Interactive Events

What makes a networking event interactive is having activities or games that incentivize people to interact with each other. These activities can range from a bingo networking ice breaker to a role-playing game, and I’ll share some ideas below.

Having talked with many community builders and event hosts, a common theme among great hosts is their enthusiasm for incorporating engaging, interactive ice breaker activities into their events.

Partly because they have either experienced events that were painfully awkward and recognize that an interactive element was missing, and they want their own events to stand out.

The whole point of an interactive event is to encourage people to talk and interact with each other. However, there are some guidelines: the activity shouldn’t be cringe, and it shouldn’t feel like you’re going way out of your way just to talk or interact with someone else. It should feel natural, like it’s part of the game.

Here are interactive ice breaker activities that can help make your event more interactive.

The Lego piece icebreaker is about connecting with someone else in the room who has the same piece or sticker as you.

The incentive naturally gives them something to ask, like “What’s your piece?” or “We have the same sticker, what’s your name?” and boom, connection made.

The idea is to give people an easy excuse to talk to new people, and this does exactly that.

A few recommendations: keep the pieces in a box or container, and have people grab one as they come in.

If you don’t have Lego (we forgive you), you can also use stickers. Ideally, have 10 color sets and have people pick a color on their way in, or randomly hand one to them.

Bingo is a classic networking ice breaker. Here’s a blog on how to run Bingo as an interactive networking activity.

The idea behind Bingo is that everyone has a prompt like, “Find someone wearing the same shirt color as you and ask them what inspires them to keep going.” The goal is for people to mingle and complete their prompts.

Bingo is especially useful for large groups, like 100+ people, because a platform like Jam Bingo makes it easy to set up and manage without printing paper sheets or handing out pens and pencils.

There’s no fixed list of icebreakers you have to use. You can also create your own or choose activities focused on team building.

One I really like is a team activity. Split the room into groups of five, then give each group a meter stick. Each person places one finger underneath the ruler, with only one finger per person.

The goal is for each team to work together to lower the stick to the ground without anyone removing their finger.

If at any point a group member’s finger comes off, the team has to restart and reset.

Here’s a video that demonstrates the game!

What makes this fun is that it’s much harder than it looks. People quickly realize they need to talk to each other, learn names, and communicate, which naturally encourages interaction and connection.

This one is not for the weak. Everyone gets 15 minutes to create a rap or poem, which they will later share with the group.

It can be silly, it can be Eminem-level, whatever people feel comfortable with. By the end of the time limit, they present their work of art to the group.

If you have a larger group, it may be best to split everyone into smaller groups of five so everyone has an equal chance to listen and share.

I hope by now you see there are several ways to make a networking event interactive. There are no prescribed activities or rules. The key is to create an activity that gives people a natural excuse to interact and talk with one another.

Giving people an incentive to talk and interact is what it means to truly have an interactive networking mixer.