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Category: Adventures

ellis in academic-land?

a new adventure to dive deep in, on the 1st of August ellis started a full time PhD position at the Technical University in Eindhoven, within the QoLEAD project researching: Quality of Life Enabling Artificial -intelligence in Dementia. With a strong focus on the lived personal experiences with dementia, and co- designing with an older […]

Serious about play

Ellis has been talking often and in many places world wide about play, games and the impact play can have and how to design motivation, check out some of those events here >>

Speaking can be like playing

I was invited to talk (again) on the IGDC the Indian Game Developers Conference in Hyderabad. I spoke about “Designing for Impact: How to research to kill assumptions and avoid failure” – With approx 30 guests I was so lucky that after my slides, great questions were posted to have a great dialog. I wish […]

Journey to India

Thanks to several organisations as the Dutch Embassy in India, Dutch Culture and the DGA, I was invited to visit India to share knowledge on game design and development. From that amazing trip, I got in contact with great people and the journey grew larger and bigger…. last year I got invited as board member […]

Interviewed on play

I was interviewed for a Dutch Magazine CoachLink and it is an impressive article they created. I am mostly proud to be together in one magazine with Jan Geurtz, who I read and admire a lot! Read the article and magazine (in Dutch) here >>

Online summit this april!

I am very pleased to announce that I will be one of the 44 international speakers featured in The Playful Creative Summit 2020. This is a FREE virtual summit of pre-recorded interviews with professionals, creatives, makers and designers working with Play and Creativity. The summit goes live April 1-3rd, 2020 and it is 100% virtual! […]

greatest talk ever: the ONE academy

on my trip to Asia, from India to Indonesia via Malaysia, I got to experiment my own playfulness, or my personal playfulness got challenged is a better way to express what happened. After speaking about play in Kuala lumpur at #improv (thanks to Allison Yap) – I was invited by some participants to come and […]

Play in Kuala Lumpur

While visiting old friends and colleagues at WHW& associates in Kuala Lumpur, I was so lucky that Allie Hill arranged an event for me to talk about Apply Play in Improv Bistro surrounded by beautiful art, we had a great conversation about applying play, Allie was the perfect host facilitating the dialog, introducing me to […]

Talking about games for impact in Istanbul

Always great to meet a fan on a conference (or create new fans) who want to create a selfie with you… this one is taken at the GIST conference in Istanbul 2019, an amazing conference, including a consumer expo, which created an interesting audio back drop for the conference. To hear the questions from the […]

Verso – storytelling

Last month I was invited to tell the story about writing my book Apply Play • to get ahead of the game at Verso: A literary & arts evening that renders the literary journal in live form, featuring poets, artists, and thinkers of all kinds. Brought to you by the makers of VERSAL at Mezrab. For […]

ellis in finance land

Beginning of this month I was invited to give a Lecture.nl at InsingerGilissen about play and the impact of play. There was great interaction and many questions were asked, one question is sticking with me since then…. “how do you balance reward and punishment in game design?” …. in that moment i answered that that is […]

Games for Health 2018

In nov 2012 I was invited to talk at Games for Health Europe Conference in Amsterdam… that was also one of my first talks about play on stage ever…. now 6 years later I have been so lucky to have given many talks and workshops worldwide, about the value of play, the impact of games. […]

Record week in 9 days 7 full day conference!

This week in october, I was dealing – within a nine day span –  7 conference days (including one full Designathon day) with 7 times a performance on stage!!! I was worried and stressed (many might not know, but I used to have stagefright severly some years ago)…. this time I managed to have a […]

as Published in Dutch Newspaper! “Addicted to learning”

Since I was invited to be part of the program on the NRC Live event on the future of Education in octobre, I was asked to write an opinion piece on applying play in education for the Dutch Newspaper NRC, the title of the article is: “Addicted to learning” to explore the existing current worries […]

Apply Play book tour – Visiting Iran at the TGC

This summer I was invited as speaker to talk about Applying Play at the TGC, the Theran Game Convention. I was not sure what to expect in advance, but was amazed with the curiosity and welcoming atmosphere I encountered. 

GIST – talking about designing games for a special targetgroup

How to design games for a elderly, was the topic of my talk at the Game Developers Conference in Istanbul 2018. I showed samples and experienced, and shared why this target group is so great to use and learn about what a players wants and can do. How to design accessible and desirable games. The […]

Talking at Internet of People event

I was invited to talk at the Internet of people event about Internet of Elephants. I presented the concept of Internet of Elephants and how we aim to reuse location and other data retrieved from scientists and conservation organisations to create compelling games to interact and play with this data. To treasure this real data plus these animals as […]

Ellis was in W*india*land – part 2

“Ellis was in W*india*land – part 1” can be read here In November 2017 a group of Dutch game developers went for the GDC (game developers conference) in Hyderabad. We were invited to speak, discuss and expo different applied games from Holland.

Students designing play for Zoo

At the University of Applied Science Amsterdam, for the launch of the new academic year, students are Challenged to develop games at the Zoo (Artis), to engage visitors with the less popular animals. I am invited to give an introduction lecture about designing games and apply play. Off course I will mention some elephants ; […]

Ellis was in W*india*land

A group of 11 Dutch game-entrepeneurs, game-researchers, game-developers and designers were invited by Dutch Culture (centre for international cooperation) to go Roadtrip India. To meet the Indian Industry, government and organisations to learn from each others challenges, opportunities and see how there are possibilities for future cooperations on the topic of games, applied games and play.

Talk about play in Rio

I was invited to talk at the Design Week in Rio de Janeiro november 2015. The location was beautiful, the event was perfect, and the people were great. Something unexpected was the weather, my balloons were blown away very fast, which gave an extra challenge for my audience to participate in the game with the […]

How I became a play alchemist

I am invited at the Hanze School in Groningen te present to first years game design students about being a professional game designer. My presentation is second in an interesting line up in 5 ‘shows’ organised by Arjan Terpstra from Gameclowns. Lecture #1: Joost van Dongen (Ronimo Games) Lecture #2: Tomas Sala (Little Chicken game […]

Talking at Respawn Cologne

I gave a presentation at Respawn Game developers Conference 2015 in Cologne Germany titled: “Designing Games, Play or Motivation?” Here you find the recorded podcast to listen to it >> The slides (prezi) are available for further reference as promised! >>

Talking at Doctors2.0 in Paris

I was invited to Doctors2.0 in 2015 in Paris to explain more on the game “Coach4Life” we developed for the Dutch Kidneyfoundation with Little Chicken and Cfag as a tool to motivate people with a Kidney disease to change their lifestyle and learn to cope with their disease. Great discussion were initiated on how to motivate […]

Social&Design conversation DDW14

I participated in the conversation Social & Design in Doornakers, in an innovative care center and talked about implementing technology in care for elderly. I briefly spoke about my experience last 20 months implementing technology at Atlant, most important take away, is not only to make the elderly play, but have the employees and organisation play […]

Talk at Doctor’s 2.0 Paris

Travelling to Paris for Doctor’s 2.0  2014 to talk about the game for the kidneyfoundation, work in progress by Little Chicken & Monpellier Venture.