And suggest that they work in a quiet, distraction free room. I Don't Actually Have to Go, but I'm Going to Pretend I do. With Video Off. The real value of a Zoom meeting is that you get to see each other and interact face-to-face. Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Once a virtual meeting has been deemed necessary, try implementing these 10 realistic tips (read: does not require fancy new software or expensive meeting tools) to banish boredom, keep things interactive, and encourage participation. A new trend report from Deloitte shows that business travel is increasing, but it's not yet close to reaching pre-pandemic levels. Let your employees ask questions. And don't worry about freaking them . Then, do all that you can to help persuade them to participate. Power of the Past - Force of the Future. Step two: Make your audience mute themselves. Paper Airplane Game "I can't pay for your entire wifi bill, but I promise when we go on a date IRL, it's on me!" 3. Pro: It keeps you paying attention during the meeting. To clarify, the volume on the end of the other meeting attendees is fine; I can raise and lower the volume from my audio source (music app, browser, etc . Share music or sounds- As long as it will not disrupt the meeting, you can play an ambient sound of waves crashing or some Zen music. Each person states three facts, two truths and one lie. However, with a single click, you can view everyone on the call by clicking "Gallery View" in the upper . During the meeting, cross off the buzzwords as you hear them and yell "Bingo!" when you get a line of 5 in a row. Play "I Spy" Backgrounds. Just for fun, here are a few jokes you can tell at your next meeting . Research finds that most workers cannot focus in meetings for longer than 45 minutes, and engagement sharply drops after the 30 minute marker. Founded in 2011 . It can be anything, from Harry Potter to Christmas. The episode explains five different ways to end your team meeting. And have everyone on your team dress accordingly for your Zoom meeting. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. 7 Ways to Have Fun on Zoom During a Pandemic There's nothing funny about people dying from coronavirus. 1. It would be ethical to ask everyone in the meeting if playing sounds is all right. But meetings dont' have to be all work and no play. Then, if you see that your juice is getting low, and you think you'll be ready to . Make the assumption that your team doesn't want to participate in the meeting. Apps are available for Windows, MacOS and Linux as well as for iOS and Android OS. Having people's quality attention in a meeting results in a much more productive and focused meeting. Raise Your Hand Get to know each other in a new way. Take care, bye" and then you're out. 22 Internal Meeting Ideas for Remote and In-Person Teams. Want Your Company to Be Successful? Enjoy industry leading usability with top-rated video and audio quality. A quick breakfast is one of the fun ways to start a meeting. Stealth. 2) Create an Agenda And Assign Roles Ahead of Time to Make Your Virtual Meeting More Engaging. Take a snack break. 2) Everyone who wants to compete should show up to the next meeting with their song, props, and anything. During this icebreaker, one person reads a list of statements of varying experiences or values (such as raise your hand if you've gone skydiving, were a star athlete in high . Chaos. Step-by-step instructions: Open the Zoom app on your PC. Gone are the days when it was expected that staff leave their emotions, personal life, and mental health status at home. Paul French, managing director of Intrinsic Search, describes his team's version of this game: "Participants weave a story together with each person taking turns to add a sentence at a time, beginning each subsequent sentence with a specific phrase that helps to build the story. Here are our favorites: Buy four boxes of the same puzzle. Try these 5 closing tips to bring better structure to your virtual meetings: Have your meeting end process and time listed on the agenda. 3. Since it's virtual, you can make happy hour literally any time you want. If the leader is letting the meeting drag on and company culture dictates you let it go, do that. Discussing favorite movies, shows, and books can be a great way to engage your team. (This is crucial!) "Good to see you and ~Zoom in~ on your beautiful face !" 2. From your Zoom meeting window, click on "Share Screen" and select the window with the Presenter view of your presentation. The teacher can open the file and select "share screen" in Zoom for the students to read the question of the day. Start with a question that each student can choose to respond to. You'll now be able to look at the presenter notes on your screen while your audience views the slide open in your Presenter view window. 4. Name your session ex. 6. Share music or sounds- As long as it will not disrupt the meeting, you can play an ambient sound of waves crashing or some Zen music. Mac user writing with a problem I haven't seen yet on here the challenge that when I 'share computer sound' in a meeting, the sound from my computer immediately bumps way up and I'm no longer able to really lower the volume. At the start of each meeting, pick a word of the day such as "cucumber." See who can slip the word into the conversation without others noticing: "I really think that if we. Luckily, here are a few silly lines you can use to end a conversation: Table of contents: Want to See My Tree Impression? Exhale for 4 seconds. 1. First, your group will pick a text. Zoom. Click the topic of the . This depends completely on your company culture. "Percussive Maintenance" This one's an oldie but a goodie. Tough Souls. Party animals: Go wild and invite a farm animal to your next team meeting. Let their imagination take over. You need to have an excuse for leaving. Virtual backgrounds can be more than just fun. Aces. John says, "I bring in bottles of water, one for each student. If you're ready to hit the bottle, happy hour is always a good theme option. You can get some gaming name combinations for your regular meetings, like a worrier gauge, Cool Assassin, Combatant of Box, and Soldiers on Duty. Rose & Thorn: Rose & Thorn is a fun way to kick off a Friday standing meeting. At the same time, we see people making the best of challenging situations. You (or whoever volunteers) start by saying a sentence. Here is a list of activities to do with children digitally. 11. These can be hilarious but also distracting so some educators have disabled this feature for their group meetings. 3. Zoom United. Morning Meeting. Be real, yet to the point, with staff. The free accounts allow for up to 40 minutes of live chat time and up to 100 different 'members' or devices. That's it! One group of medical staff waited around the elevator door so they could clap for a custodian arriving on their floor. Check out these ideasto celebrate special dates with your remote team. Putting the end on the agenda allows any last comments to be made and voices to be heard. To start a new meeting, open the app and click or tap New Meeting . 2 Select End. Chamber AM. #3: Collaborative Storytelling A great ice breaker for Zoom meetings is telling stories. And there are other meetings, where you really actually are going to politely wait for the responses of the other people to acknowledge that you're leaving . Meeting icebreakers & warm-up polls; Re-engagement polls & pulse checks; Retrospectives & feedback polls; Meeting icebreakers & warm-up polls. First, when they share their list of to-do items, you can cross reference with your notes to see if they missed anything. Pay attention to their language, tone, and body language. Set expectations. Insert text boxes to customize your awards, then save the Power Point slides as pictures (jpgs.) Start with a lip sync of Soulja Boy's. Themed Days Pick a theme. Step three: Pick a crowd-pleasing karaoke jam to play softly and sing . Pause for 4 seconds. Some meetings will end earlier than expected and others will run late. As with every other conversation, song, or story, meetings always have an end. Say something like, "Oh my god, what the fuck is th" and then exit the Zoom chat. Put people into breakout rooms in pairs and give them 1 minute each to share. Morning meeting is a nice way to start out a Zoom meeting with your class. Now the others have to guess which is the untruth. These days, it's not such a rarity to attend a meeting where someone says 'before we get into this meeting, let's spend a mindful minute'. Heads Up Before the timer runs out, you must guess what word you are holding up by the description your coworkers give you. 4. Grin and bear it. Keep your team constantly engaged with polls. Screen Share Only. These games apply to any formal setting where a discussion is happening (work meeting, small group at church, family dinner discussion, board meeting, etc.) Celebrate highlights. The Bottle of Dreams. Here are 15 of the most creative Zoom meeting ideas for team building. 4. Our Engineering Team advised that the issue has been fixed from the backend. Collaborative Storytelling. Look 10 years younger with just one click A really powerful tool within Zoom is called "Touch up my appearance" and it'll give you an instant face-lift. Sweet Dreams. Closing a meeting is a like closing on a new home. Irrespective of what kind of week you've all had you can schedule a virtual meeting "down the Nags Head" for a drink after work at say 5.30pm or 6.00pm. It also gives your coworkers something to look forward to. Exhale for 4 seconds. Square Breathing (The 44 Box Method) is a great technique to try with groups. 2 thoughts on " 12+ Icebreakers to kick off your next zoom meeting ". Another fun technique that is effective for breaking Zoom fatigue is storytelling. Screen sharing is one of the key features that Zoom does better than any other video conferencing platform we tried. Inhale for 4 seconds. July 14, 2015 3 min read. This can be a local "virtual pub" or "virtual wine bar". Hope I'm in Them. Sign in to the Zoom web portal. By default, Zoom will show you whoever's actively speaking. Before the meeting even starts, allow attendees to get into the right mindset by setting . Use these editable end of the year class awards, or any editable awards in a Power Point file. Option 1: Turn Awards into Pictures. Pick A Party Theme. Similarly, closing a meeting is a celebration of accomplishments and establishing next steps. Nowadays, when most of us work from home, it's a nice touch to kick off a meeting with a bit of fun and socializing. If you really want your students to focus on everyone in the classroom, play a game of "I Spy" backgrounds. The same is true for Zoom video conferences. Time may run out, or all of the items in the agenda may be checked off. "Kindergarten Literacy", set the date, and time. Encourage them to use headphones during the meeting, if possible, to block out any noisy distractions on their end. Meeting jokes: Add a little humor to your meeting discussions. A Celebration of Success. 2) Create an Agenda And Assign Roles Ahead of Time to Make Your Virtual Meeting More Engaging. Start your meeting with an interactive icebreaker. Start your meeting strongly. Set up a Zoom bomb. A few reasons. Make your coworkers think your exit was their idea. Facing the Future - Together. Click Save as. You could see the smiles and hear the laughter. On the top right you can click the gray box to change the box to be a picture of you. Add the meeting's closure to the agenda. You can't just walk away. People, Process & Performance. My Battery is Running Low. Once you have an account you can schedule meetings and copy and paste your invitations into an email. However, there could be some productive uses of these virtual backgrounds. Give the poor schmucks still trapped in the meeting something to talk about. Other Resources You'll Love 100+ I Spy Games to Play During Zoom Meetings Fun Virtual Backgrounds for Zoom that Kids . Make copies and distribute to your like-minded colleagues. As with Opening and 'Exploring-Divergent' activities, there . As a card-carrying introvert (I laminated it myself!) The odd time, a meeting may be cut short due to an unexpected problem or circumstance. If you have ever participated in this, you know how amazing one quick minute . Get creative with it. Turn taking everything down into a fun event done as close to the last day as possible. The meeting invitation will be copied and you can paste that information into an email or anywhere else you would like to send it out. 1) Let people know you will be hosting a lip-sync battle in the next meeting ahead of time. Go into your Zoom preferences, click on. Inferno. Second, when they say what they are going to do next, you have an opportunity to listen. Inhale for 4 seconds. You can create a team-building activity by building a collaborative story. Finishing Strong With Zoom Meetings. If your meeting just ends at the last discussion item, there is no expectation and opportunity to wrap up the topic. You can still have the children see and connect with each other, just in a different way. Zoom is a very popular and easy to use platform for live video groups. If you are presiding the meeting, make sure the closure appears on the agenda and highlight it as important. Turn your business numbers into a quiz. Whether having an in person or virtual meeting, this is easy to do. Hi everyone! This is an easy and fun icebreaker game to get everyone putting down their guard, which allows for teams to work better together. 2) Word of the day. The techniques encourage reflection and allow everyone to gain data about where the team is at. This is the last of four posts covering facilitation games for the different phases of meetings - Check In, Opening, Exploring, Closing. 1. Step 3: The website will redirect you to the Zoom app and start a meeting. Basically, anyone entering your meeting must have signed out and back in to their accounts and/or re-install the app. Step one: A little Dutch courage, if that works for you. If everyone gives the go signal, make sure . Supply your accomplice . Click the Meetings tab. You can make it more realistic by just manipulating the combination of words. Select the meeting that you want to invite others to and click Copy Invitation. Following the Exploring phase, they are focused around the question 'How do our new insights help us move into the future?'. It doesn't have to be elaborate or overly planned just a chance to unwind and connect with people. 1. You can host a meeting in the computer client available for Mac and Windows as well as the mobile app for iPhone and Android. 2. Then, do all that you can to help persuade them to participate. Give your meeting code to someone you trust so they can "bomb" the meeting posed as a hacker. Here are a few games that I liked from the book: 1) Trading Cards. Zoom. Create a 55 grid and fill the boxes with typical meeting acronyms and buzzwords. Forget 5 o'clock . It is common for employees to think the topics are boring. The real value of a Zoom meeting is that you get to see each other and interact face-to-face. During this icebreaker, one person reads a list of statements of varying experiences or values (such as raise your hand if you've gone skydiving, were a star athlete in high school, prefer dogs over cats, etc). I often use Zoom. Discuss fun meeting ideas Staff meetings can feel stiff and uptight. Cool Names for Teams. Purchase Zoom Phone, Meetings and Chat together and save. 3) Share Screen. Step 1: Log in to your Zoom account. Leadership: Sharing the Vision. 5. Check-in talk: Have all the children sign-on to whichever program you are using at the same time. If you've been in any Zoom meeting the past couple of months, you've probably seen all sorts of crazy and fun virtual backgrounds. 5. Move from a chat or a phone call to a meeting with a single click. Putting the end on the agenda allows any last comments to be made and voices to be heard. Web portal. Pump Up Your Sales Success. Dramatic readings You can delight the bookworms and kids-at-heart on your team by staging an adult story-time. Google Hangouts Have each meeting attendee explain the premise of a recent show, movie, or favorite poem to spark discussion and get the team excited about participating actively. This was a 2 hrs Design Thinking workshop, and this ice . To ensure you close your meeting effectively, apply these four tips: 1. Get to know each other in a new way. How does it work? Zoom can be used for live chats, live virtual games, or anything that needs to be handled face-to-face in real time. These simple changes can make a huge difference. The Passive Aggressive: Let Your Device DIE. Raise Your Hand. Exceeding the Vision. You can do this either with or without virtual backgrounds, but in essence you are describing things that you notice in the background of someone's zoom call. In the navigation menu, click Meetings. Make the assumption that your team doesn't want to participate in the meeting. These icebreakers are energizers that can be used to boost your online team meetings if you use Zoom or not. Move breakout . Keep meetings short Just because you paid for Zoom so that your meetings could last longer than 40 minutes, does not mean your meetings should drag on for hours. 8 Give them a fun riddle to answer in the next meeting Riddles are another fun way to engage your team and leave people wanting more as they leave the team meeting. Dress up days are simple ways to make video meetings fun and to fight Zoom fatigue. Try these 5 closing tips to bring better structure to your virtual meetings: Have your meeting end process and time listed on the agenda. But, not in a boring way. If everyone gives the go signal, make sure . 1. If meetings were more like comedy shows, maybe more people would LOVE to attend them. To pause/resume a screen share, type Cmd+Shift+T (PC: Alt+T). Step 2: Hover your cursor over the "HOST A MEETING" link at the top-right corner of the screen, and select one of the following options: With Video On. Draw a portrait - In one of my workshops, we divided participants into groups of 2, send them to breakout rooms, and asked them to introduce each other, and then they have to draw a portrait of the other person. Friday Night Beers. To start a screen share, type Cmd+Shift+S (PC: Alt+Shift+S). It would be ethical to ask everyone in the meeting if playing sounds is all right. This game is a great way to get players to get to know each other better, and makes an excellent ice-breaker. They can be personal facts, historical facts or anything really. What You'll Learn Why being intentional about how you end your meetings can help your teams be more successful. Get a glass of wine, beer or a soft drink and just chat and have a laugh. Choose jpg. (Think slam-dunk basketball.) Here are a variety of ways to adjourn a meeting: Here are some professional icebreakers that you can try for your next Zoom call. Mix up the puzzle pieces between/across the boxes, (i.e., move some box-one pieces to box two, box-two pieces to box three, and so on . It's good to start a meeting on a high note. Do not answer any incoming calls. The episode builds on 056 which talked about how to open a meeting. The simple act of breathing together with your co-workers is a great way to get everyone feeling present and aware. Building on the Best. See everyone at once. Get Meetings, Phone and Chat together on any device. The closing date means you've successfully accomplished a home search and survived the lending process. Pair and share in breakout rooms. 3. Doodle on your notepad or think about your project. 3. by following these steps: Click File. Put the meeting on pause and the tunes on loud, and encourage everyone to shake out their limbs and dance out their boredom! One alternative I've found that is worth trying is to pack up your stuff and stand up, but with deference to the leader. You take a piece of paper and start. The words "meeting" and "fun" go together like cheese and Nutella. If your meeting just ends at the last discussion item, there is no expectation and opportunity to wrap up the topic. Step 3: Share your screen on Zoom. Yes, employees and managers are still expected to be professional. as the type of file to save as. THE METHOD: Don't charge your laptop or phone before a call. Kindly have the affected users to sign out and sign back in to their accounts and then retest. On the same line in blue it says "Schedule a Meeting". Meeting hosts must find a time and day in which all employees are available. 1. Morning meeting discussion slides are a great option for this. If you like this option and want to use it, we suggest enabling it by default before heading into a meeting. Click the gear icon under your . Go around your video call and share the best (rose) and the worst (thorn . 30 to 60 seconds of this will do, but it's a fun and surprising way to get folks' blood back into their brains and their attention re-focused on the topic at hand. The simple act of breathing together with your co-workers is a great way to get everyone feeling present and aware. 1. It's a great way to get the conversation going and you can even ask your team members to come to the next meeting to see who was able to solve the riddle. This is the one that I'm working on this year, adapting from John Berray's original idea. Pause for 4 seconds. Square Breathing (The 44 Box Method) is a great technique to try with groups. Celebrate your heroes and heroines. 6. It's easy to set up a zoom meeting and send a link to sign-on. 4. You could also come up with an end-of-meeting tag line or sign off, such as: "Live long and prosper." "Confusion to our competitors." "Exit, stage right." "Exit, pursued by a bear." "So long and thanks for all the fish." "Now where was I?" "After all, tomorrow is another day." "Have fun storming the castle."