One of the favourite events we did was "two truths and a lie". Each person makes three statements about themselves (as personal or impersonal as they like) and others ask questions and then vote. We did a little leaderboard.
It was great fun and we got to know each other much better. I'll also never trust my colleagues to tell the truth ever again :-)
Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
131–140 of 273 posts
Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#132Another shameless plug :)
I recently left my job at Google to focus on building a trivia platform (https://www.trivvy.co/). We offer both async trivia leagues and live trivia games over Zoom with professional hosts. We're currently beta testing our live games (for free!), so if anyone wants to do a fun live event (anywhere from 60-90 minutes), shoot me an email (sam at trivvy dot co).
Also if you're interested in trying out a multi-week season with one game/week played whenever players are free, feel free to reach out as well :)
Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#133A few of the things we've done: - virtual murder mystery (two people on the team wrote it all up, it was intense, but I think you could buy a good package) - drawing apps online we use https://skribbl.io but the ads are tedious - we did a scavenger hunt for household items on different themes (we did a thanksgiving one) - this is easy to adapt to a lot and a lot of fun to see what folks have around their house - fill…
> Really looking forward to other folks' ideas. No, I want to work for you! (I’m kidding, I can’t leave the company I founded) PS: Is there something to do with a Lego set? Being able to keep it at the end would be nice to remember the company’s present.
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Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a business owner - I can't ethically ask my employees to have "mandatory fun time" after work. But 80% of my employees keep asking for them!
Do you know why they keep asking if they're free to get together on their own?
Because they know their co-workers don't want to hang out with them outside of work so they want the company to force them to, maybe?
Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a business owner - I can't ethically ask my employees to have "mandatory fun time" after work. But 80% of my employees keep asking for them!
Do you know why they keep asking if they're free to get together on their own?
* The business will pay
* The business will take care of the organizing
* Making it a "work event" gives them slack from family members who might otherwise balk at coworker happy hour
Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#136We recently had a fun remote event: a painting class. A local company shipped supplies to each person (canvas, brushes, paints) and held a video session with a teacher who walked us through how to paint a particular picture step by step. Accessible for beginners, many of us had never painted before.
Loved the idea of having a remote manual activity to spark joy.
Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#137A few of the things we've done: - virtual murder mystery (two people on the team wrote it all up, it was intense, but I think you could buy a good package) - drawing apps online we use https://skribbl.io but the ads are tedious - we did a scavenger hunt for household items on different themes (we did a thanksgiving one) - this is easy to adapt to a lot and a lot of fun to see what folks have around their house - fill…
Do you have recommendations for icebreaker books?
Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#138I think it's hard to have meaningful interactions over video chat among groups with more than, say, four people. Inevitably one or two parties do all the talking at a given moment, and everyone else just listens
Something we've started doing at my company is monday-morning "random coffee". Everyone gets paired off to video chat with a random person for 20 minutes at the start of the day. It's been a great way to have some non-work conversation with the people I do interact with, and have any exchange at all with those I never interact with
Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#139Terrariums (e.g. https://www.etsy.com/listing/880201016)
We all received a kit in the mail and on a Friday afternoon, everyone was guided by an indoor gardening expert. It was a calm, pleasant, ~2 hour exercise and I got a fresh plant for my desk out of it.
Re: Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?
#140An Oculus Quest 2 costs 300 + tax -- extremely memorable way to have an event in these times. And acts as a collaboration device and an amazing gift going forward.
Reading through all the comments here, I was meh towards most, but yours was the only one I wowed at.
Sure, people like different things, but a device (gift) and then spending time together (co-op games etc) is an awesome idea