Last year, I created a blog post that had a leaderboard in it. Perhaps you’ve seen it: The “Badges Wall of Fame” Leaderboard. It’s nothing complicated. I just list the name of the person with the number of badges they’ve earned and a link to their Acclaim Badges Profile page.
It’s manually updated. There’s nothing automated about it. Originally I identified some top badge earners in my discussions with people and I wanted to honor their achievements, so I typed them up on the list. I had 10 people on the original list.
Then when I published the “Digital Badges: Are you Ready for What’s Next?” blog post and people that were on the leaderboard shared it with others.
People that should have been on the leaderboard and weren’t, let me know and I added them to the leaderboard. Which they then shared with others.
This past week, I updated the list and republished the post. 21,000 Views, 313 likes and 70 comments later, I think the post was very successful.
The post read very simply:
I just updated the Badges Wall of Fame. Still at the top of the leaderboard is Oliver Bodemer with 257 badges!
Here are the others on the leaderboard:
- Gourav Banerjee – 117 badges
- Mihai Criveti – 88 badges
- Tanut Karnwai – 76 badges
- Martin Dvorsky – 71 badges
- Cristiano Borges, MBA, PSMI®, PO® – 68 badges
- Ranjith T Radhamanohar – 62 badges
- Kenneth Cheung – 61 badges
- Wes Morgan – 60 badges
- Chip Van Alstyne – 56 badges
check out the rest of the list here: http://bit.ly/badgesnext
What made this Leaderboard so Motivational?
Here are a few of the comments shared by others, with my observations:
- Those on the Leaderboard were genuinely proud of others on the Leaderboard. How often does that happen? Many times leaderboards can be discouraging because those at the top are always at the top and they look down on those that aren’t as good as they are. On the Badges Wall of Fame, Oliver Bodemer is at the top of the list with 257 badges (so far). Oliver is in first place by well over 100 badges, but he is one of the nicest most helpful people you will meet. He wants others to succeed as well in their badge journey. You frequently see Oliver posting on Linkedin, offering congratulations to those that have just earned a badge. This type of humble leader is the “secret ingredient” to the success of the positive motivation of a leaderboard. He instills such a positive spirit on the rest of the Badge Achievers as you can see in Martin’s comments below. Also, notice that Martin shares with three others the leaderboard. This re-sharing of the leaderboard is critical to it’s continued success.
2. Share the minimum requirements for being on the leaderboard. Tom Halvorson wasn’t on the list when I first published it, so he requested to be on the list and wondered what the criteria for being on the list were. I told him, he had to have at least 29 badges. Why? It just was a number that I found very few people attained and so I thought that would help motivate people to get on the list (I have 21 badges, so I’m not on the list). It turns out that Tom actually had 54 badges.
3. Make it easy to add people to the leaderboard. Giulio had 94 badges! So, I added him to the list in 3rd place. I wrote a Python program to calculate the number of people’s badges and displayed it in a form so they could download as a text listing of all of their badges useful in posting to a resume, CV or Social Media Profile. This is a very organic way of growing a leaderboard. We currently have 54 people on the leaderboard. It’s not automated from some master database. If people want to be on the leaderboard, they just let me know.
4. Some don’t seem to be as motivated by earning badges as others. I thought Wes Morgan did a good job answering Andreas’ comment. I also like to point out to people that it only takes one hour per day of learning. With an average badge taking 4 hours of coursework, if you did 200 days of learning at 1 hour per day, you’d earn 50 badges in a year.
5. Reply to comments. As you can see, I have replied to many of the comments. I also liked every one of them. When people see this type of participation they respond in kind. We are so used to everything being algorithm driven, that I think it’s engaging to just have another human being to interact with instead of an automated Bot of some sort. I view these types of posts as conversation starters which lead to building a community. In return, I have developed long term relationships with fellow Badge Earners who like to continuously learn!
Have you read the Linkedin Post? What observations could you make about the Comments and the Leaderboard? Do you find Leaderboards motivational?
Kaggle Leaderboards
Check out this leaderboard for Kaggle. Thanks to Jean-Francois Puget for sharing on Linkedin:
Kaggle is the world’s largest data science community with powerful tools and resources to help you achieve your data science goals.
If you’d like to learn more about badges, I have created this eBook that covers everything you need to know about earning badges.
Join our community of “badge earners” who are passionate about learning, collaborating and encouraging others to reach their goals. Click the JOIN NOW! button below.
If you want to teach and learn from others, we’d like you to join us in the Upskill Create Community. Just click this button to join today!
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