Woot!! Won “Gamification Guru of the Year” Award at the Gamification World Congress
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
The Biggest Gamification Conference in Europe
Every year, the biggest gamification conference in the US is the GSummit, hosted by Gabe Zichermann. In Europe, the biggest event is the World Gamification Congress, hosted in Barcelona, Spain, and had 1,300 attendees this year.
I was invited to do a Keynote and Workshop at the Gamification World Congress regarding Octalysis Gamification, along with my Managing Director and Partner Joris Beerda who also did a Keynote.
My main focus was to teach the attendees at the workshop a deeper level of Octalysis Gamification Design, and to teach the Keynote attendees how the gamification industry needs to mature in order to not reach a crash.
I was delightfully surprised that, on a show of hands, over 60% of the audience had learned about my Octalysis Framework before.
Many people also wanted to take selfies with me and have me autograph random items, as well as my book Actionable Gamification.
High interest in my book: Actionable Gamification — Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards
For my book, I shipped 100 books to Europe, thinking that it would be enough for the audience at the conference with many left to disperse to the other countries I visited.
Shockingly, all 100 books were sold at the Gamification World Congress, with many people deciding to order the book on Amazon instead.
Many people walked up to me and told me they have already finished my book and loved it. All extremely flattering and I could only humbly thank them for enjoying my work.
Deeply surprised and honored to win the Gamification Guru of the Year Award
The climax of the event was at the end of Day 3, where the Gamification Guru of the Year award was given out. This award is based on the Rise.Global algorithm, community voting, and preferences of judges.
This year I honestly wasn’t optimistic on winning the award since I haven’t been doing that hot on the Rise leaderboard throughout the year. Also, I felt that it would be more interesting to the audience if there was a bit more variety for who the winner is.
After all, there have been tons of other folks in the industry that are doing great and inspiring work.
I was therefore surprised when they announced that I had in fact won the award. I felt deeply honored and wasn’t sure what to say when I got the award. Hopefully it didn’t sound too embarrassing.
Then I decided to throw in some dance moves that I randomly did, which apparently people liked.
Thanks everyone for the amazing support you have continuously given me throughout the years. I’m SO happy to see my work and Octalysis spread through the industries. If you ever want my help in your projects, feel free to reach out to me on my contact page.
My Keynote Slides for the Gamification World Congress 2015
Below is my Keynote Presentation at the Gamification World Congress. Still waiting for video footage, but hope you guys enjoy!
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- What is Gamification?
- White Hat vs Black Hat Gamification
- Books by Yu-kai Chou