Who says you can’t have a big party with COVID-19? We did :)
It’s been about 2 years since COVID-19 forced our team at LifeSG (over 50 of us!) to retreat to our homes and to collaborate via virtual means. We haven’t been able to meet for big scale sprint activities or small by-the-water-cooler chats…and the word party quickly fell into disuse.
But what’s December without a year-end party to unwind and have fun? We didn’t want to let the circumstances bring our spirits down, so a representative from each of the teams in LifeSG and BookingSG (our sister project) came together to organise the annual BookingSG x LifeSG Christmas party on 21st December 2021. With teammates across the globe and with all of us still living with Covid, this was organised and held virtually, with aid of our favourite online collaborative tools!
Pre-party
LifeSG and BookingSG were split up into smaller teams in preparation for the party games. Both projects have grown with new members in the past year, so teammates from various teams are randomly put together for the party to interact with others beyond their working teams.
6 teams, with holiday as the theme. We created slack channels for each team to get together before the party to prepare to wow the judges (i.e. the organisers) with their creative zoom backgrounds and costumes to win the fanciest team award. From wearing real winter coats to using special zoom features, check out the photos below and you’ll see the effort put in by the teams to dress up as one for the party!
The party games
Having a party virtually limits the type of games you can play. Using miro, the organisers got each team to decorate a Christmas tree together as an ice breaker. With the little amount of time given for the task, each team had to quickly strategise and split up to find images to decorate their tree. It was heartwarming to see team members helping each other out, even if it was something simple like moving one picture behind another.
We also brought back Charades, which was well-loved at last year’s party. Other than acting out and mouthing the given word for their team to guess, the pictionary element was added this year too. Can you guess the food drawn here?
Teams also pitched against each other at Kahoot!, where the googling experts showed off their skills at finding the quiz answers. As there can only be one team representative answering the questions on Kahoot!, the teams collaborated efficiently using the slack channels created for them for the pre-party to quickly help their teammate choose the right answer. It was a lot of teamwork showcased for one Kahoot! quiz!
The most creative game (in my opinion!) would be Spot the Difference. Each of the organisers made a change to their appearance and each team gets 1 chance to guess what the change was. Most teams learnt to save a screenshot of the organisers for the 2nd round of the game!
End of the party
It was 3 hours of fun and laughter, with 2 teams being tied on the number of points and having to go into a round of sudden-death pictionary to win the 1st prize! Prizes, sponsored by our recently-promoted teammates, were also given out. All-in-all, it was a good break from work and a great time getting to know people that we may not work closely together with.
Ultimately, we learnt that with all the available virtual collaboration tools, the word party doesn’t have to fall into disuse. We just have to give it new meaning. Despite the physical distance, there was fun and games, and we had a jolly good time. We hope that these ties continue to grow and make it easier for collaboration across teams.
With the end of the Christmas party, comes also the end of 2021. Hereby wishing all our readers a great 2022! Hopefully, when I write about our Christmas party again next year, it’ll be about the sort of party that we miss, where the full team celebrates together, in-person, at Hive. Cheers!
