Silence is Golden – where action speaks louder

Yes was pretty quiet on the blogging side for the past 3 months. Was on the fast lane… not stopping for long anytime yet but taking a quick breather to reflect on what had happened so far and where I am at the moment.

Project works have been keeping me busy, on top of the usual administrative work, PhD examination and public engagement. And yes lots of traveling. I look at it as a Zelda adventure moving from one scene to another, entering one exciting doorway after another. Not without the usual stress and pressure. But I suppose the goal is bigger than the occasional upsets. Have always been glass half full – but I like to think that it is a more informed one. Though faith plays a key role as well- may not sit well with people who are working based on KPIs, but it seems to work so far.

Highlights from the past three months include the Coventry University Brussels office launch in April, where we showcased the fantastic portfolio the University has in applied research. I was also selfie-tastic on the day- as you do!

This launch was also followed up by a visit from the lab in June to explore opportunities for partnership with EU organisations, which also includes a session with the EU Commission DG Education.

May has also been busy with long haul travels, which started with the ChangSchoolTalks2018 in Toronto, where I keynoted alongside other gamification colleagues- those that I respect in the circuit. You know who you are! Great enthusiasm from the participants and clearly more work in the domain of serious games and gamification should be followed up in Toronto exploiting existing talents. Inspiring.

Beaconing’s Location-Based Games was also demo-ed in Toronto, where the link to the game was released via Twitter.

From Toronto, I moved on to Singapore and Malaysia, where I participated in a site visit for our Newton Funded CreativeCulture project. It was such a humbling experience working with the schools and community in a the remote Long Lamai Village in Borneo Malaysia. The potential of co-creativity inspired by play and games has been realised there, where teachers were able to remix existing games and create new games for teaching and learning STEM. This school is one of the three schools in rural Borneo that we are engaging with under the project, which is a spin off initiative from Gamechangers. I will have a separate blog post on the experience and lessons learnt.

You can watch a 17-minute long video capturing some of our adventures there:

When I was still in Malaysia, we have also managed to submit another Newton funding bid that is expanding the GameChangers approach for promoting social values, innovation and enterprise in Mexico. Another Gamification colleague from the circuit is part of the bid.

June was particularly interesting as well, where I was a member of the examination panel of an industrial PhD in Gamification in Barcelona- which I think was insightful. Well done Alberto! The gamification framework based on an agile approach will prove to be useful when it comes to being disruptive in the development and implementation of real solutions. Check out the Fraggle framework. Looking forward to the journal papers and perhaps full validation of the framework by gamification experts.

Then finally, the launch of the Centre for Advanced Computational Science at Manchester Metropolitan University on 27th June. Fantastic work by the team. A pleasure to be a member of the External Advisory Group, where games is one of the strands under the Centre’s Human Computer Interfaces lab.