Javier is Co-founder of Azahar Juegos and Free to Play, companies that focus on the design and research around the use of playful paradigms in serious contexts. He has 11 years of experience working on gamification projects and has collaborated on educational projects with institutions in Colombia such as Universidad de los Andes, Sergio Arboleda, Rosario, Uniminuto, and with companies such as Bancolombia, Compensar, Grupo Bolivar, among others. He is the designer of the BEM Framework for systemic and meaningful gamification and the recipient of two awards from Tech Magazine / Gamicon 2019 for gamification projects in virtual learning.

Meet Chris, founder of Gaming@Work. His company integrates Game Derived Skills·· and Game-based Learning for a dynamic workplace. With a background in International Hospitality and experience as a Partner Manager at Dell Technologies, specializing in Cloud and Gaming-as-a-Service, Chris brings expertise in various graphics/gaming workloads. He provides a unique tech perspective on employee growth. Chris aims to help organizations achieve digital transformation goals, keeping employees skilled and motivated without investing in expensive software. Regularly sharing insights on gaming culture, esports, and tech trends, connect with Chris to explore the future at GamingAt.Work and his blog, TeamLocktree.com

Engagers free resource out! In this episode, we explore a free mini-course we have just released that will allow you to either take your first steps in this Game Inspired world of Gamification, if you are a seasoned veteran you can add something different to your belt or anything in between, including curiosity, register for free at professorgame.com/freegamificationcourse. I'm looking forward to seeing you there and read any feedback you have!

The founder and director of Checkpoint, Tamer is dedicated to changing our perception of learning and the technology we use to enable learning. Advocate of gaming cultural wealth and the benefits gaming has, Tamer has spent years developing pedagogy through Checkpoint to help us benefit from our digital fluency. Driven by the failure of governments and education systems globally during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the hypocrisy around "screentime", Tamer focused on showcasing the benefits of gaming on well-being, education and as a social platform for children. This led to a partnership and study on the impact of gaming in education with Brunel University which proved incredibly successful. Tamer is also an award-winning producer and journalist who has worked across print, broadcast (TV and radio) and online.

Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Bret is a seasoned Game/Software professional with over 15 years of experience in crafting immersive games, innovative software, and user-friendly apps. His passion lies in bridging the realms of design psychology in both gaming and software landscapes. He's dedicated to uncovering the intriguing parallels between professional e-sport players and software power users, as well as exploring the social dynamics ignited by elements like "hi-scores" in e-commerce platforms. Bret delights in translating these insights into tangible enhancements, creating products and experiences that resonate deeply with users. Don't miss his enlightening 2022 TEDx Talk, "Can a 90s video game be a standard for experience design?", available online for a captivating dive into his perspective on the fusion of gaming and design.

Helen Hooper is head of learning design at VirtualSpeech which creates soft skills training solutions based around immersive practice in VR and online. Helen has a particular passion for creating engaging and effective learning experiences that involve active participation by the learner. Her rich background includes twelve years founding and running two award-winning educational startups focused on child development through active storytelling. And, long ago, after graduating from Oxford University - Helen spent nine years working in the UK Civil Service and European Commission (which she hated!). When not working she·s often found taxiing her 2 teenagers around or walking in the countryside with her husband and French dog, Garry.

Bhaskar Thyagarajan is the Founder & CEO of BlueSky Learning | KAIROS. BlueSky Learning is a consulting & training company with a vision of helping individuals, teams and organizations nurture and develop their Human skills. All programs are anchored in the experiential learning methodology. Kairos is a platform offering digital and in-person games & activities to the L&D community. They have been designing game-based learning modules with a focus on behavioral skills for 2 decades. Bhaskar is a facilitator, speaker and mentor focused on building institutional capability in game-based learning. He has trained over 400 trainers in facilitating experiential & game-based workshops, designed 30+ unique workshop designs, 100+ game-based learning modules and has rich experience of working with professionals across 30+ countries. He is also a founding member and Senior advisor at Koach.ai · a conversational AI-based coaching and mentoring app focused on youth and frontline employees.

Kevin B. Burk is the Headmaster of The Real Astrology Academy and the creator of the Human Game and the Human Game Experience. He has been counseling and coaching as an astrologer since 1998, teaching astrology since 2000, and is the author of more than a dozen books. The Human Game is a philosophy based on the idea that the Universe is made up of stories. The story is the smallest practical unit of reality. If everything is a story, when you understand how a story works, you can understand anything. The Human Game Experience is an astrology-based reality role-playing game that can give you creative control over The Story of Your Life. It·s an 8-week online program that helps you experience the potential of the Human Game philosophy with video tutorials, a comprehensive Player·s Handbook, personal coaching, and the support of a growing community of Human Game players around the world.

Terry has been a consultant in learning and development for over twenty years and specializes in creating and facilitating games-based and gamified learning experiences. He's the founder of Untold Play, via which he works with clients of all kinds to help make their learning experiences as gameful as possible. He's the creator of the Transform Deck, a games-based tool to inspire learning designers and creators to make their learning experiences more activity-led and learner-focused: the deck is being used to do just that in more than 20 countries worldwide. His current focus is his framework, the Six Levers of Games-based Learning, a tool to help learning designers and creators take inspiration from what works in games and apply it to their learning experiences. He writes and speaks regularly on games-based learning and gamification in as many places as possible, including for Bookboon, the world's largest corporate library provider, and Spiel Digital and the Playful Creative Summit.

Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents.

Charney Kaye is a lifelong artist, musician, and hacker, the beneficial type, empathetically building technology to solve problems, and connecting software with media. Professionally, he's built an arsenal of skills ranging from typography to Java and honed his design thinking over hundreds of projects. Charney is both a seasoned veteran and a contemporary student of human-machine interaction, from R&D to implementation. He founded XJ Music to enable artists to compose new possibilities in background music for video games, live streaming, and environments.

Steve is an experienced executive, venture investor, entrepreneur, educator, scientist, and author. He is co-founder and CEO of Thynk, a digital health company advancing innovative brain training video games for children and adults.  Previously, Steve held various roles in academia and industry. He began his career as a professor at Harvard Medical School where he co-authored more than 130 scientific papers and was elected a member of AAAS and AHA. Subsequently, he co-founded and held senior positions in several private and public life science companies. In addition, he co-founded and was Managing Director at Excel Venture Management, which invested in over 40 innovative startups.  Steve loves innovation and has spoken widely, including at TED, TEDMED, and TEDx and, with Juan Enriquez, he co-authored ·Evolving Ourselves·. Throughout his career, he has focused on transformative technologies across many sectors of the economy and relishes opportunities to advance innovations that can help millions. He and his wife live in Boston and have 5 grandchildren who love doing STEM projects and playing Skylar·s Run.

This is our small tribute to a former guest, Michael Sutton who was on during our first year, as we recently got news that he has passed away. If you want to hear a bit more from him, here's an episode where I was leading a panel that Michael was a part of.

Nazli Ozturkmen has more than 10 years of professional experience in Fintech, insurtech, crypto technologies and Web3 as a Product Marketing and Product Management executive.

An entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience, coach, mentor, and public speaker. The founder and President of the Supervisory Board G2A Capital Group, to which belongs G2A.COM - the largest and most dynamically developing global marketplace for digital entertainment, where users can buy vouchers for digital products such as games, gift cards, subscriptions, or software. The marketplace already has over 25 million users from 180 countries around the world.  A winner of the Forbes magazine·s BrandMe CEO award, the Digital Shaper Award and the Gold Medal of the Polish Academy of Success. He·s also a co-founder and member of business organizations such as the International Leaders Forum, Google Next Gen CEO Club and Facebook Client Advisory Board and the Polish Council of Global Businessmen.  Graduate of the AGH University (University of Science) of Krakow and the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, as well as Executive Education programs at Harvard (Finance), MIT (IT, Blockchain, Platformization, Productivity), and Oxford (Fintech).

Edgar Guillermo Solano is the author of the Best Seller ·Innovation for square heads·. His new book, ·Playliving· shows how to take strategies used on games into the business world. Creator of the game and the book WakeUpBrain to accelerate innovation using games.. He has been Commercial and Marketing Manager in tech companies such as Hewlett Packard, Compaq and Lexmark. He is the director and host of the Podcast ·Square heads club·. He is the director of the WakeUpBrain Academy. He is also the creator of i-Tournaments, innovation tournaments designed to transform culture in companies.

Well, this time I'm writing this super late on a Sunday, December 31, 2023, as we've had some domestic complications (nothing huge, more on the episode). However, I did want to take some time to wish you the best for 2024 and leave some space for reflection! See you on the flip side!!

Anton Hecht is a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. He recently finished a Ph.D. in games for art in public space with others. He makes gameful artworks, across mediums, including with orchestras and dancers. He makes installations and experiences in non-traditional spaces. He has created work for many galleries and arts centers, including the South Bank in London. Much of his work is filmed and placed online where he has over two million views on his YouTube channel. He began the idea of Orchestral Flashmob in a bus garage in Newcastle. He looks for ways to engage others and to get them to contribute to making artwork in some manner.

Michael Low is a classroom educator with an MA in Secondary Education and over 20 years in the classroom. For the past four years, he's run Luck Of Legends, developing educational role-playing games for small groups and classrooms. As the co-creator and storyteller at StoriesRPG.com, he publishes play-at-home games for families and classrooms like Starsworn, Luna Uni, and Giga City Guardians, and co-hosts the Stories RPG podcast, which helps people of all ages leverage the power of role-playing to foster trust and creativity, build literacy, and deepen academic engagement. His classroom role·playing game for mastering writing, Luna Uni, is currently being playtested in a number of classrooms and led to huge gains in writing scores in two 5th-grade classes last spring.

Professor Pete Alexander is the President of the greatest interior landscaping company in the San Francisco Bay Area - Office Plants by Everything Grows. In addition, he serves as an adjunct college professor, where he helps inspire students to develop and apply key concepts of marketing specifically to their area of interest. He's also a TEDx speaker and best-selling author on reducing stress in your everyday life. Lastly, but certainly not least, he is a certified Laughter Yoga leader and improv comedy cast member, supporting his community to laugh more and stress less.