Case study · Flagship cybersecurity conference, Canada, 2026
A conference floor people played.
A global cybersecurity vendor wanted its flagship regional conference to feel nothing like a trade show, and to prove who engaged with what. One floor, a scavenger hunt played from a QR code, and no app to install.
The day at a glance
People didn't stop playing.
Source: MoVA platform data. Percentages are shares of external attendees, excluding staff, speakers, vendors and test accounts.
The recap
39 seconds on the floor.
The ask
Badge scans counted people. They never said who engaged.
Make it feel different
Technical content made accessible and fun, with moments worth photographing, and every pavilion, booth and session visited through a real conversation, not a badge tap.
Show who engaged
Which attendees engaged with which products and sessions, how long they stayed and where they dropped off, plus evidence of value for sponsors.
Build it once
Shared infrastructure, so the game, the immersive experiences and the reporting run again at the next summit at lower cost.
How it works
Try a stop.
This is the mechanism attendees used, with a placeholder question. On the day, the code came from a person at the stop, and the question opened the conversation.
Find
Every star on the map is a stop: pavilions, sponsor booths and session rooms.
Talk
A person at the stop shares the passcode. The code only exists in the conversation.
Earn
Some stops ask a question. Every answer is linked to the attendee's registration, with consent, so it doubles as a brand-knowledge signal.
Who played
The people who started kept going.
One bar, the whole room: every external attendee, and how far each group went. Select a group.
Source: MoVA platform data, share of external attendees.
Results
Completion beat every target.
Both bars sit on the same 0 to 100% scale. The black line marks the target set before the event.
Full completion 7.6× target
15 of 18 stops, share of attendees
Halfway 2× target
7 stops, share of active players
Participation: a first-time benchmark
36% of attendees joined in the game's first year at this conference, most of them after the keynote announced it. Players who started kept going, so the lever is getting people in earlier.
How we raise it next time
A short animated explainer before the event, the keynote walkthrough again, and bigger signage on the route between session rooms and the floor.
Source: MoVA platform data; targets from the client's scope of work.
Immersive experiences
Moments people shared.
Alongside the hunt, three experiences built for the camera. No download for any of them, and each gave booth staff an easy opener: "scan this."
Scan to Defend
Scan the poster and a power plant comes under attack on your phone. Tap to apply the patch and protect the grid.
Become the Guardian
Raise a fist and augmented-reality wings and a shield appear. Take the photo, save it, share it.
Live social wall
Attendees made an AI portrait in a cyber role and saw it go up on the wall next to the live leaderboard.
What attendees told us
Interviews from the floor.
Sophie interviewed players between stops. Paraphrased here, with each attendee identified by role only.
IT Infrastructure Manager
Visited every booth to collect and crack the passcodes, and was among the first to redeem the 60-token backpack. Rated the questions simple, with a mix of difficulty.
Desktop Support Team Lead and indie game developer
Called the hunt a gamified way to explore the vendor's products, and backed the choice to run it in the browser, with nothing to install.
UX/UI professional, with a colleague
Tried the Guardian selfie together, praised the wings and the shield, and rated it 8 to 8.5 out of 10.
Source: on-floor interviews by MoVA. Paraphrased; approved for sharing.
What sponsors get back
Every booth visit, named.
Sponsor booths were scored stops. Every check-in is linked to the attendee's registration, so a sponsor's report names its visitors instead of estimating them. Being a few tokens short of a prize sent people to talk to sponsors.
Source: MoVA platform data.
Fair play
Someone scored 178 in a game capped at 100.
One attendee left each session five minutes early to collect the next room's code. It was a cybersecurity crowd. Finding the holes is the job.
The platform's fairness rule credits one session per time slot, since nobody can be in two rooms at once. It went live on the floor before the awards, and attendees were glad: it kept the game fair for everyone who walked the floor.
Nobody games something they don't care about. Next time, session codes only work during their own hour.
Highest token count reached against the maximum.
Session per time slot: the rule that kept the game fair, shipped on the floor.
What happened next
Back at twice the size.
The client is running the same model at its next conference, at about twice the size, and a second team inside the company has brought MoVA in for a training program.
Who built it
Started at Princeton.
Founded by architects and technologists who design how people move through space. We bring that to the conference floor to make events playable and measurable.
Sophie Jiang, CEO and co-founderShe was on the floor all day, holding every passcode. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn
They posted about it, unprompted.
Attendees, partners and the host's own team shared the day on LinkedIn, many with the AI persona they made on the floor. Names and the event are withheld here.
"…did a fantastic job of gamifying the day with challenges and prizes, you definitely kept me engaged."
Cyber security leader who earned the full-completion prize"Looks busy enough."
Chief Technology Officer, posting a selfie in front of a packed floor"Yesterday was one of those days that reminded me just how much I love being part of the cybersecurity community!"
Account Executive at a partner"I am the Threat Hunter at [the conference] — Finds hidden attacks."
Client Account Manager, posting the AI persona he made on the floor"The energy of our SEs is amazing! So many dialogue with customers happening on the floor."
A leader at the host company, posting with his AI persona"Events like these are a great reminder that security is ultimately about people, partnerships, and sharing experiences as we work through new challenges together."
Senior manager, security solutions architecture, who posted his AI personaSource: public LinkedIn posts, September 2026. Quoted as posted; bracketed text replaces the event name.