Found.ation’s e-Christmas event: an opportunity to think differently
The holiday season might be over, but keep this article handy — if you intend to organize a virtual team building event, you’ll find some useful ideas below.
An intense year, 2020 was full of challenges, personal, professional, in the way of doing business, in the way of building trust with new colleagues and coworkers, in the way that one creates and maintains meaningful human relationships.
After gazillion hours in front of the computer screen teleconferencing with colleagues, clients, mentors and mentees, the team’s Christmas event was around the corner. How could this be any different from the weekly Friday afternoon online casual “drinks” call between the team members? How could there be a touch of “normality” on this special occasion in this new distant setup? How could we take the core of this annual Christmas event and give it a twist that can be suitable for our current working-from-home mode?
This was the task that Costas* (our innovation mastermind), had to solve with Voula and Lydia (our administration and finance fairies). Stirring away from any regular team meeting setup, we decided to keep the vague setup of any Christmas company event that is true to itself and decided to include a fun team building activity, food, a mini contest and the traditional Secret Santa gift exchange.
How do you make Santa… virtual?
Preparation and thorough organization beforehand was the key, not just for the three responsible for setting the event, but also for the entire team. That’s why they put some effort in sharing hints with the team one week prior to the meeting, making sure everyone came prepared for the event.
So, everyone was asked to come with their favorite food recipe at hand — in the forms of text & image — and were anonymously assigned their Secret Santa via an online app. But that’s where it starts to get tricky.
This gift exchange had to happen completely online during our event with a budget restriction of zero (0) euros. The reason was mainly that we needed to avoid transportation of goods, logistics and deliveries (we all knew that during this 2nd lockdown, timely deliveries were not a “thing”), but it also served another purpose: having to make instead of buying your gift is a much more creative process. Thus, all gifts should be a link away (not to be confused with click away…)
Getting together
On the day, we all got together on our regular teleconference platform, while all planned activities were placed in an interactive online tool we use for our business workshops.
As our event begun and everyone started joining in on the small talk, the first surprise of the evening started playing out. Pizza delivery for all! Yes, with a prearranged delivery time at everyone’s location, Voula had worked her magic keeping us all fed and happy! We all shared the same meal. The same taste. From the same vendor. As if we were around a buffet!
And then came Secret Santa.
Finding a way to use the online collaboration tool we use regularly for our business workshops was an interesting challenge. We had to think of the physical experience and somehow translate it to the digital. Could we build elements of suspense in the experience? Anticipation? Reasons for fun conversations?
So, we took turns, the gift giver was notified by a “digital Santa face mask” placed on their photo by Voula, and then he/she would place a digital parcel in front of the recipient of their gift. A small interaction allowing a tingle in the stomach of those who might be recipients. Then, the gift giver spent a few moments laying out his/her thoughts as to why this was a present relevant to the recipient, sharing it live, via share-screen or in our interactive environment, ending by providing a link to the gift (the Lorem Ipsum seen in the picture below).
Everyone went the extra mile to bring something with a personal touch, showing they understand who the gift is for. And many created artifacts. This, we must say, came as a very pleasant surprise!
We saw people dedicate home-made & fun videos or songs to their Secret Santa, share tailored traveling food information & guides, skill-mastering e-books, online info-points and tools in regards to their interests & roles — be it social matters or hiring, bespoke fun posters of adoption or magazine front pages of team members, websites that transport a travel-loving one to random locations on earth and the universe, among the stars. Libraries to learn of music band correlations and influences, a DIY open-source app coded by one of the team that turned any pdf file to an audiobook, and a beautifully tongue-in-cheek use of our internal cloud file management system to share a visual story, making the most out of the original prompt of considering the unboxing of the digital gifts!
Really — how much thinking went into all of these! How unique and tailored each of these digital experiences were! Isn’t this the essence of gifting? Thinking of the other and responding thoughtfully?
We dare say that this year’s Secret Santa held hints of innovative thinking, mainly given the circumstances. We even made a short video that gives a glimpse of the experience (and a real YouTuber, our own Chris, narrates it!). If you want to see what came through, watch the video where Chris makes sure we don’t miss a thing:
Something’s cooking…
After our gift exchanging and a lot of bantering and laughter, we moved on to the second part of our online event: sharing our recipes and voting for the most innovative one… Although everyone was asked to bring their favorite recipe, voting was based on the criterion of innovation — a surprise deliberately kept from the team to trigger responses and conversations on the spot, even friendly word-sparring, all contributing to a sparkling session. And since we were discussing innovative recipes (whatever that may mean…), the winner of the public vote won an apron to use at home, tagged with an appropriate message we created for the occasion.
But the great thing is that now, we at Found.ation, who have a dedicated #food Slack channel talking food every lunchtime, have shared among us our favorite recipes — what makes our individual tastebuds go wild, what we might bring in the office to share when the time comes. We can say that we have the first version of our collaborative cookbook!
We are looking forward to making these recipes for ourselves and our beloved ones, exchanging tips and experiences between us on how they went down and getting to know our colleagues even better along the way!
We are really looking forward to sharing them with you, not because they’re awesome, but because they are part of the team — who we are!
Just follow this link, give any of them a go and tell us how you got along!
Wait… there’s more?
To finish off, for the late stragglers, we ended our event with a fun exercise to get some laughs… erm we mean engage everyone’s creativity. All Costas asked was two words: our dream job and our favourite animal. He never said we had to combine them in a drawing… Somehow this got us a boxing horse, a turtle coder, a tour-guide cat and a lot of unanswered questions. Would the turtle ever stick to a deadline? Is a dolphin doctor good for the job or would the patient end up to the orca coroner? And how many followers would Chris, the bunny influencer get?
All in all, it was great fun! It was different but it was merry. It was joyful, fun and engaging. From afar but nevertheless, our minds focused and worked together to have a good time. Hopefully next year we can have an in-person event, with all its glamour and majesty.
But this year set an interesting standard. Actively co-creating the event content with all team members, for all team members might be the experience to seek out in the years to come –the kind that builds a strong community between us.
Sounds like a tough project, but hey — there are still 365 days ahead to conquer it. In the meantime, let’s try to find more ways to be closer to our colleagues and new friends on a human level, even digitally — It will be a great advantage when we meet in person!
Best wishes for the New Year, and in regards to our & your new coworkers, those who joined during this lockdown… may we all soon finally see how tall we really are!
Welcome 2021!
Costas Bissas (the guy responsible for making 17 adults awkwardly draw like five-year-olds on a digital platform) is an Innovation Specialist at Found.ation. His research interests lie between design, technology, wellbeing and culture, focusing on the use of design as a creative tool for the development of innovative products and services. In all his efforts while living for 2.5 years next to the Loch Ness, he never managed to locate the monster.
This article was authored by Costas and edited by Maria.
