I’ve been thinking about the sort of social event that might make sense over a virtual channel, and one of them that I keep coming back to are games. Not necessarily video games, but I’ve begun collecting interesting/potential options for things like Trivia nights, board games, and even a sort of choose-your-own-adventure light RPG style game…all of which are designed for Zoom/virtual/distant play.
Here’s a few links, I’d love to get some feedback on whether y’all think this is worth continuing to pursue.
If anyone has other suggestions, that would be great as well…but I’m super into the idea of a sort of conference-long trivia series, with a prize being given to the winning team of information professionals.
i like the trivia idea alot. also (though not public domain I guess) something related to Jeopardy. could be questions based on information industry history, products, themes etc. Not sure what others think but it’d be good to have a bit of fun since we can’t attend a magic show this year… if something like trivia ran over a course of days it could a way to keep folks engaged …
I agree that games of some sort would be great! I personally love trivia/quizzes but I haven’t (yet) had a great experience with the off-the-shelf versions. We do a homemade family quiz monthly where we take it in turns to create and ask the questions and the scoring is done on an honor basis. It’s more work - and possibly not scalable! - but is my favorite version of online trivia so far…
We’ve been playing remote games of Jeopardy at Digital Science quite successfully - the only problem is that the UK folks keep forgetting to answer as a question I’m sure the organisers wouldn’t mind us borrowing the basics for their slide deck if we wanted to. Otherwise, yes to quizzes and RPGs. I think these are great ideas and can take place any time of the day, with and without a drink.
Just as another thought. Not sure whether you would like to do a ‘charity’ quiz or anything for attendees and beyond, but I spent a LOT of lockdown doing Spectacular Quizzes, themed around all sorts of nerdery (Harry Potter was a fave). I don’t know whether they do quizzes for events, and I know they were raising money for Child.org through them, but they would be a fun bunch to potentially work with.
I definitely think that the trivia idea is worth pursuing.
Another idea possibility would be to run a few rounds of games in the Jackbox Party Pack series. I’ve had great fun with these! Although most of the games have a maximum of eight players, they have been catering to streamers for a while now, so they have robust options for “audience participation”.
I’ve seen a lot of suggestions for these! I’m curious to try a few to see how they work/flow in a large group, though…But yes, these are exactly the sort of thing I’d love to experiment with.
I’m sure the organisers wouldn’t mind us borrowing the basics for their slide deck if we wanted to. Otherwise, yes to quizzes and RPGs. I think these are great ideas and can take place any time of the day, with and without a drink.