Thinking In and Out of the Box

Jimbo Clark

"Think out of the box!" A commonly heard phrase, but no one ever tells you what the box is, how to think out of it, and why you might want to think back into it. What is the box? Where did the box come from? The better you understand the boundaries of the box, the better you can think beyond them. PLUS enjoy a side of NOLA craft brews and McClure’s BBQ (included with your registration). 

An offsite event at NOLA Brewing Company, 3001 Tchoupitoulas St, New Orleans, 504.896.9996, www.NOLAbrewing.com

MS1:  Opening Keynote

The Case of Baldi's Ruler and the Purple Backpack

Monica Cornetti

We have a neurological imperative to allow our learners to play. Play helps create new connections between neurons and between different parts of the brain. Learn how you can use gamification to help learners not only feel better while engaged in your learning experiences, but you'll also encourage creativity, expand their brains (literally), and help them better survive their complex world.

MS2:  Level Up Your Professional Development:  Experience the Magic of GamiCon

Chuck Sigmund and Kerstin Oberprieler

Two internationally-recognized presenters and gamification experts, come together on one stage to share their experience of a platform that is a unique application of gamification. Chuck Sigmund (Seattle, WA) and Kerstin Obleprier (Canberra, Australia) met at GamiCon last year, formed a partnership to do a pilot... and this year they share their learning, insights, and results with the GamiCon community. This session shows you the magic of GamiCon! 

MS3:  Gamification is Not One Solution for All - Persona, Phases, Journeys and More...

Altug Yilmaz

This session is for anyone who cares about employee engagement and wants to change their behavior through fun. Understand the steps of any Gamification Project, analyze the KPIs, and apply game mechanics to enhance the employee experience.

MS4:  The Game Master Framework

Bernardo Letayf 

Making sense of all the gamification knowledge out there requires a lot of time. Usually a framework covers one end and leaves others out because of tunnel vision. The Game Master Framework allows you to prepare your system while testing if you are walking in the right direction from your first iteration. Learn the key game mechanics and core game dynamics that will build a system fast and simple while minimizing mistakes in the process. 

BO 1A: i-Tournament: ¿Can I play with my boss?

Guillermo Solano 

Experience the development of an i-Tournament – a mix between a hackathon and a workshop. Build exciting competitive experiences that lead to deep-rooted knowledge combined with powerful and innovative solutions to real problems. Learn the process to design an i-Tournament, as

well as the main risks and weaknesses to avoid. 

BO 1B:   Be the Game Changer: Narrative as the Glue for Learning and Game Mechanics 

Naomi Pariseault  

Crafting a compelling story can serve as a hook for your learners, be the glue that makes all the components work together, and help sustain excitement, empathy, and curiosity throughout the learning journey. It can the difference maker between something that is immersive and cohesive vs. a hodgepodge or bland. Let the story drive the journey, not the click “NEXT” button!

Finalists in the Throwdown Challenge will Showcase their Projects

A showcase of low-tech, no-tech, and technology-based gamification of learning projects with a special focus on not just the projects themselves but also the results they’ve produced. This fun and social event gives GamiCon participants the opportunity to see a variety of projects and talk with the designers and developers, about the strategies, tools, and processes used to build them.

BO 2A: Pressure Packed! What Would You Decide?

Chuck Sigmund

In this exciting, anxiety-producing (in a good way) session, content developers and instructional designers will learn how to frame their training in the context of real-world environments. The use of reality-based scenarios will engage learners in all-too-familiar situations. Walk away with new ideas about how to leverage what you already know to create highly realistic and engaging learning experiences.  

BO 2B:  Experience Based Learning – Content is NOT King!

Michiel van Eunen

We’ve heard it a thousand times: content is king. But it’s simply not true. In this session learn how and why to use games for learning. Experience what you can learn from balloons, toilet-paper, and confetti. Discover how you can learn more about a person in an hour of play, than in a year of conversation.  

BO 3A:  Barebones Storytelling:  How One Game Design Principle Can Boost Engagement and Save You Time

Scott Provence 

This learning lab explores “content gamification” of training, which oftentimes is less understood than the elements of “structural gamification.” While the latter deals with things like how to create effective points, badges, and leaderboards, content gamification explores how to create engaging stories. This session is compelling because Instructional Designers often over-engineer their content, thus wasting time and actually risking a disengaged audience. Learn “behind the scenes” tricks on how to do more with less, and ultimately save time, while simultaneously boosting engagement. 

BO 3B:  Colorfully Connecting:  Practical Ways to Gamify for Everyone 

Rob and Mary Hambleton

Even though personality style assessments are ubiquitous, they are seldom used correctly. Colorful Connections teaches a tactical approach that involves two personality style reads – Introversion/Extraversion and Thinking/Feeling. If content designers and facilitators can have this very easy to understand knowledge along with a mechanics menu that goes with each style as a general guide – gamified training can be even more engaging and effective.

Experience the 2030 SDGs Game

James Bishop

The 2030 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) Game is a multiplayer, in-person, card-based game that simulates taking the “real world” into the year 2030. Designed in Japan in 2016, this experience has become a powerful and impactful social phenomenon, earning extensive media coverage and reaching over 50,000 participants over the last two years. It’s also been delivered at the United Nations in New York! https://2030sdgsgame.com

A once-in- a lifetime opportunity to experience this game designed with a social purpose in mind. Play and learn with hands-on gamified action, followed by a practical debrief. PLUS enjoy quintessentially southern, with a distinct Louisiana influence, appetizers and cocktails made with Lula Spirits (included with your registration). 

An offsite event at Lula Restaurant and Distillery, 1532 St. Charles Ave, New Orleans, 504-267-7624, www.lulanola.com 

MS5: Keynote

Deliberate Fun

Jonathan Peters, PhD

Most gamification programs will not

live up to expectations. And this is because most practitioners simply build a program and hope people will like it. Creating a balance between the explanation of scientific profiles, gamification philosophy, and practical application this session is designed to equip L&D professionals with a proven and repeatable process for adding game mechanics to their learning programs.

MS6:  Gamification Gumbo: Small Lessons from the Big Easy

Valary Oleinik

This session helps participants to shift from trying various ways of motivating learners to creating environments and experiences in which learners will be more likely to feel motivated. The session contains activities that model the concepts presented. Participants will receive the learner persona template and a series of questions to help them identify ways in which they can bring more self-determination into their courses and learning events. 

MS7:  What Makes a Great Narrative – The Brain Science Behind Increasing Retention with a Great Story

Keith Lillico

Narratives are typically one of the easiest and widely used game mechanics when creating a learning project. But what makes a good story? Recent advances in brain science have shown that just telling a story is not enough for someone to remember it. By understanding Long-Term Potentiation (LTP) and mnemonic memory techniques, participants can learn how to write compelling stories that will leave their audiences remembering things that once seemed impossible. The history of these techniques have long been established and used in the world of memory championships where participants do things such as memorize a deck of cards, full poems, or random numbers in a few minutes, but recent studies have shown that there is an application for them in the learning and development world.

MS8:   Gamification Using iBeacons

Miary Andriamiarisoa

In an extremely dynamic, fascinating, attention-grabbing session, Miary will outline the key characteristics of iBeacons that relate to gamification and demonstrate how iBeacons technologies can be used to create a low-cost (as low as $10), high-tech, engaging gamification experience. You don’t have to be a technology wizard to bring this cool tech into your gamification projects.

Through an interactive progress map, discovered via iBeacons, you will interact with the GamiCon Ambassadors and explore the latest platforms, tools, games, and apps that the gamification industry has to offer. Experience exploration and progression playing with both high and low-tech platforms and frameworks 

The Perfect Pecan Praline Recipe Search 

It seems like everyone who has ever tasted a genuine Louisiana praline has a story about their hunt to track down a praline maker equal to that first experience of the "greatest pecan praline ever!" (BTW – the correct Louisiana pronunciation is "praw-leen".)

Unfortunately, cracking the praline code can be a grueling task. Perhaps your first experience really was the greatest – or perhaps your memory has raised that praline to a heroic status which none can rival. 

The same may be true for your hunt for the perfect gamification for learning project. Is there a Holy Grail? The perfect gamification strategy design? Here in the depths of the digital age, can we uncover the secrets to the perfect gamification design recipe?

Happy experimenting with iBeacons, assembling the perfect pecan praline recipe, and maybe you just might find a fabulous formula for effective gamification along the way.

Perhaps you’ll even get your happy little hands on some genuine, scrumptious, Louisiana pralines.

Earned in the GamiCon Event app
Facilitated by a GamiCon speaker , Ambassador, or industry leader of your choice, take a deep-dive into specific topics of significance for you. Enjoy a unique opportunity to hear from an engaged and focused group of your peers to exchange experiences and ideas. 

MS9:  EDrenaline Rush: Inside the Fully Gamified Classroom
John Meehan 

What if going to school captured the thrills and excitement of an amusement park? Could classroom activities elicit the same sense of exhilaration as when charging the hill in a mud run? And how much more engaged would today's students be if a curriculum was filled with the same mystery and mastery you’d expect from a twisting escape room of puzzles and surprises? Step inside the world of the fully gamified classroom! 

Colorful, bold, and full of excitement, this 60-minute EDrenaline Rush challenges educators to think differently and push their pedagogy to incredible limits. Create learning spaces where students willingly step outside their comfort zones and boldly dare to attempt the impossible.  

MS10:  Closing Keynote
Implementation Intentions…A Challenge for the Future
Monica Cornetti and Jonathan Peters, PhD

Our Closing Challenge caps off GamiCon, but the fun does not stop here! The TechLearn Kick Off event is open to all GamiCon attendees.

Wow! You Can Do That? 

Michael Allen, eLearning Industry Pioneer; TLC's Chief Learning Evangelist

Yes, you can! Today’s technologies are breaking down barriers with blinding speed. How can we keep up? And how do we avoid letting seductive novelties divert our attention from instructional foundations that matter? We’ll have fun seeing and playing with some new things.
And then figure out how to put the new technologies to work for us.

Mission Possible: Make Connections
John Chen, Geoteaming

Your mission, and you SHOULD decide to accept it, is to make connections that can help you move your career forward. The Geoteaming group will help you take the next step through an engaging mobile game. You’ll solve missions and climb the leaderboard as you make your way toward Barcadia where you’ll meet up with other groups for awards and fun!

Whatever your plans for your time in New Orleans, the Throwdown Awards are sure to be a nail-biter session. A gladiatorial combat. 20 final projects. 5 ultimate winners. Who will it be?

PLUS enjoy appetizers, drinks, and ‘80s arcade games! (included with your registration). 

This celebration will prove to be THE can’t miss event of the conference! 

 An offsite event at Barcadia, 601 Tchoupitoulas St, New Orleans, LA 70130, (504) 335-1740, (www.barcadianeworleans.com)