Healthcare has many serious challenges that serious play can help solve.

The Serious Games Association (SGA), lead by Executive Director Sue Bohle,  is an international trade organization serving the entire serious games industry. Members include developers, publishers, technology providers, analysts, authors, consultants, faculty and other professionals. Their members are involved in the making of games and sims for education or at home learning, corporate training and marketing, government and military uses, healthcare and medical training and games that are designed to create positive change in our society. The association produces educational conferences (notably, the Serious Play Conference) does research and provides support to special interest groups (SIGs) and committees studying how to move the industry ahead. The 2016 conference will be co-hosted by the UNC Computer Science Department at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, July 26-28.

What is serious play? According to the event website it’s a gathering where creators can have critical conversations about game design and share their knowledge with peers. The focus of the conference is exploring opportunities, challenges and the potential of game-based learning. At Serious Play, attendees listen, share and participate actively in informal sessions dedicated to the discussion of the future of serious games. We are a leadership conference for people who design, manage and implement serious game programs. Their goal is to provide a forum for visionary educators, chief learning officers and heads of training programs in health care, government/military or other fields that want to learn how to improve the effectiveness of their program, and use the data collected to do even better.

Podcast Time Stamps

Listen to the podcast or drop in at the time stamps below:

00:00 Introduction
00:51 Meet Sue Bohle & the Serious Play Conference
03:55 What’s the difference between Serious Games and Serious Play?
04:40 Phaedra Boinodiris of IBM
05:15 How is healthcare using serious games?
06:54 Serious cognitive brain games
08:00 Children very comfortable with technology. What about seniors and technology?
09:45 My parents are addicted to Solitare on the computer
11:00 Gamifying lessons about serious asthma for children
11:54 Teaching at-risk teens, social-emotional intelligence
12:42 Adults need emotional intelligence games as well!
14:04 The Serious Play Conference
15:00 Who will be attending the conference?
16:08 What other business verticals are addressed at the conference?
18:00 What is a “Game Jam”?
19:15 Are serious games all digital?
21:05 How are these games being funded?
22:28 Startup Weekend style pitch events?
23:21 Find out more about the Serious Play Conference
24:05 Get a discount for listening to this podcast!
24:36 Follow the action in Twitter
25:15 Playing games while learning
26:00 Social Media Tip: Erin Wold – “Be a real person”
26:25 “Social Media Ambassadors” – Capitalize on social media during a conference or event

Find Sue:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter (Serious Play Conference)
• Serious Play Conference
• Email Sue for your discount to the conference!