Tour de force

WooExpert Platinum WooCommerce partner - biggest elephant in the eCommerce room.
Mailchimp Partner Mailchimp partner - you know what’s the newest cutting edge customer experience solution? Great email subject!
Clutch logo Clutch - clients say we’re top dogs in eCommerce. Throw us that stick now.
WordPress Vip WordPress VIP - Enterprise hosting partner

Changing the game with Gamechanger

The Gamechanger conference- the first gaming, web3 & metaverse conference in Croatia, took place in Zagreb on December 1st, 2022. It took a big bite of the topic cake seeing it delivered presentations and panels revolving around gaming, development, web 3, eCommerce, animation, digital design, AI and big data, cyber security…

Listen to this article
1x
0.5x 0.75x 1x 1.25x 1.5x

The crowd witnessed over 70 speakers on 5 stages talking about the latest global trends from the gaming and web3 industry. The event took place in Z center in Zagreb, and I must say the look&feel of the affair was pretty modern and well organized. The auditorium was packed on all stages while Neuralab was also part of the experience. Our Krešimir took part in a panel called: Gamification of eCommerce and social commerce, and our crew was mostly on the eCommerce stage where we eyeballed all the lectures.

gc01

Ana highlighted ‘AR&VR: virtual goods – an emotional connection’ with panelists Marina Kuleš, Daniel Pikl and Feđa Gavrilović.

This panel offered a rare opportunity to observe the changes in our industry from an artist’s point of view. Feđa explained that we connect emotionally with the clothes that we see on ourselves. He believes that this is all related to “commodity fetishism” which describes the belief that clothes take part in creating one’s personality. He wasn’t afraid to mention the risk of people becoming isolated due to the increasing spread of technology. Nevertheless, he concluded that it is possible to use the advantages of technological progress with quality thinking.

Marina shared her experience in Foreo with a strong confidence that AR & VR have great potential. Technologies can provide unique experiences, but greater use will require a lot more education and materials.

Daniel concluded that the future of AR will definitely shift our focus from phones to glasses or lenses. However, he also says that it is difficult to predict anything because we do not know in which direction technology will take us.

gc02

Blagica on the other hand underlined the panel eCommerce- where is the door to digital commerce 3.0 with panelists Mislav Combaj, Ivan Dovhanj and Marcel Majsan.

I found most interesting the first panel about e-commerce 3.0 where the panelist talked about e-commerce in the metaverse. The consumers want to feel unique so the call to action won’t be enough, the community demands added value to the products and the brand so we will reach the need of the term call to value, stated Mislav. When asked, what can we expect in the future and what to propose to the retailers, the panelist gave some advice. 

Marcel said that 40% of the consumers (data from the last research CroCommerce 2022) preferred to be contacted through SMS, shocking but true. SMS has a higher CTR than email which is over-saturated with communication. He also encouraged retailers not to be afraid of TikTok, the newest trend for promotional marketing. Mislav advised gamification of the processes, building a strong community, and encouraging the consumers to connect with the service and the brand. Ivan concluded that it is of most importance to educate ourselves about the metaverse and be familiar with the technology because we will all use it in 5 to 7 years. 

I am dying of curiosity to know how many brands will successfully adopt this new way of thinking and doing business. Let’s wait and see.

gc03

Krešimir Končić and Ana Nives Radović were part of the panel – Gamification of eCommerce. They dove into the current state of building eCommerce applications and tackled major issues that occur with merchants. The conclusion is that merchants should steer away from hype and trendy terms and focus on the things that make their eStore actually make a profit. Yes, it’s ‘cool’ to implement crypto-payments, but is it merited in the bigger scheme of things? Agencies are still battling with their clients to deliver coherent and proper copy for their single product page and trying to perfect the UX for customers. These are the things on which developers and designers should focus their expertise at this point in time. I thoroughly enjoyed what was being discussed between Krešo and Ana Nives, even though a very small portion of the talking was actually about the topic 

And that’s my main issue with the Gamechanger panels – the speakers were great, but they didn’t stick to the title subject matter. The convos were actually pretty interesting, provocative even, but I think that the moderators need to lead the way and steer their guests in the aforementioned direction. Not all attendees had all day to be at the conference and many of them cherry-picked the talks that were up their alley, but in the end, they didn’t learn much new stuff on the topic of their interest.

gc04 1

Case in point, I was present at the talk ‘Web camera or spy tool’ and even the panelists joked in the end that they didn’t talk much about the webcam. Don’t get me wrong – I utterly enjoyed what Jagor Čakmak and Alen Delić had to say! They are experienced in their line of work and great storytellers. I raised my hefty eyebrows at a couple of their observations and learned some things about account hacking and the cost behind such an attack; but nothing about the title of the panel – why and how one can spy through a webcam.

But hey, this is just one little thing that ground my gears. Let’s not forget that this was the first edition of the conference and everything else was outstanding! (shout out to the lovely girls operating the DeLonghi espresso machines) Knowing the passion behind the organization team I’m sure they will polish all the nooks and crannies and I’m looking forward to 2023. edition of Gamechanger!

Bruno Zagorščak
Bruno Zagorščak Neuralab Co-founder and Chief Content Officer

A Boletus aficionado who loves to get lost in the woods. He's still holding dearly to his OG Canon 5DmII while claiming that the play button is the apex call-to-action button on the web.


Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

Please fill in this field.
Please thick this field to proceed.

Related blog posts