Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?

Beer & Cheese Tasting!

We had a company event from City Brew Tours (based out of NYC, I believe, but we're in Philadelphia) where we were shipped boxes of cheese, crackers, and beers (or ciders or sodas at the employee's selection to support alternatives) and during the event were given a tasting experience over Zoom.

It was excellently done, gave team members a chance to socialize about non-work things, and we learned something, too.

https://www.citybrewtours.com/

There are a couple of things that we used to do before the pandemic and can be done or adapted for these times. 1. Kart racing. It is an outdoor activity and quite safe if you bring your own helmet and gloves. It requires decent temperatures (at least 20 degrees Celsius), so it depends on your location. 2. Virtual bar or restaurant. We used to go out to some places, we can order foods and drinks while videoconferencing on Teams. It works best with some app that accepts sub-groups in a conference because this is also the dynamic at the restaurants - even if we went in a group of 10-15 around a large table, the discussions were broken in groups of 3-5 based on reach and loudness. The app should not mute the others, just reduce the volume so that there is the atmosphere of having 10 people around the table but being able to talk to 2-3 at the same time.

If you do #2 well, you can do weekly a different theme: 'virtual ', 'virtual ' etc, so you just order from one place every time as you would do if you were physically there. Having dinner and drinks with people helps unwind, doing it virtual helps with (not) driving afterwards after a couple of beers.

I've played Bar None Trivia (www.barnonetrivia.com) a bunch of times with my team -- it's a blast.

Hosts were great and led us through 4 four rounds of creative trivia (including out-of-the-box questions, picture round, music round).

We were split into teams in breakout rooms so we actually got to converse and connect with people on our 5-6 person team. Also spent time in the main room as an entire group.

Pricing is $15-20/person depending on time of game. We play at least once a month, couldn't recommend more!

I just recently launched https://slideswithfriends.com for exactly this purpose — it's a slide-based game builder with a bunch games made for team building. Imagine Jackbox-meets-Powerpoint but designed for companies.

We have a lot of trivia games, some Quiplash-style games, photo sharing games, and other interaction slides that make for some really interesting and fun event options. And everything we have is customizable so you can add content specific to your company if you want.

Plus there's a sound board :)

Virtual Escape Rooms: https://theescapegame.com/remote-adventures/