The office holiday party is a tradition unlike any other. As the old adage says, work hard play hard. Who doesn’t love unwinding with colleagues whom you go to battle daily in the corporate world? There’s nothing like seeing the stoic task-master melt away when you strike up a chat about his or her favorite hobby, the normally inaccessible executives mingling and recounting the company’s glory-filled early days, or the office extrovert in her or his element? Regardless of whether there’s a killer spread, who doesn’t love seeing a more festive side of your coworkers during the holidays? So how can we get together and watch our boss let loose when everything is shut down? If you tell me it’s another Zoom meeting, count me out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvZkLd-aoAw
With heavy demand for a UNIQUE holiday office party experience this past December, Zeacon developed a new solution that quickly won the hearts, minds, and team-building budgets of leading companies and nonprofits. World-class organizations like Amazon, Linkedin, Pymetrics, Taboola, Brave Software, PagerDuty, University of Colorado at Boulder, Conservation Northwest, and others quickly signed on and enjoyed their own unforgettable, innovative, and interactive office holiday parties which made folks forget all the work-from-home (WFH) isolation and boring meetings this Pandemic brought with it. We imagined differently about what an online holiday office party would look like. What do people miss about an office party, what will delight and surprise them, how can technology enable a better party instead of just a digital substitute? Essentially, how can we socialize via a computer without feeling like we are just attending another structured Zoom meeting with 15-minute breakouts? You know what I’m talking about…
We asked ourselves these questions and came up with a very intuitive, interactive, and just plain fun platform. Some companies that we have worked with ARE the type to have ping pong tables and bean bags, so we knew that our virtual party offering needed to be impressive. Other companies we worked with weren’t as tech-forward, but after 10 minutes of playing around, they were easily whirring around the platform. From expansive, multi-map, 400+ person festivals, to intimate, single-map gatherings, participants had a great time, and so did we as hosts. A few guests even told us that they had more fun in their Zeacon World party than they did at previous in-person events. With a dozen parties over two weeks, Zeacon’s clients were very happy with the way things turned out.
With custom and client-branded maps, Zeacon World’s truly immersive environments make you feel like you and your coworkers are actually together. One map may have you walking through Paris in winter, then a door takes you to Gatsby’s Mansion in 1920. Walk through another door in Gatsby’s Mansion and you are transported to an old speakeasy, with virtual card dealers and bartenders. After grabbing a drink you go sit down at the blackjack table and double down on 11. Immediately busting after hitting again on 16, you angrily head for the exit and pass by the accounting team discussing outstanding Q4 payments. Immediately your card game irritation is forgotten as you interrupt their conversation and do your best to convince everyone to forget about work and try to have some fun.
As it turns out, some of the deepest, most intimate, and thought-provoking conversations happen after a couple of drinks between you and a professional fortune teller that you just met. There were tons of choices for guests to enjoy themselves. One employee’s difficult choice was whether to have their dog or their cat in their custom digital caricature drawing, while other guests debated between taking a private lesson to create their own artwork or watching a live magic show
Executives gave speeches thanking their team for all their hard work and handed out awards. During all the partying, peers connected in a more personal way, and that’s all we could have wished for. While “work hard play hard” may sound overused or a management excuse to expect a lot more working than playing, the saying exists for a reason. We owe it to ourselves to take the time and create meaningful, fun experiences. The mind is most creative and teams bond more effectively during play. We all deserve to laugh and relax with the people we spend most of our time with outside of home. In addition to better team morale and a healthier company culture, office holiday parties create moments and memories we can collectively look back on with gratitude and as the team regroups to tackle the new year ahead of them.
At Zeacon, these are the moments that matter most to us, the moments we set out to create more of. That feeling of fulfillment and joy that comes when we have meaningful experiences with our coworkers, friends, and family. Realistically, we are unlikely to use our spare time to email everyone to join a scheduled video conference so we can just sit around our computers and “hang-out.” However, if we get together in a custom online world, where one can walk around and participate in fun activities together, we are more likely to spend that time with those close to us. Zeacon was extremely pleased to have delivered another service that demonstrates our mission of intelligently connecting communities.
If you or your organization are interested in an office party or other virtual work event — like offsites, kickoffs, team-building, customer events, supplier/partner summits, developer conferences, recruiting fairs, etc. — and want to explore Zeacon’s online, virtual live event solutions, leave a comment below or send us an email at team@zeacon.com. Even though the holidays are over, our Zeacon World virtual experiences provide affordable, safe solutions in today’s post-Covid business environment.
