4 Giggle-Worthy Activities To Break The Ice At Corporate Events
Wednesday 1 January 2020 4:07pm
Image: Pexels
Ah, the dreaded out-of-town conference.
You have to spend hours traveling via car, train or plane – then, upon arrival, you’re surrounded by a big group of strangers - You might know one or two people if you’re lucky.
Besides, by the time you arrive, coffee in hand, you’re in no mood to socialise.
Unfortunately, not all conferences are a dream-come-true – but it doesn’t have to be a chore. To help ease the awkwardness and encourage attendees to get to know each other, we’ve come up with four giggle-worthy activities to break the ice at your next corporate event.
Get the conference off to a good start. Let’s have some fun!
#1. Take on the GIF challenge
Social media can be a beautiful thing.
It brings people together from all over the world – or, in this case, all over the conference room.
To break the ice and encourage team members to add each other on social media – whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or Twitter – set up a conference hashtag and get the team to share a GIF related to the conference.
For example, you could share a post like “how are we all feeling about the food?” followed by the allocated hashtag, plus #GIFchallenge.
Team members can share their funniest reactions and GIFs for the topic, then team members can find each other more easily on social media.
Here are some more ideas for topics:
- How you’re feeling
- How you feel about the food at the conference
- What you’d like to learn at the conference
- What you think about the host city
- What you think about public transport in the host city
- Who you’d like to see speak at the next conference
#2. Play a game of five-second rule
Can you describe your role in five seconds or less?
At most corporate conferences, everyone has a very different role and set of skills. To help the team get to know each other and their experience better, set up a game of “five second rule” at each table.
Each team gets a five-second sand timer and a bell. Each team member gets five seconds to describe their role in three words – it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a challenge under the time constraints!
The teams can run their own games – if the person describing their role takes more than five seconds, another team member can ring the bell. Time’s up!
Go around the circle or table until all team members have had a turn. Everyone will have a better idea of each other’s skills and experience, plus it’ll encourage further discussions and, of course, lots of laughs.
#3. Set up speed meetings
It can be uncomfortable walking into a room full of complete strangers. At most corporate events, you choose a random stranger from the crowd and hold onto them for dear life for the rest of the day - They’re your new best friend!
You’d be lost without them… until you’re sitting in traffic on the way home thinking, “what was her name? Was it Karen?”
Instead of leaving attendees to their own devices, we’ve come up with a simple method to get people talking, networking and making connections. Based on the concept of speed dating, we recommend setting up speed meetings.
Set up tables of two and make sure each table has one person seated at all times. One side of the table will get up and move to the next table every sixty seconds, so you’ve got a minute to get to know the person sitting in front of you.
Speed meetings allow attendees to meet tonnes of people in a short amount of time. It’s fun and for an added bonus, it gets attendees up and moving around the room. You get some cardio and meet like-minded professionals!
#4. Share a laugh with live polling
Live polls are perfect for catching the audiences’ attention straight off the bat. For one, it’s a reasonably new idea – you can integrate questions into your presentation and all audience members have to do is click a link and vote, or respond via text message.
Then, the results are shown up on the big screen. The results may surprise you – and get a giggle or two out of the audience.
Using tools like Poll Everywhere, you can make the conference more interactive and open communication channels with the audience. You can make the poll anything you want it to be, for example:
- Questions relating to your industry. Consider including stats and ask what the audience thinks is the right answer – then blow their minds with the truth!
- Questions relating to the audience. Consider adding questions like where everyone has come from, everyone’s roles, cats vs. dogs.
- Questions relating to professional pain-points. Consider FAQs related to your industry. Add questions about software, tools and processes currently used in the business which could use improvement. Who knows – you might even learn a thing or two and update the business model for higher efficiency!
Go from boring to brilliant with interactive activities at your next corporate event. Corporate events can be awkward, especially if your guests have traveled from out of town and don’t know anyone particularly well.
Eliminate awkwardness and boredom at your next corporate event. Consider adding an interactive element at the start of the day to get your guests talking, networking and having fun – GIF challenges, speed meetings and live polling are great examples which are sure to get some laughs!
Of course, no corporate event is complete without a great venue. Set the scene for your next business meeting or conference with one of the meeting rooms at McDonald Jones Stadium.
Get in touch with McDonald Jones Stadium and set up a venue worthy of your super fun corporate event activities!
