Virtual CS Teambuilding Events

Darko Kankaras

Hello!

My CS team is planning a virtual teambuilding event and I am coming up with some suggestions. In the past we've done virtual fitness classes, cocktails making class, and virtual zoo.

Curious if you did any cool things at your company?

annaszentgyorgyi

I know it’s cheesy but for me the Virtual Pub Quiz is everything! Teamplay, competition, and it’s funny as hell 😄 Mix it up with some Charades as you got a winner in my book.

Darko Kankaras

@annaszentgyorgyi , I love it!

Allison Mortens

We've done Drag Bingo for a Pride event, which was super fun! The most fun I had was a cooking and cocktail class with extra before and after the class time to hang out with our team. Pub Trivia is always a good way to go, too!

Jeff Breunsbach

A couple of others @Darko Kankaras...

• Taking a personality test and then discussing over-arching themes, results
• Creating some sort of hack-a-thon or something that the team can build together in a session
• Book club or video club - get different team members to lead sessions
• "Study hall" - just join the video to see each other but be working independently

A few that I've seen out there.

Darko Kankaras

Thanks @Allison Mortens ! Bingo is a cool idea.

@Jeff Breunsbach , these are all great suggestions. I'm curious, what format did you find that works the best for the book/video club?

Jeff Breunsbach

We had a rotation of who would lead and pass it amongst the team @Darko Kankaras - coordinated via Slack channel.. assign out when to get prepared by and then the facilitator would bring a few questions to talk about

Darko Kankaras

@Jeff Breunsbach , I just saw your latest comment. Before I scrolled up and saw the rest of the comments, for about 10-15 seconds I could not remember the context. I was kind of freaking out thinking that I was supposed to coordinate something here. :D

Tania Hall

Hi! We are planning a virtual escape room for our event. Not sure if anyone has used one before and has one they would recommend?

samaever

https://gaingrowretain.com/discussion/comment/10240#Comment_10240

Hello! We recently did a virtual escape room and it was so much fun! I'm not sure how large your group is, but there are 9 of us. The biggest challenge was ensuring everyone could provide input toward the escape (some are more willing to chime in than others) but it was manageable. We went through trappedintheweb.com and chose the 'Lockdown Breakout' room. It was tough, but we shared lots of laughs working together as a team to figure it out.

Tania Hall

https://gaingrowretain.com/discussion/comment/10241#Comment_10241

Thanks for the suggestion! I will check it out. We have a team of 25, and were thinking about breaking into random teams of 5 to compete against each other in the same theme game, so hopefully this could work this way.

NicNoland

@Darko Kankaras “Book Club” but everyone brings one piece of little known CS research (or whatever they’re interested in) and breaks it down for everyone else!

Not an icebreaker, but good way of 
-Learning together
-Seeing how everyone thinks/learns
-Prompting more specific questions for future L&D on your team

While keeping it fun!

Darko Kankaras

@Tania Hall and @samaever, we are considering using The Escape Game for the escape room game. They seem to be a bit pricey at $300/person. What kind of quotes did you get?