Playposium

Hanan Sabry designs conversation boards in Cairo, and GLUCOSE draws on Barbara Fredrickson's research on positive emotions: seven letters, seven emotions, and a die with only six faces, because everyone starts with gratitude. Mohnish Jadwani, a software developer, consultant and team coach, facilitates Hanan's games in Germany, where a spoken pledge creates safety before anyone shares. The reframe: Hanan sells the moderator training, not the boards, because a conversation this open is only as safe as the person holding the room.

Sabina Lammert of leadventure in Munich built Challenge it! after watching the same thing happen at the end of every workshop: six hours of good thinking, then one exhausted final hour that produces action points like "let's improve our communication". Her game hands the coaching questions to the participants, who rate each other's actions on a one to ten scale of gut feeling, then talk each other into the green. The reframe: the facilitator asking the hard questions at hour seven helps nobody, so build a game that makes the group ask them instead.

Edwin de Vos owns The Management Challenge and Hidde de Jong stopped teaching and now plays it with his Business Continuity students at Saxion in Deventer. Teams run a fictional company on ten energy points a quarter, pick from over a hundred measures, and get feedback that always lands one quarter late. The reframe: the facilitator's job is to wait to be asked, because the struggle is where the learning sits.

Sylvia Taylor designed the Adaptive Identity Game after her third layoff. Three decks, one partner, and a single rule: your job title is banned. The reframe: adaptability is not about becoming someone else, it is about expanding who you already are.

Eli Godde and Gaëlle Shearn facilitate The Glorious 2030s, a French-born conversational workshop that drops participants into a utopian future through guided meditation, three personal questions on a pocket-sized blue card, and oracle cards featuring real initiatives already underway today. The reframe: utopia is not a destination but a muscle, and training it with strangers in a room for three hours produces much more agency than years of reading about what is going wrong.

Adam Lusby and Maarten Koeners explain why Playposium has no published minute-by-minute schedule, how a vegan vampire dinner replaces awkward conference networking, and what happens when you stop teaching the dance moves and start DJing the room.

Are we alone in the universe? For decades, that question has been tackled with complex formulas. Drake’s Dice flips the experience: you explore the Drake Equation through dice, risk, peer review, and discovery cards, without doing any math. Game designer Daniel Larose shares how he and Alissa Pott built a science outreach board game designed to stand on its own at home, while staying grounded through expert review.

The Serious Play Conference comes to Europe for the first time. Dr. Philipp Busch, co-organizer of the first European edition in Mainz, unpacks what it takes to move game-based learning from niche enthusiasm to cross-sector cultural change — and what happens when the right people finally share a room.

The Climate Business Challenge helps organizations link climate ambition with real business constraints instead of feel‑good wishful thinking. Creator Tim Riedel and facilitator Jan Störkel explain how their 4‑hour workshop moves from systemic awareness (how our economic system drives growth at all costs) to redesigning business models and generating concrete, organizations‑specific ideas.

CounterPlay is a playful festival and global community that invites adults to reclaim play as a way of living, learning, and being together. In this episode, founder Mathias Poulsen shares how building a “play commons” gives us the courage to unhide play in everyday life – from libraries and design schools to horses, soap bubbles, and serious work.