Photo: Max Levine Photography
Illustration: Cornelia Stiles/BizBash
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.
Photo: Courtesy of Wizard Studios
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.
Photo: Courtesy of Adventure Associates
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.
Photo: Courtesy of TeamBonding
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.
Photo: Courtesy of Corporate Games Team Building
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.
Photo: Courtesy of Wildly Different
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.
Photo: Courtesy of Corporate Games Team Building
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.
Photo: Courtesy of the Go Game
Photo: Courtesy of PhotoTap
Meerkat (left) and Periscope both allow users to instantly broadcast directly from their mobile devices.
Photos: Courtesy of apps
Photos: Courtesy of Ron Miziker; Courtesy of the University of New Mexico Press
Users can book teambuilding experiences right from the YoYo website, which includes information about pricing, duration, and ideal group size as well as details about the location, logistics, and outcomes.
Photo: Courtesy YoYo
Marriott's "VRoom Service" kit comes with headphones and a Samsung phone and headset, all delivered in a steel case.
Photo: Courtesy of Marriott Hotels
Guests who opt in to Eventbit will receive personalized recommendations based on their behaviors.
Photo: Courtesy Experient
O-Power set up a biking station to generate energy that would help offset the event's carbon footprint.
Photo: BizBash
1. Create Your Own
Event pros can generate buzz leading up to and surrounding an event with custom emoji. New York-based Swyft Media has been creating custom sets since 2012. Acquired by Monotype early last year, the company frequently works with companies and entities to come up with on-message emoji.
Photo: Courtesy of Swyft
Bluescape
Sponsor Bluescape demonstrated its visual collaborative software by erecting several multi-touch video walls around the conference. On the walls, attendees could read about conference activities and speaker content and bios, watch live streams of presentations, and contribute comments. Attendees could also access Bluescape using a Web browser.
Photo: Marla Aufmuth/TED
Target
Sponsor Target provided illustrators who created unique pieces of art based on guests’ descriptions of their hopes and dreams.
Photo: Marla Aufmuth/TED
Event Farm's Digital Gifting Wall
With Event Farm's Digital Gifting Wall, guests can have offers emailed to them by tapping a badge. Gifts include coupon codes, music files, and digital content.
Photo: Kristen Finn
Royal Caribbean
Offering visitors a taste of the future, Royal Caribbean’s Bionic Bar premiered at Italian Bites on the Beach on Friday night. The robotic bartending system, created by Makr Shakr, plucked bottles from overhead to mix drinks.
Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for SOBEWFF
Rather than traditional business attire, Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi donned the event's color—orange—for his opening keynote.
Photo: Courtesy of Content Marketing World
The conference’s color theme carried through to snacks served at breaks. Cups of cantaloupe and peaches, cupcakes with orange frosting, Cheetos, Orange Crush soda, and carrots with dip are some of the orange-hued bites that are offered.
Photo: Courtesy of Content Marketing World
The spaceship design of the keynote stage tied to the conference theme of "Content Strikes Back"—a play on Star Wars—and became a popular backdrop for attendees to use in photos.
Photo: Courtesy of Content Marketing World
Instead of a traditional panel format, organizers created a replica of the set from the game show Hollywood Squares to house two sessions: one featuring nine of the conference’s keynote speakers and another with instructors from the Content Marketing University as game participants. Tim Washer, creative director for Cisco and a comedy writer, served as host, asking participants questions related to content marketing.
Photo: Courtesy of Content Marketing World
Since the third year of the event, organizers have designed something to recognize repeat attendees. This year it was a "Wall of Fame" made of squares attached with Velcro, bearing the names of those who have attended since the event began six years ago and those who have attended the last five years. During the conference, the wall was a popular site for photos, and at the end the individuals could take their squares home.
Photo: Courtesy of Content Marketing World
After selecting the theme of “Content Strikes Back,” organizers lined up Star Wars actor Mark Hamill for the closing session. Pulizzi and Hamill sat in futuristic-looking orange chairs for their discussion.
Photo: Courtesy of Content Marketing World
Kingman Ink created graphic renderings from 20 sessions at the conference. The artwork was displayed in the exhibit hall until the final day when organizers stacked them outside the workshop rooms. Pulizzi said they switched to a square format for the renderings because that shape makes them more suitable to be shared on Instagram.
Photo: Courtesy of Content Marketing World
The Toyota Prius activation in Chicago's Grant Park for Lollapalooza this year offered a model car that doubled as a charging station. Inside the vehicle as many as five festival-goers could recharge their gadgets.
Photo: Barry Brecheisen for BizBash
