New Year's recipe in the style of IT
"Well now, we all go to the center and get up in a circle, boy-girl, but more tightly-eeeee!" The third time after this, we almost threw the lead out of the window of the fourth floor. Carried. We would have managed to drink a little more, tragedy can not be avoided.
Common situation? You are long and hard looking for a leading corporate party, carefully describing the situation and the public, discussing all the nuances of the performance, and he establishes a village wedding. Well, this is when everyone needs to dance under Serdyuchka, pass oranges on their chins, fall into a bottle with a pencil and feel each other blindfolded.
That’s how we celebrated March 8 a couple of years ago. Then they decided that from now on we would only prepare the entertainment program ourselves. And last New Year, the lot fell on me. At that time I had to work hard and for my part it would be extremely wrong not to share the experience gained.
So, if you are in a similar situation now - this post is just for you. Under the cut, there’s a story about what contests I prepared, and how the holiday went as a result.
So. There are 50 people. Almost everyone is from 25 to 30. Programmers, testers, designers, plus a few analysts and managers. All young, funny, educated and duly bummed. Not the audience that will hit the drunk "trickle of wallpaper."
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to find a leader who shares this opinion. And the Internet is replete mainly with similar scenarios. So, I had to seriously scratch my turnips. As a result, three thoughts were born about how a New Year corporate party should be in an IT company.
To implement the plan, I had to actively remake, adapt, and sometimes just come up with contests myself. And here is my recipe.
Description: The point is simple - the presenter pronounces a congratulatory phrase in the letter “A”. Say, “And today I wish you a Happy New Year” and passes the microphone to the person next to him. He must say congratulation on the letter "B". For example, “Moreover, not just with the new, but with the year 2015!” Etc. It is recommended that the next one be advised in advance, and then the people will figure it out themselves.
Impressions: I had it the very first warm-up competition. Immediately after the official congratulations to the management and the first toast. The goal is not so much to entertain as to warm up the audience, to remove stiffness and tension, to set the tone for the whole subsequent party.
I was surprised how well this topic went. Even the most introverted guys who had never participated in anything before, were happy to come up with their own options.
Description: Depending on the size of the room, we take from 2 to 5 office chairs on wheels. At the other end of the hall we put the appropriate number of bottles of beer / wine / vodka. For each chair, two people. One is sitting, the other is pushing. The task of the first participant is to bring the second one to the bottle on the chair, pour two glasses and take the glasses NOT SPLASHING to the start, where they drink both in a glass, switch places and move on. The team that empties the bottle the fastest wins.
Impressions: After the first contest, you can get a little distracted. In our case, it was the delivery of diplomas for the past year. Well, then it's time to have a drink. And alcoholics are better suited for this.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember exactly what we played. It seems to be a beer, so that the participants do not fall on the spot from the drink. But I remember that everyone liked to drive on chairs so much that they asked to repeat the contest several more times.
Description: This is like a game in cities, only instead of city names you need to use the names of computer programs. Limitations:
Everyone is playing. Who lasted the longest, he won.
Impressions: After the race you need to relax. In general, it is better to alternate intense contests with quiet ones, alcoholic ones with intellectual ones, and not to forget that there are tasks not just for volunteer teams, but for the whole hall. Playing games is just that. It was fun.
Description: We take a couple of bottles of viscar, or other strong alcohol, buy alkodarts, hang on the wall, and everyone who wants to play. I note that store alkodarts are usually on magnets, and this is not at all cool. So I drew my own and stuck it on the target from the darts of the present.
Impressions: This is a very cool contest, because it can last from 30 minutes to an hour and the host is resting all this time. A company of 5 people plays by itself, another 5-10 people are watching. The rest eat, communicate with each other, listen to music, etc. Complete relaxation.
And according to the results, we have 5 more people thoroughly subservient, plus the same after alcoholics, which means the degree is growing steadily, and the audience is preparing for a real annealing.
We played darts all evening parallel to the main program.
Description: Everyone knows Alias, right? In turn, teams of 5-7 people play. There is one explainer in the team, the rest are unraveling. Each is given a stack of cards with words. The explainer takes the card, reads the word and explains it to the team, following the rules. The team guesses. The tour lasts 3 minutes, then the next team. In the end, we think who solved the most cards.
The difference between my alias was that all the words were from our subject area - server, ip-address, hyperlink, database, etc.
Impressions: According to my impressions, this turned out to be one of the most successful contests. The participants were already at a degree, stammered and forgot previously familiar words. It’s very funny to see a seasoned bearded programmer try to explain what RSS is. The audience really fell out of laughter.
Description: 3-5 people, each sheet of Whatman paper and a bright marker, as well as a card with a famous saying. In five minutes, players must portray the meaning of their saying without using words and letters. Then each artist presents his masterpiece to the audience, and everyone present guesses.
Impressions: Calm relaxed contest. The beauty is that viewers who guess the pictures also get their portion of pleasure.
Description: Choose from 4 to 6 people. We take out transparent glasses, each filled with 100 grams (or 50, depending on the team) and a straw. We declare that in one glass vodka, in the rest water. The task of the contest participant is to drink the contents through a straw without showing emotions, i.e. not let the audience understand what he is drinking. The task of the audience is to guess which of the participants drank vodka.
The trick is that in fact everyone has poured vodka.
Impressions: As far as I remember, it went so-so.
Description: The host of the evening calls proverbs and sayings in which each word is replaced by a word with the opposite meaning, and the people guess who is faster. Examples: A new enemy is worse than the old three, The last pancakes are even, Happiness moves in heaps ...
Impressions: Another warm-up game for everyone present, in case someone is bored.
Description: You just need to buy a twister. You can beat the team, you can just play it all. Fun.
Impressions: By this moment, the people have already completely warmed up and are ready to anneal. And the twister is the first annealing. More will be more fun. We really liked it, asked for more.
Description: Take a few people, a plate and 6 eggs. The host announces that the players must take turns breaking one egg on their forehead, but one of them is raw, the rest are boiled, although in fact all eggs are boiled. Tension builds up with each subsequent egg. But it is desirable that the participants were no more than five (they begin to guess that the eggs are all boiled).
Impressions: It should have turned out very funny, but with us the very first participant knocked over a plate of eggs.
Description: Two participants enter the arena, each with a rope hung on a belt, a bag tied to a rope, raw eggs in a bag. Everyone's task is to break the opponent’s eggs. You can’t touch each other, you can only beat with bags of eggs.
Impressions: This is our traditional annealing, tested many times.
Description: Need a projector and screen. We go to the cinema search, choose any rating of the best films, select and copy a more or less recognizable frame from each film. Then we take 3-5 participants and arrange a quiz - who will be the first to name the film. The remaining rules are at your discretion.
Impressions: At me this competition was final when people were already tired and wanted to do something calm. However, it was much more fun than I expected. The hall actively joined the game and prompted the players.
And finally - here is a file with my cards for Alias and sayings for inverted phrases.
Happy New Year!
Common situation? You are long and hard looking for a leading corporate party, carefully describing the situation and the public, discussing all the nuances of the performance, and he establishes a village wedding. Well, this is when everyone needs to dance under Serdyuchka, pass oranges on their chins, fall into a bottle with a pencil and feel each other blindfolded.
That’s how we celebrated March 8 a couple of years ago. Then they decided that from now on we would only prepare the entertainment program ourselves. And last New Year, the lot fell on me. At that time I had to work hard and for my part it would be extremely wrong not to share the experience gained.
So, if you are in a similar situation now - this post is just for you. Under the cut, there’s a story about what contests I prepared, and how the holiday went as a result.
So. There are 50 people. Almost everyone is from 25 to 30. Programmers, testers, designers, plus a few analysts and managers. All young, funny, educated and duly bummed. Not the audience that will hit the drunk "trickle of wallpaper."
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to find a leader who shares this opinion. And the Internet is replete mainly with similar scenarios. So, I had to seriously scratch my turnips. As a result, three thoughts were born about how a New Year corporate party should be in an IT company.
- Firstly, it is necessary to focus on the intellectual component of contests in order to enable people to show off their resourcefulness and erudition, as well as to work with teams to solve different problems.
- Secondly, we must use the IT theme, if possible, after all, we are all professionals in the same field.
- And thirdly, it is necessary to arrange so that by the middle of the evening the public should be well fed up. Then there will be real fun.
To implement the plan, I had to actively remake, adapt, and sometimes just come up with contests myself. And here is my recipe.
A and b
Description: The point is simple - the presenter pronounces a congratulatory phrase in the letter “A”. Say, “And today I wish you a Happy New Year” and passes the microphone to the person next to him. He must say congratulation on the letter "B". For example, “Moreover, not just with the new, but with the year 2015!” Etc. It is recommended that the next one be advised in advance, and then the people will figure it out themselves.
Impressions: I had it the very first warm-up competition. Immediately after the official congratulations to the management and the first toast. The goal is not so much to entertain as to warm up the audience, to remove stiffness and tension, to set the tone for the whole subsequent party.
I was surprised how well this topic went. Even the most introverted guys who had never participated in anything before, were happy to come up with their own options.
Alcohol
Description: Depending on the size of the room, we take from 2 to 5 office chairs on wheels. At the other end of the hall we put the appropriate number of bottles of beer / wine / vodka. For each chair, two people. One is sitting, the other is pushing. The task of the first participant is to bring the second one to the bottle on the chair, pour two glasses and take the glasses NOT SPLASHING to the start, where they drink both in a glass, switch places and move on. The team that empties the bottle the fastest wins.
Impressions: After the first contest, you can get a little distracted. In our case, it was the delivery of diplomas for the past year. Well, then it's time to have a drink. And alcoholics are better suited for this.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember exactly what we played. It seems to be a beer, so that the participants do not fall on the spot from the drink. But I remember that everyone liked to drive on chairs so much that they asked to repeat the contest several more times.
Game play
Description: This is like a game in cities, only instead of city names you need to use the names of computer programs. Limitations:
- Only software for DOS / Windows - otherwise the most stubborn Linuxoid will win
- Only with a GUI - otherwise an admin who knows 2000 command line utilities will win
- Only in English - otherwise there will be complete confusion
- Numbers are not part of the name - for the same reason
- The version number or revision name is excluded from the title - for the same reason
- The brand of the developer is ignored - that is, not Microsoft Office, but simply Office
Everyone is playing. Who lasted the longest, he won.
Impressions: After the race you need to relax. In general, it is better to alternate intense contests with quiet ones, alcoholic ones with intellectual ones, and not to forget that there are tasks not just for volunteer teams, but for the whole hall. Playing games is just that. It was fun.
Alcodarts
Description: We take a couple of bottles of viscar, or other strong alcohol, buy alkodarts, hang on the wall, and everyone who wants to play. I note that store alkodarts are usually on magnets, and this is not at all cool. So I drew my own and stuck it on the target from the darts of the present.
Impressions: This is a very cool contest, because it can last from 30 minutes to an hour and the host is resting all this time. A company of 5 people plays by itself, another 5-10 people are watching. The rest eat, communicate with each other, listen to music, etc. Complete relaxation.
And according to the results, we have 5 more people thoroughly subservient, plus the same after alcoholics, which means the degree is growing steadily, and the audience is preparing for a real annealing.
We played darts all evening parallel to the main program.
IT-Alias
Description: Everyone knows Alias, right? In turn, teams of 5-7 people play. There is one explainer in the team, the rest are unraveling. Each is given a stack of cards with words. The explainer takes the card, reads the word and explains it to the team, following the rules. The team guesses. The tour lasts 3 minutes, then the next team. In the end, we think who solved the most cards.
The difference between my alias was that all the words were from our subject area - server, ip-address, hyperlink, database, etc.
Impressions: According to my impressions, this turned out to be one of the most successful contests. The participants were already at a degree, stammered and forgot previously familiar words. It’s very funny to see a seasoned bearded programmer try to explain what RSS is. The audience really fell out of laughter.
Sayings
Description: 3-5 people, each sheet of Whatman paper and a bright marker, as well as a card with a famous saying. In five minutes, players must portray the meaning of their saying without using words and letters. Then each artist presents his masterpiece to the audience, and everyone present guesses.
Impressions: Calm relaxed contest. The beauty is that viewers who guess the pictures also get their portion of pleasure.
Who drinks vodka
Description: Choose from 4 to 6 people. We take out transparent glasses, each filled with 100 grams (or 50, depending on the team) and a straw. We declare that in one glass vodka, in the rest water. The task of the contest participant is to drink the contents through a straw without showing emotions, i.e. not let the audience understand what he is drinking. The task of the audience is to guess which of the participants drank vodka.
The trick is that in fact everyone has poured vodka.
Impressions: As far as I remember, it went so-so.
Inverted Phrases
Description: The host of the evening calls proverbs and sayings in which each word is replaced by a word with the opposite meaning, and the people guess who is faster. Examples: A new enemy is worse than the old three, The last pancakes are even, Happiness moves in heaps ...
Impressions: Another warm-up game for everyone present, in case someone is bored.
Twister
Description: You just need to buy a twister. You can beat the team, you can just play it all. Fun.
Impressions: By this moment, the people have already completely warmed up and are ready to anneal. And the twister is the first annealing. More will be more fun. We really liked it, asked for more.
Russian roulette
Description: Take a few people, a plate and 6 eggs. The host announces that the players must take turns breaking one egg on their forehead, but one of them is raw, the rest are boiled, although in fact all eggs are boiled. Tension builds up with each subsequent egg. But it is desirable that the participants were no more than five (they begin to guess that the eggs are all boiled).
Impressions: It should have turned out very funny, but with us the very first participant knocked over a plate of eggs.
Egg battle
Description: Two participants enter the arena, each with a rope hung on a belt, a bag tied to a rope, raw eggs in a bag. Everyone's task is to break the opponent’s eggs. You can’t touch each other, you can only beat with bags of eggs.
Impressions: This is our traditional annealing, tested many times.
Guess the frame
Description: Need a projector and screen. We go to the cinema search, choose any rating of the best films, select and copy a more or less recognizable frame from each film. Then we take 3-5 participants and arrange a quiz - who will be the first to name the film. The remaining rules are at your discretion.
Impressions: At me this competition was final when people were already tired and wanted to do something calm. However, it was much more fun than I expected. The hall actively joined the game and prompted the players.
And finally - here is a file with my cards for Alias and sayings for inverted phrases.
Happy New Year!