Event ideas

For outdoor meetings and events, the new stretch tent is available through Absolute Tent & Event Services. Available for rent or purchase, the waterproof tent comes in three sizes and can be stretched around trees, structures, and rocks.

At Caesars’ Garden of the Gods pool complex, a mixologist can offer groups short, poolside mixology demos as a meeting break, serving up boozy punch in an ice bowl.

For those looking to entertain out-of-town meeting attendees or summer associates, the Capitol Skyline Hotel hosts Adult Swim every Sunday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. through September 9. Groups of up to 10 can purchase tables for $500, which includes two bottles.

Gary Hirshberg, chairman of organic yogurt company Stonyfield, has partnered with Amerivents to launch Chelsea’s Table Catering by Amerivents, offering menu items made with local, sustainable ingredients that are ideal for healthy meetings and events.

The doughnut craze continues with Glazed and Infused. Available for catered meetings, the doughnuts are made with all-natural ingredients and local products whenever possible. Flavors, like banana salted caramel, change seasonally.

The XBus Mobile, offered through Day Entertainment & Events, is an air-conditioned bus outfitted with eight 22-inch LCD screens and Xbox 360-linked stations inside, plus two more screens connected to Wii and Xbox Kinect mounted outside. The cost is $1,500 for three hours.

Cult D.C. bakery Georgetown Cupcake opened its first Boston outpost in May. The Back Bay shop offers catering for meetings and events, as well as gift boxes. The treats cost $15 per half-dozen, and $29 per dozen.

Erin Una Chainani offers live portrait sketching throughout South Florida. Drawings typically feature fluorescent colors, but she can sketch in any requested color combination. The cost averages around $150 per hour, with reduced rates for charity events.

Archive Rentals has introduced a line of vintage Western- and camp-themed rentals. Among items like reclaimed wood tables, picnic linens, horse tack, canoes, and lanterns, the company also has a rare collection of retro Airstream trailers.

321 FastDraw creates speed-drawing video presentations for meetings. Designed as a creative alternative to PowerPoint, the process involves filming an artist illustrate on a white board, then editing the video to move at the speed of the scripted voice-over. The cost averages between $5,000 to $8,500 per minute.

Heirloom Tomatoes, basil gelato, early harvest olive oil jam, cracked black pepper strussel, flake sea salt, cream balsamic

Vegetable root pave

Mozzarella with olives

Pea mint grapefruit salad

Study in beets

Bocconcini salad

Raspberries and whip cream inside mint leaf

Teambuilding USA offers competitive canoeing games for groups of 10 to 40 people in the Florida swamplands. Teams are given canoes, life vests, maps, GPS trackers, and a backpack of supplies before they set off to find buoy markers holding treasures and clues. Costs start from $199 per person.

It's true—trampolining is an official Olympic sport. AirHeads Trampoline Arena opened last December, just south of downtown Orlando. The trampoline arena can accommodate 125 jumpers at a time, and the minimum for a teambuilding event is 20. The facility also has three meeting rooms and offers light food service.

Not everyone is an athlete, but table tennis is a sport for many skill levels. The Broward Table Tennis Club in Dania Beach, Florida will tailor teambuilding activities based on clients’ preferences. The Olympic package includes table tennis for 12 to 60 people and offers participants team hats, T-shirts, medals, and trophies. Pricing varies, but the average cost is $35 per person. A deluxe package combines cooking classes led by chef Wayne Whittall with table tennis lessons from Olympic gold medalist Terese Terranova. The package is for 10 to 40 people and costs between $50 to $70 per person.

Staffers from Dial M Productions dress like referees and guide guests through a wide variety of games including clothespin tag, sack race, tug-of-war, soccer hockey, and tortilla toss, all played in Olympics-style tournaments. Prices vary depending on location, length of event, and how many coaches are provided; costs usually start around $1,500.

Based on Olympic ideals of teamwork and sportsmanship, Team Builders Plus' "Team Olympics" programs involves a series of timed, low-impact physical activities like racing, cycling, and balloon bobsledding. The tournament includes choosing team colors and names, and finishes with an award ceremony where gold, silver, and bronze medals are handed out. Group sizes can range from 40 to 200 people.

During Windy City Fieldhouse's Olympics-inspired teambuilding activity, groups are divided into teams of 20. Teams can choose to have specific members play just one activity—such as volleyball, basketball, or soccer—or rotate team members through the different activities, allowing participants to manage how physically active they wish to be. Costs vary depending on the number of participants, which can range from 20 to 500.

Corporate Games offers a variety of customized Olympics-inspired events, that include activities like kayak racing. Large teams of 15 to 20 people rotate between sports, and groups from 20 to 500 people can be accommodated. The program generally costs between $1,500 and $7,000.

Teambuilding Unlimited offers its "Wacky Mini-Olympic Games." The featured games are Olympic sports with a whimsical twist, like "soccer hockey," which involves mismatched equipment from several different sports, including hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks, and a variety of different types and sizes of balls and gloves. The activity can accommodate between 5 and 300 people; costs range from $1,500 to $7,000.

"Weightlifting" is one of the Olympics-inspired bonding activities offered by Wildly Different. Participants blow up and stuff balloons into a chosen participant's loose sweatsuit, with the aim of increasing the weightlifter's "muscle" mass. The team to stuff in the most balloons without any of them bursting is the winner. Activities include, on average, 12 participants, and the price is fixed at $2,000 plus $45 per person.

Team Bonding's outdoor Olympic-style games activity includes 10 different relay races designed for less-than-athletic groups ranging from 25 to 500 participants. The full program opens with a ceremony, complete with a torch lighting and national anthems, and closes with medals being handed to the winning team. Price varies based on the number of people participating.

Rhona Frazin, president and C.E.O. of the Chicago Public Library Foundation, said the planning team aimed to "bring the library into the space that we were in." At the end of the evening, guests could take home the Toni Morrison books that topped each table.