July 2014

Our ambitious aim is to establish GAETSS as a world leader in the understanding and use of the fast emerging technologies which influence and shape the world we live in.

Our mission is to help shape the future of business and society through the application of best practices for human development and motivation.

The Institute of Gamification and Enabling Technologies at UPMSTOP PRESS

I am very pleased to announce that I have just accepted an offer from the Universiti Putra Malaysia in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur for a 3 year Consulting Fellow contract to help them to set up the world’s first Institute for Gamification and Enabling Technologies. Working with Professors Rahinah Ibrahim and Normahdiah Sheik Said we will be developing ambitious plans to establish a global centre of excellence for the transformational application of Gamification and Enabling Technologies to global challenges in Health, Education, Culture, Heritage, Tourism and Commerce and Sustainable Development. Once the administrative processes for work permits etc.are complete, I plan to move out to Malaysia and develop the new Institute as a hub for collaborative partnerships with South East Asia, Europe, USA and the rest of the world.

In this Newsletter

Medilink Conference Review Bangkok Digital Content Gamification Workshop ISAGA 2014 Simulation and Games Conference Health and Lifestyle Tracking Development Back to the Future – Card Games and Gamification Gamification, Personalisation, Brand Loyalty and CSR Culture Heritage Tourism and Commerce Gamification and Enabling Technologies for Independent Living Tackling the Ageing Society with Gamification and Enabling Technologies APAN Healthcare Webcast on Independent Living Upcoming Conferences and Seminars LIsting Slideshare Archives

Medilink Conference Review

Mark McIntyre at the Medilink Conference

Attending the East Midlands Medilink Conference on Innovation held in Leicester last month, one of the keynote speakers, Mark McIntyre, a Senior Director at Boston Scientific, told a story which resonated with me and gave an insight into an important and costly problem with the medical profession and society.

He was speaking about a specialist treating patients with circulatory problems where their condition often results in amputation of the limb. This specialist had dedicated himself successfully to interventions which avoided amputation because he believed (thankfully) that patients prefer to keep their limbs. His increasing success with his patients led to a visit from the surgeon specialising in amputations at the hospital who complained that the specialist was "doing him out of a job".This story of conflict between innovators and established professionals in an industry is a useful illustration of some of the disruptive changes we are about to see in the health sector.

View the full article at http://www.slideshare.net/dwortley/physician-heal-thyself

Bangkok Digital Content Gamification Workshop

The Gamification Workshop Participants at the Bangkok Digital Content Conference

I was an invited keynote presenter for the Bangkok Digital Content Festival run by the Software Industry Association. It was held at the Siam Paragon Conference Centre in the heart of downtown Bangkok and ran in parallel with the Comic Con conference which has to be one of the most unusual conference events I have attended in recent times, if only because both visitors and exhibitors dressed up in cartoon character costumes such as Spiderman, Batman, Spongebob Squarepants etc. By comparison, my one day gamification workshop was a relatively low key affair that provided further opportunities to use playing cards to illustrate and teach gamification. On this occasion, I used not only my own card games using standard “UNO” cards, but also used Playgen’s gamification cards described later in this newsletter.

ISAGA 2014 Simulation and Games Conference

One of the highlights of ISAGA 2014 - Thiagi

The ISAGA 2014 conference held in Dornbirn, Austria provided some new insights into Games, Simulations and Gamification. The ISAGA conferences are extremely well organised and attended and a powerful illustration that games-based learning practices have been around for many years longer than most people realise. I attended the event as a delegate, giving me the unusual freedom to concentrate on listening to other perspectives and learning from some of the many workshops at the conference.

Probably the most memorable aspects of the conference came from one of the senior citizens of Games based learning, Thiagi, who not only gamified his keynote presentation, but also ran a very engaging and enjoyable workshop called “Jolt” – a series of very short high impact interactive exercises designed to provide lasting new insights to challenge stereotypical perceptions.

The Thiagi group are also developers of sets of card games that gamify learning in many different contexts. This is also covered later in this newsletter.

Health and Lifestyle Tracking Developments

The New Jawbone UP iPad Application Interface

The last few weeks have seen significant developments in the acceptance and functionality of Gamification applied to Lifestyle and Health through enabling technologies. One of the good but sometimes irritating features of mobile apps and cloud computing is that they are continuously being updated and enhanced and automatically downloaded onto your portable device. The recent updates to the Jawbone UP device made some very significant changes both to the interface and its potential to improve health. The most significant change is the rating of food with marks out of 10 and the ability to select from menus of participating restaurants and fast food chains bring two very important potential effects :-

1. Keeping a record of what you eat and drink is greatly simplified, especially when eating out2. It is far easier to understand and choose healthy options3. There is added motivation to eat more healthily and drink more water.

These developments are great examples of gamification strategies designed to not only engage individuals but also support the development of commercial win-win ecosystems.

Back to the Future – Card Games and Gamification

Playgen Founder Kam Star in Pensive Mood at Coventry University Gamification for Education Workshop

Over the last year, a significant number of highly respected people in games based learning have opened my eyes to the potential and cost effectiveness of one of the oldest game formats to support learning activities. Card Games are not only a highly successful and established mechanism for engaging people’s discretionary time, they are inherently tailor made for use in education. I have begun to use and develop different variations of card game formats that I have seen used by the following people :-

Beth Lipton and David Crookall used custom made card game puzzles to demonstrate collaboration, communication and debriefing at the Thaisim conference in Bangkok

Kam Star of Playgen has developed his own special set of cards to teach gamification and he demonstrated the effectiveness of their use in a Coventry University workshop on Gamification and Education. Playgen’s cards are available from Amazon

The Thiagi Group have developed many different variations of standard 52 card playing cards adapted by the addition of personalised text and graphics and a set of manuals for use by facilitators. This has the added benefit of being able to use the cards as normal playing cards as well as for specific learning outcomes

I have successfully used standard UNO playing cards both to teach specific learning outcomes and to challenge workshop participants to develop their own games. I plan to further develop card game sets using the same principles as Thiagi so that the cards can be dual purpose.

Gamification, Personalisation and Brand Loyalty for CSR

Loyalty cards and the adoption of personalisation of Point of Sale activities are a good example of the gamification strategies

supporting brand development and marketing. My activities and work with Gamification and Enabling Technologies lead me to predict that this combination of game mechanics/methodologies/psychologies and rapidly maturing digital technologies such as the internet of things, big data analytics and cloud computing will result in an increasing number of strategic win-win partnerships and a focus on profitable Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a differentiator in an Omni World.

Tesco Personalised Loyalty Card Incentives

Recent changes in the management structure at Tesco seem to indicate that brand differentiation is becoming increasingly important for major retailers if they are to address the challenges of discount operations like ALDI and LIDL. You can view the full article at http://www.slideshare.net/dwortley/gamification-personalisation-brand-loyalty-csr

Culture, Heritage, Tourism and Commerce

Bangkok’s New Central World Development

I have written a short article on the role of Culture, Heritage and Tourism in the development and promotion of Commerce and the factors which might influential the future development of urban retail. You can view the article at http://www.slideshare.net/dwortley/commerce-culture-heritage-and-tourism-in-an-omni-world

Gamification and Enabling Technologies for Independent LivingThe Simon Stevens Story

Simon Stevens Twitter Page

For generations mankind has conceived, developed and used enabling technologies to both overcome our physical and mental limitations and leverage our ability to manage daily life efficiently and independently and these are especially important for those individuals who are disadvantaged by physical or mental conditions. For those individuals who are disabled, technology plays a vital in not only improving the quality of life but also giving them some control over their world that would otherwise be denied to them. It is important to emphasise the value of the independence from human care that these technologies bring. Being dependent on other human beings for our every need reduces our capacity to grow and develop our capabilities, wellbeing and self-esteem. Being able to meet the challenges of everyday life using our own resources, assisted by technology is a powerful motivator.

I have written an article to support two forthcoming web conferences on Gamification and Enabling Technologies for Independent Living. You can access the full article at http://www.slideshare.net/dwortley/gamification-and-enabling-technologies-for-independent-living-simon-stevens-story

Tackling the Ageing Society with Gamification and Enabling Technologies

Minigames using a Virtual Tutors to Train Care WorkersI have written an article to look at some of the issues associated with the Ageing Society and discusses the merits of some of the projects which use Serious Games, Gamification, Enabling and Assistive technologies to support independence and improve the lives and wellbeing of older people. I conclude that Independent Living and addressing the challenge of the Ageing Society can be a very difficult and emotive subject, especially where the care of the elderly is concerned. The strains on the care sector, the well-publicised abuse cases, and the transfer of responsibility for care from the public to the private and community sectors are all

symptoms that the status quo expectations around care are unsustainable.

Ultimately, as with various other lifestyle related medical conditions such as diabetes and obesity, the answer will have to come from individuals empowered to accept more responsibility for health and well-being management. This will require not only the use of enabling technologies such as the internet of things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and broadband to improve access to services and service providers but also, through Gamification and Serious Games to challenge, motivate and continuously develop older people in ways that help them to live better for longer by contributing to society rather than being dependent on society.

You can view the full article at http://www.slideshare.net/dwortley/tackling-the-ageing-society

APAN Webinar Healthcare Session on Independent Living

Simon Stevens, Keynote Presenter at APAN

On August 8th, there will be an opportunity to view a live webcast from Korea on the use of Enabling and Assistive Technologies for Independent Living. The webcast will feature a joint presentation from myself and Simon Stevens, founder of the Wheelies Virtual Nightclub sharing his experiences of using technology to overcome the challenge of cerebral palsy.

Email me at david@gaetss.com for an invitation if you are interested.

Upcoming Conferences

Below is a list of forthcoming conferences – also accessible at http://www.davidwortley.com/events.html

Date Event Name / Description Location Web URLAug 7-10 AMCIS 2014 - The Philosophy in

Information Systems track provides a forum for scholars who are open to questioning all aspects of Information Systems and seeking to find ways for the field to progress

Savannah, Georgia, USA

http://amcis2014.aisnet.org/index.php/track-list/77-amcis-2014/103

Aug 8 APAN webcast on Enabling and Assistive Technologies for Independent Living

Live webcast from Korea

Email me at david@gaetss.com for an invitation

Aug 25-28 SimTect 2014 Asia Pacific Simulation Training Conference

Adelaide, Australia http://www.simtect.com.au/

Sep 9-11 Gameon 2014 - The 15th annual Simulation and AI in Games Conference

Lincoln, UK http://www.eurosis.org/cms/?q=taxonomy/term/357

Sep 15-16 Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) Academic Summit 2014

Calgary, Canada http://nas.geocens.ca/academicsummit/

Sep 25-26 ICDE International Conference Moscow, Russia http://eng.mesi.ru/icde2014/

Oct 17-18 IIKI 2014, International Conference on Identification, Information and Knowledge in the Internet of Things

Beijing, China http://business.bnu.edu.cn:765

Oct 22-24 EUROPEAN SIMULATION AND MODELLING CONFERENCE - ESM'2014,

UNIVERSITY OF PORTO,PORTUGAL

http://sigarra.up.pt/feup/en/WEB_PAGE.INICIAL

Nov 3-5 19th International Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies

Vienna, Austria TBA

Nov 9-11 5th Digital Earth Summit WINC Aichi, Nagoya, JAPAN

http://gis.chubu.ac.jp/summit2014/

Nov 24-26 EiED 2014 Immersive Education Initiative

Vienna, Austria http://europe.immersiveeducation.org/events/ied-europe-summit-2014

Dec 1-4 SEANES 2014 - 3rd International Conference of the South East Asian Network of Ergonomics Societies

Singapore http://seanes2014.org/index.html

Dec 3-5 2ND ANNUAL SIMEX'2014 Brussels, Belgium http://www.eurosis.org/cms/?q=taxonomy/term/359

Feb 22-27 eKNOW 2015, The Seventh International Conference on Information, Process, and Knowledge Management

Lisbon, Portugal http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/eKNOW15.html

Archived Presentations, Images and Videos

I am archiving as many of my previous presentation, videos and event images as possible. You can access these from my web site at :- http://www.davidwortley.com/conferences.html or visit my Slideshare page at :- http://www.slideshare.net/dwortley/

If you would like any presentations, videos or documents circulated to my network, I am happy to provide this service free of charge for any material relevant to readers of this newsletter. If you are interested, contact me at david@davidwortley.com.

Best Regards

Best Regards

David Wortley FRSA

Founder and CEO

GAETSS – Gamification and Enabling Technologies Strategic Solutions

Shaping the Future of Business and Society through Human Development and Motivation

Mobile Phone : +447896659695

Email : david@gaetss.com

Skype: davidwortley

Web: http://www.gaetss.com

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