Well that was fun!

In the last blog entry I chatted about an upcoming experiment at work using gamification, to encourage adoption and education on some cool collaboration tools.

The scope  of participation was meant to be contained withing the IBM Labs of UK and Ireland, but by the end of the two week game, we had gamers playing from the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Denmark, out to India, across to the USA and all the way round the world to Australia, with participants numbering in the hundreds, with folk still joining and playing even though the ‘event’ is concluded.

So it looks like this gamification thing is a winner!

From a purely practical point of view – it was surprisingly resource light, especially when you compare it to traditional education methods,  If you have ever developed a piece of education in the form of  a workshop, you know how time intensive the creation/preparation can be. Then comes the delivery of the education itself – another very labour intensive activity. Add to that the need to deliver in multiple geographic locations, with all of the cost of travel, logistics, time…brrr…. The gamification model begins to look like a very attractive alternative.

So all in all, an extremely positive experience, which has caught the imagination of quite a few people in the organisation. There is the definite opportunity to replicate in other areas, for example, applying gamification to testing and development as well as education.

Looks like we have some subsequent irons in the fire….

More soon 🙂

In the meantime meet Dr Redshirt and the ‘gang’…

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