Professor Game Podcast

This special episode is the live recording of the panel that was held on the Business Learning Games Conference 2019 in Lisbon, organized by the Business Excellence Institute. The panel had quite a broad topic, and as such features questions from Rob as head of the discussion but also questions and comments from the audience itself.

Paul Darvasi is an educator, game designer, speaker and writer whose work looks at the intersection of games, culture and learning. He teaches English and media studies, is a doctoral candidate at York University, and a founding member of the Play Lab at the University of Toronto. His research explores how commercial video games can be used as texts for critical analysis by adolescents. He has designed pervasive games that include The Ward Game, based on Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Blind Protocol, a cyber warfare simulation that instructs on online security, privacy and surveillance. Paul has worked with the Canadian Royal Military College, the US Department of Education, UNESCO, foundry10, Consumers International, iThrive, and Connected Camps and has participated in several international research projects. He recently wrote a working paper for UNESCO on how commercial video games can be used for peace education and conflict resolution. Paul's work has been featured on PBS, NPR, CBC, the Huffington Post, Polygon, Killscreen, Gamasutra, Sterne, Endgadget, Edsurge, Edutopia, and MindShift.

Danny Stefanic is the brains behind the world's first WebXR learning experience platform, LearnBrite. Also founder of 3D internet company ExitReality Inc, founder of the International Virtual Reality Association and chairman of the virtual worlds social network Koinup. Called a "visionary" by his peers and deemed by Wall Street CIOs and Silicon Valley VCs to be "one of the pioneers in his field", he has been creating ground-breaking 3D businesses for over 25 years. Danny actively works with young businesses to share his experiences and give back to the community. He has assisted companies with angel investment, international licensing, acquisitions, exits, managing distributed teams and has personally closed IP acquisitions valued at $85MM.

Jesse Schell is the CEO of Schell Games, a team of one hundred people who strive to make truly great games, both for the purposes of entertainment and education, including award-winning VR games such as I Expect You To Die, HoloLAB Champions, and Star Wars: Droid Repair Bay. Jesse serves as Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University and is the author of the award-winning book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.

As Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Filament Games, Dan Norton oversees Filament's design team and works on continuously improving the company's design process. Dan has designed games about a uniquely broad range of topics, ranging from marine turtle ecology to legal argumentation. His games have won numerous industry awards and have been played millions of times in classrooms across the country. Dan approaches each new project at Filament as an opportunity to find authentic passion and engagement around learning new things, blending his love for game design with his love of collaborative creativity to support and lead Filament design and artistic practices.

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. The M.I.T. Technology Review dubbed Nir, "The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology." Nir founded two tech companies since 2003 and has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He is the author of the bestselling book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir's writing has been featured in The Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Psychology Today. Nir is also an active investor in habit-forming technologies. Some of his past investments include Eventbrite (NYSE:EB), Refresh.io (acquired by LinkedIn), Worklife (acquired by Cisco), Product Hunt, Marco Polo, Presence Learning, 7 Cups, Pana, Kahoot!, Byte Foods, FocusMate, and Anchor.fm (acquired by Spotify). Nir attended The Stanford Graduate School of Business and Emory University.

Gian­luca Sgueo is Global Media Seminar Professor at New York University – Florence, and Research Associate at the Center of Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (Portugal). He is also Department Director at the Institute of Competitiveness, a think tank located in Rome and Brussels. His professional background includes several experiences in the public sector. From 2011 to 2013 he was the Head of Communications of the Italian Government; since 2014 he is Policy Analyst at the Parliamentary Research of the European Parliament. He has published extensively on participatory democracy, lobbying and globalization. His last book title is 'Games, Powers & Democracies', Bocconi University Press 2018.

Jasmin Deniz Karatas is on a quest to lead Gamification and Behavioral Design to success for businesses and entrepreneurs alike. She built up and leads the Gamification Chapter within Accenture Interactive. She gives lectures to students, holds international talks and workshops. Trained as a product designer and armed with years of experience in service design, as well as founding her own Startup Myndset, Jasmin follows her ambition to help her clients add passion, value, and emotions to their ideas and solutions.

Zack Hartzman is a Social Studies teacher at a high school in The Bronx of New York City. He has a Master's Degree in the teaching of Social Studies from Teachers College at Columbia University. He has taught Global History, United States History, Economics, and Government. He is the founder of Hey Listen Games, a website where he creates curriculum and lesson plans for teachers to use video games in their classrooms.

Nicolas has been enjoying life for over 53 years. He has worked and lived in the US, UK, Belgium, Japan, Germany and France allowing him to be open and understand different cultures. He worked for Sony for many years and learned to combine marketing and gaming. He is a co-founder of GamFed. Since 2017, Nicolas is a consultant in all digital matters. He helps big and small companies to transform their business by using AI and Gamification. He writes for Le Monde Economique in Geneva as a digital expert and works for LinkedIn Learning and IBM on social media and AI subjects.