Ever since 2020 brought about the doom of COVID-19 pandemic upon us, people around the world have been looking for ways to get back the familiarity they are used to with physical, in-person events & gatherings.
A lasting, cost-affordable, environment-friendly, as well as exciting solution to this problem came about in the form of virtual events.
Virtual Events come in various shapes and sizes; virtual corporate events full of custom-designed booths, interactive features, lobbies, auditoriums, & multi-stage functionality, to informal virtual gatherings like virtual happy hour parties, reunions, & college graduation ceremonies.
Not all Virtual Events are alike, thus the engagement strategies & interaction opportunities offered by different kinds of virtual events also differ by a lot.
Some virtual events utilize high-quality live chats, live videos, & 1:1 video conferencing to facilitate the one-to-one interaction aspect of physical events.
While some other virtual events use group networking features like networking tables, discussion forums, live chat rooms, & other options to facilitate group interaction.
In this article, we tell you the top 10 fun & interactive virtual event ideas that help informal virtual gathering events like virtual wine-tasting, virtual get-togethers, & virtual office parties, more fun & engaging.
1. Virtual Office Games
In annual virtual office meetings that are designed to get everyone from the office together to discuss the yearly agenda, fun office games can add a real fun flavour to the event.
You can spice up your annual general meetings & yearly or quarterly office meetings with fun & interactive virtual games like virtual bingo, virtual monopoly, virtual singing competitions, virtual icebreakers, mini trivia, virtual quizzes, & mini competitions.
These will not only help your employees feel relaxed & more open, it will also increase the employee engagement rates & their happiness rates, thus leading to a more meaningful, open interaction between employees & employers.
Virtual office games also provide a great way for you to provide your employees with a source of fun & relaxation amidst these trying times, hence increasing productivity & trust among employees.
2. Virtual Drinking Games
Drinking games have always been a highlight of every friendly get-together or gathering.
But just because your gathering can’t take place physically now, doesn’t mean that you can’t organize virtual drinking games.
Next time you’re hosting a virtual gathering, try to include some fun virtual drinking games.
You can have people try new wines or cocktails with blindfolds on their eyes or can have them repeat a tongue twister a certain number of times in a row, & if they get one wrong they’d have to drink.
You can also have them read a particular chapter of a book drunk, while the other people chug their drinks while waiting for their turn & having a barrel of laughs all the while.
There are a lot more examples of virtual drinking games that you can include in your virtual gatherings, to make them more fun, interesting, engaging, & exciting.
3. Community-Driven Activities
Virtual games can be made even more fun by including certain community-driven activities like writing thank you cards to doctors & nurses & all the other frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, or organizing an activity that donates funds to charities related to animal shelter, orphanages, COVID-19 relief, food banks, etc.
You can also organize virtual giveaways where all of your employees can pledge a certain amount of money to a particular charity in return for any prize they win during the virtual event.
Community driven activities are not just great ways for your group to interact with each other doing something super fun & exciting, it also instills a sense of goodwill in them for having done good to the community.
4. Social Media Challenges
When the entire world was reeling from the physical restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the only thing that provided relief to people were social media challenges & ofcourse, baking bread.
Social media challenges have always been an amazing way to get people excited about a topic, course of action, social issue, or anything else.
You can also include social media challenges as part of your virtual event/gathering to encourage people to interact & keep in touch with each other even after the event itself is over.
There are many ways you can design a social media challenge for your attendees. Some examples include:
Throwback Thursday photo challenge
You can encourage your attendees to share old photos with the other event attendees to spark a sort of Throwback Thursday photo chain, where everyone can join in with their own embarrassing past photographs. The more embarrassing photos you can pull up, the better & more lasting the chain will be, just saying!
Dinner Dates
Whoever said you can’t have a virtual dinner party with your friends or teammates during the times of COVID? Organzine Virtual Dinner Dates as part of your virtual gathering where each one of your attendees showcase their deliciously prepared meals for everyone else to see, & watch your virtual events turn from nay to yay within a few minutes as everyone rushes to outperform each other!
Story challenges
Story challenges can be another great way for your virtual attendees to connect & interact with each other virtually. Encourage your attendees to start a story challenge by posting an Instagram story & tagging another(or two or three or more) attendee(s) challenging them to perform the same challenge. The idea behind story challenges is to sort of create a chain of stories that lasts well beyond the duration of the actual virtual event.
Lookalike challenge
This can be an especially fun way to break the ice in any virtual event, or office meeting, or even an informal gathering. Just give a lookalike challenge to your attendees, where they have to find out their lookalikes, whether in the same pool of attendees in the event, or anywhere out in the world within a stipulated amount of time, & share them with the other attendees in the virtual event.
Given the frantic nature of this activity, it’s bound to get quite fun & exciting as & when it progresses.
5. Virtual Camping
You can also go camping with your friends & teammates the virtual way if you’re up to it.
For this activity, ensure that all your attendees have their s’mores kits with them, or you can also send personalized ones out to them if you have the budget, & begin with the virtual camping.
You can organize fun camping activities like virtual scavenger hunts, virtual ghost storytelling sessions, & virtual outdoor-themed activities, all the while your attendees roast their marshmallows over candlelight & try to immerse themselves in the virtual camping experience!
6. Virtual Game Shows
Virtual game shows can also be a great way to break the ice between attendees & to create a fun, interactive, immersive environment in the virtual event.
You can include online game shows like jeopardy, online quizzes, online the-price-is-right, family feud, & recognize-that-celebrity kind of game shows via some home-appropriate DIY tools to keep your attendees engaged & interested throughout the virtual event.
7. Virtual Pet Meetups
Pets can always light up any meeting & make people more friendly & productive almost instantly.
At your next virtual office meeting or virtual gathering, encourage your attendees to introduce themselves along with their furry companions to everybody else.
You can also encourage certain pet friendly virtual games & allot a certain amount of time to fun activities where your attendees’ pets can showcase their special skills & any talents that they have.
How about a pet fashion show? Or maybe a prize contest for the most well-behaved pet, or the most friendly one?
All of these ideas can help completely transform your virtual gatherings & office meetings into extremely fun & collaborative virtual events.
8. Organize an upskilling workshop
Fun & games are alright, but if you give your attendees something to look forward to via learning opportunities, they are much more likely to stay & listen intently throughout the entire event.
Organizing upskilling workshops where you teach your attendees certain how-tos, whether or not relevant to their current industry, is a great way to pique audiences’ interest & get them excited about your virtual event.
Certain workshop ideas to integrate into your virtual event include:
- Coding bootcamps & workshops
- Creative writing sessions
- Self-defense & martial arts workshop
- Leadership classes & webinars
- Cooking lessons & collaborative classes
- Guided meditation sessions
- Photography tutorials & sessions
9. Virtual Jam Sessions/Musical Evenings
Music is something that brings people together from across the world. Thus holding virtual jam sessions or musical evenings where attendees can come together to sing songs together or hold acapella music sessions that resemble an informal campfire like experience is also a great way to bring people together over their screens.
Encourage your virtual attendees to collaborate with each other & sing songs together. You can also ask them to hold entire informal concerts wherein some attendees can sing, some can play the piano, some can play the drums, some others play guitar, & so on.
Having such a full-blown virtual musical performance helps band your attendees together & generate a sense of community among them.
10. Online Awards Shows/Sports Viewing
Awards shows always host a level of excitement & anticipation among general people. So do certain games.
And it’s no new news that watching sports or awards shows together can deeply enrich collaboration & interaction among people.
The same holds true even in a virtual sense. Hence you should think about organizing a virtual group awards show viewing, or a virtual sports viewing to ensure collaboration & a teamwork spirit amongst your attendees.
Needless to say, your attendees will find this a great way to break the ice between them & enrich their teamwork & communication skills.
In order to include these amazing virtual event ideas in your own event, you’ll need to entrust the services of an innovative, & interactive virtual event platform that is designed to facilitate live chats, high-quality interaction, & one-on-one communication between your attendees.
In addition, the virtual event platform should also have high-level group communication abilities like networking tables, specially designed chat & breakout rooms, along with intelligent AI matchmaking features to help likeminded attendees find & interact with one another.
You should choose the virtual event platform that you will use to host your virtual event carefully, & only after considering whether or not it supports all the above-mentioned features.