Feedback. Friends. Fun. The Power of Gamification

Serendipity this morning brought me to an article, How to Give a Great Keynote by Gabe Zichermann.  Even though I intended to see how he presents to an audience himself, as I began watching the video at the bottom of the article I was stunned and delighted to have my horizons raised about great ways to think about the possible gamification of the world.

Gabe was presenting at The Next Web 2012 conference held in April in Amsterdam. But what he talked about in this presentation was gaming, game theory and ways in which his audience could think about the accelerating shift in task/achievement/reward and how profound gaming is in making that happen.

I’ve written in the past about gaming here and follow people like this guy, a Northwestern University professor named Dr. Tae, who has publicly wondered Can Skateboarding Save Our Schools?, and I’m sold. Now I am wondering how long it will take before people understand how to create work, tasks, and achievement all wrapped up in to what Zichermann says is essentially the magic three: Feedback. Friends. Fun.

Watch the video and you’ll see what I mean:

[media url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdUclLUDxRg&hd=1" width="640" height="400"]