened since, one of them that the hype around gamification seems to have at least started to fall. This can be great news, less talking and more doing, if we manage to survive. As Kevin Werbach said during his keynote speech, it is time to get this industry serious (I’m probably paraphrasing). Which does not mean that fun or games must be taken out of the equation, it is seen by many of us as a call to get serious about becoming a community that helps this industry thrive and move in the right direction.

On the community building, and especially on the side of sharing knowledge and more specific know how, I’d like to highlight the talks of Flavio Scrivano about the Gamification Model Canvas framework 3.0 (which they intend to make open source soon, some info at gecon.es, and specifically here), Sylvester Arnab from the Beaconing project, and Manuel Pimenta when he shared his experience at Novabase Gameshifters: Gamified Ideation, on Steroids (web in Portuguese I’m afraid), and the calling of Kevin Werbach for the information exchange between practitioners and researchers. This was also a main topic in most of the informal conversations I held during the breaks at the event.

It’s time that communities are not only formed, but also nurtured and become a place to share ideas, success and also failure. At www.professorgame.com we will focus our efforts precisely on that, the sharing of ideas through a regular podcast where we will have many of today’s (and tomorrow’s) practitioners, researchers, experts and gurus to share the best (and the worst) of their experiences.

Let’s join forces for the benefit of us all, GAME ON!

P.S. Last but not least, CONGRATULATIONS again to all the nominees of the Gamification Guru 2016, and to the winner Andrzej Marczewski!