Swag

The gifting boasted positive and playful messaging like "take it all in," "you got this," "make big plans," and "power full."

Adventure Associates' “GeoTrek” activity is based on the recreational sport of geocaching—using GPS devices to locate containers, known as “caches.” The company has courses in 75 locations around the country, including one at Walt Disney World that requires participants to use the monorail, boats, and walking between resorts to locate each cache. Organizers provide a brief lesson on how to use GPS, and then teams of about four people each choose which caches they will attempt to locate based on point values, distances, and strategy. When teams reconvene, the company’s facilitators can lead participants in a discussion of what they learned followed by a tallying of each team’s scores.

Add a bit of Hollywood to a teambuilding event with TeamBonding's Make-A-Movie experience. The company’s facilitators begin the event with a short skit and then challenge each team of employees to make their own movie around a specific theme. TeamBonding provides digital video cameras and all editing services. The groups reconvene to screen each of the movies and vote on categories such as best actor and best director. The organizer also receives a DVD with all of the movies on it.

Smartphone cameras drive the fun in Corporate Games Team Building's Paparazzi game. Organizers divide participants into groups of about eight people each and give them a list of photographs and a bag of costumes and props. Teams then have a set amount of time to travel around a venue or within a designated part of the city, to capture as many of the photos as possible. Examples include a photo of team members posing as celebrities dining alfresco or a photo of team members hosting a cooking show. Organizers score the photos as they come in and put them into a slide show which can be viewed by everyone at the end of the event.

Wizard Studios uses its SuperSonic LED Strobe bracelets to activate team challenges for corporate groups. The wristbands emit bright, colored lights and flashing strobes. Organizers can control the bands remotely to command a team to perform a predetermined activity on cue. The company can work with hosts to develop a program of various challenges and prizes, and after the teambuilding event, the bracelets can also be activated during a party.

Classic game shows get a new twist in Wildly Different's iPlay event. The company provides iPads that teams use to complete challenges modeled after traditional game show activities. In “Survey Says,” participants must rank the answers provided from most popular to least popular in categories such as “top-selling candy bars” and “favorite pastimes.” In “What’s the Tune,” players hear snippets of music and must name the song or artist. The iPads automatically tally each team’s points, and at the end members of the winning team join the M.C. on stage to receive their awards.

In Corporate Games Team Building's Amazing Journey activity, teams must decipher clues using their smartphones and complete physical and mental challenges provided by facilitators stationed in various locations. Each completed task helps team members figure out the 10 cities in the world that comprise their “race route,” and the first team to complete the route wins. The event can take place anywhere, inside a hotel or conference center or around a few city blocks, and the clues can be customized to align with an event’s theme or goals.

In the Spy Game, from the Go Game, participants work in teams to complete a series of activities and solve clues provided via smartphone, all based on the premise that someone from their company has been kidnapped and they need to solve the crime. Missions may include having to spell a word without writing, creating videos, and engaging with actors they may encounter throughout the designated course. Each game takes about two hours and combines some high-tech activities with more campy elements such as disguises and cracking codes.