What fun things are you doing to engage with your team/colleagues?

Chris Geady

My team already works remotely, but I'm always on the lookout to see if you're doing something fun/cool/different with your team and/or colleagues.


We just did a GIF war over Microsoft Teams last Friday, something that's not a virtual happy hour because not everyone drinks.

Bryna Gleich

The gif/meme war sounds fun!


My spouse is also working remotely during Covid-19. A lot of his co-workers like games and trivia. Not everyone drinks in that group either. They had a blast with a team social event recently. They used Discord to talk to each other while they played Jackbox group games from their homes. They chose to do it relatively late in the evening so that anyone with young kids could join after their kids went to bed. They avoided the "normal" happy hour time of day since so many kids are playing and learning from their homes due to COVID-19.



 

Chris Geady

I'm posting the GIF war meeting invitation, just in case anyone wants to use/adapt:

I declare a GIF war.
Who’s in?

Note: This is an optional activity, but if you join you need to post at least once.

Today’s theme: all cats all the time (difficulty level – easy)

For those of you who haven’t entered a GIF war:

• Post GIFs according to the theme. You may respond to other people’s posts or start a new stream of consciousness.
• We aren’t creating GIFs, rather posting GIFs.
• The most likes for the day wins.

Ground rules:

1. No downvoting GIFs allowed. You won’t be invited to play again.
2. See rule #1.
3. All posts must be safe for work.
4. You must post at least once during each GIF war.
5. No reposts allowed during the same GIF war.
6. Cat posts encouraged (this is contrary to most other GIF wars out there).
7. GIF wars starts promptly within 5 minutes of the meeting start time.
8. Webcam optional, but microphone on!
9. GIF war ends when nobody posts for 30 seconds, or 15 minutes has elapsed.
10. Have fun!

Ps. If you don’t want to play EVER just let me know and I’ll remove you from the list. This game works best when there’s critical mass.

 

Aldera Chisholm

I have a team of 12 (well, up til yesterday, now we are at 10 due to layoffs, eeeep!) We do a daily check-in to replace our early morning "watercooler" chat, so it's primarily laid back chat showing off any fun coffee mugs and such, and about five minutes of "what are you working on today."  We have a lot of other video meetings to talk work. I made up a custom Bingo card set for everyone to play with, it has items like "asks another member member to stay online after meeting ends" or "Cat shows up in video".  The rules are that you can't mark a square for something you do, but you can try to prompt a co-worker to do something from the card. 

Chris Geady

I love your bingo cards for the office. Would you be interested in sharing with me so I could use at my place?

Aldera Chisholm

Of course! Here it is... this is the word doc version. I made a variant for each team member -it's just a table, so all I did was move around a couple of rows and a couple of columns for each version and that was enough variance. What I found fun about it, was that when something on the card happened, like "Awkward silence" - someone would announce "Stamp your cards!" and break the tension a bit.


 

Chris Geady

Aldera Chisholm:

Of course! Here it is... this is the word doc version. I made a variant for each team member -it's just a table, so all I did was move around a couple of rows and a couple of columns for each version and that was enough variance. What I found fun about it, was that when something on the card happened, like "Awkward silence" - someone would announce "Stamp your cards!" and break the tension a bit.


 

Beautiful thanks! I made one specific to my place (attached here). You know this is getting distributed for next week!!!

Cheryl Haimann

My team has a short meeting every morning, and we are continuing to do that via WebEx. Every once in awhile, our boss will schedule a "Spirit Day", when you wear or bring something and tell its story. Hat Day, T-shirt Day, Mug Day. Next up is probably Vacation Souvenir Day.


For T-shirt day, I found some BBCON swag - a shirt from Omatic that said, "My Raiser's Edge data 's me back" and "You had me at Import.'

Aldera Chisholm

Chris Geady‍ Love it! I can't believe I didn't put "Microsoft Teams superiority mentioned" - we are using Google Chat since that's our email host, but the Library itself uses Teams, so that one for sure comes up. I hope your team enjoys it!

Chris Geady:

Aldera Chisholm:

Of course! Here it is... this is the word doc version. I made a variant for each team member -it's just a table, so all I did was move around a couple of rows and a couple of columns for each version and that was enough variance. What I found fun about it, was that when something on the card happened, like "Awkward silence" - someone would announce "Stamp your cards!" and break the tension a bit.


 

Beautiful thanks! I made one specific to my place (attached here). You know this is getting distributed for next week!!!

 

 

Chris Nungesser

We've been doing virtual happy hours on Friday evenings. We have a private Facebook groups for staff. One staff member is the host of the happy hour. They'll do a Facebook Live session from their home and everyone else participates in chat. It's been a real hit with our team. It's been good to interact in a casual way. The hosts have been fun. Everyone has a different way they host their hour. It's a little cheesy, but it's been really healthy for us as a group.