Keynote Abstract: The set of notion and skill that are nowadays required is vast and made up os set of elements that interconnect. Think how manufacturing requires basic concept or programming to face the new fabrication paradigm in the era of cnc and 3d printing as something that can be afforded by even consumer users. Learning is now more similar to graph navigation than the classic linear flow of concepts and objectives that book based training offers. The problem is that navigation paths and ergonomics are no longer in the hands of the source of learning material. The success of a learning journey relies on the ability to attract, retain and influence the learner. Gamification is a clear tool that is able to no only help with user engagement but can influence both the user behaviours and the content creation process. In the session we want to talk about how much success is in the end the dynamics happening between the learner and the skill development process, how all of this is not only an education goal but a key value for the industry in general. Also we need to reflect on the subject from the lens of the pandemic events and disruptions. Traditional educational methodologies and support structure have show the cracks and new dimensions are coming up when it comes to skill acquisition and development.

Dr. Diego Colombo Short Bio: I have been working in both research and industry focusing on the effect of dynamic code evolution in several fields. During my years at University of Pisa and IMT Lucca I have been working with industrial partners like Microsoft Research and Realtime Worlds to work on the themes of robotics, ai and video games. I then moved to the area of programming languages and software architecture applying my work in financial institutions before joining Microsoft in the area of interactive programming as tool for exploration and learning. I now work with the team of .NET Interactive to develop the core engine and architecture for polyglot programming that is used in few areas like data science and more general in notebooks. Still during my work in the industry I keep working with colleagues in research and higher education.