Good Afternoon,

I have been charged with leading an activity at our all employee meeting. There will be anywhere from 200 - 250 people in attendance. Any ideas on something as an icebreaker for such a large group? I will also be conducting an activity in small break out groups centered around areas of the company for improvement and what about our culture makes us different (in a good way). If anyone has any ideas please send them along. Thank you - jbaldwin@cffc.com

I found that if I search for large group activites, "large" is defined as about 20 or so. Depending on the set up for your event, I have a couple of suggestions:
1) Icebreaker when people can mix is people bingo. Create a couple of bingo cards with things on it like "find a person who has been to Alaska" (there's lots of examples on the web).
2) If people are at tables of 8-12, put a penny on the table and ask each person to provide a story of something they did during that year. Watch your dates though, if you have a really young audience, you don't want too many with dates in the 1970s.
3) To deal with your culture idea, I read about a game when you break into groups and create new acronyms that describe something about the company. You can spin it to get people thinking in whatever direction you want.

I would also recommend that you award some very small sort of prize if you can for those who are fastest or come up with the most varities. My last event had a beach theme and we gave away rubber ducks at about $.25 per -- we had a group of 16 so the cost was very reasonable!

Good luck!

we just created a game and had volunteers come to the front to participate - the audience wasn't quite 200, maybe 100ish. Let's Make a Deal...or No Deal - yes, a twist on Deal or No Deal and Let's Make a Deal. We created our own game board in ppt similar to Deal or No Deal, but before they saw what the prize was in the suitcase, they had to answer a question correctly. (Our topic was on disaster recovery, but you could do it with just about any topic). We had the CEO interrupt occassionally to negotiate (similar to the Banker in D or ND). Our prizes were very small, and there was a graphic on the presentation to represent the prize - we had free lunch, free lunch with the CEO, cash values, the max was $25, etc. The "winners" were given an envelope with the actual prize or coupon for the prize. The audience was able to participate by helping the volunteer Deal or No Deal, but couldn't shout out the question. We had 5 volunteers and 20 "briefcases". We had about 10 minutes allotted, but actually took about 15-20. It was a hoot! Everyone had fun, and we received great feedback. Our "Howie" was one of the trainers, so most people knew him, and he loves the show and knew (and incorporated) Howie's personality and "sayings".

I have several activities that might work for your group but I would want to know a bit more about the dynamics of the group before making any recommedations. You can go to http://www.teambuildersplus.com/team_events.html for some ideas. If you would like to discuss ideas, feel free to contact me at 856-596-4196.

Jeff