Long-Distance Connections: How to Host a Remote Adventure During the Holidays
Have a mission. Be in motion.
This past week, as I began to contemplate the topic of 2020 holiday parties, I was feeling both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Can’t it just be (choose the date enough of us are safely vaccinated) already? So, rather than crawling into bed (or more accurately, in addition to crawling into bed), I phoned-a-friend. I turned to one of the most creative, fierce, insightful experience designers I know: Ida Benedetto. (For close readers of The Art of Gathering, you may remember Ida as the “transgression consultant” who creates experiences like the secret bar nestled in a water tower and the fake conference in the Waldorf Astoria.)
I asked Ida how she’d approach virtual parties right now, given everything. Her clarity and ingenuity led me to do a relieved happy dance in my kitchen.
Here’s what she said:
“My big suggestion, especially given the circumstances that we are in, is instead of doing a party, which usually means being kind of stationery in one place together, think about going on an adventure. And all you need to do to go from a "party" to an "adventure" is have a mission and be in motion.”
Editor’s note: 🤯
All you need to do to go from a “party” to an “adventure” is have a mission and be in motion.
So what does that mean?
For her 30th birthday, Ida had a friend, Neil Selkirk, who was working on a personal photography project where he’d hunt for the weirdest, coolest bathroom latches in bars. Tickled by the project, she thought “Why don’t we use my birthday as an excuse to rove around to a bunch of different bars and find the best, most scratched up or unique latches together?” So, for her 30th birthday, she invited a dozen friends to wear comfortable walking shoes and be ready to find the best bathroom bar latches in the city.
Years later, her friends still recall that evening as one of the more fun and memorable nights of living in New York City. Ida laughs because it wasn’t rocket science, it was pretty arbitrary, and it was a relatively simple offer. And, here’s the thing: it needn’t have been bathroom latches to make the night fun. She happened to land on that prompt because of her love of Neil Selkirk’s project, but it could have been any relevant prompt (that someone was excited about) and gave the group a shared purpose and put them into motion.
So, at a moment where it’s safer to be outside and being in motion is going to keep us warmer than standing around even the warmest of bonfires, here’s a little inspiration from Ida Benedetto on how to host a remote, synchronous, physical adventure for and with your people during the holiday time of Corona.
Step 1: Dig into people’s immediate environments. Whether you’re part of a distributed team, or perhaps you’ve been in the same city but have been in different neighborhoods all year, Benedetto encourages “learning a little bit about everyone's immediate environments to create a sense of closeness despite being apart.”
Step 2: Choose an achievable, specific mission that gets people into motion. “Like the photos of bar bathroom latches, it can be banal. It just needs to be something that at least some of the group is obsessively passionate about,” Benedetto says. You could have each member of the team write a mission that anyone should be able to complete in their neighborhood.
Things like:
Share a photo of a place close to home that makes you happy.
Find out the name of a stranger you interact with regularly and post their name and how you know them here.
Share one detail of your home that has changed over the course of the pandemic.
Share an aspect of seasons changing where you are.
Record one sound that annoys the hell out of you but you have no control over.
Find a trinket to give to a neighbor as a present, photograph it at their door and the note you leave with it as an explanation.
Step 3: Start out on a virtual Zoom call together, get oriented, and then get off of the call and into your neighborhoods.
Step 4: Post results of accomplishing the mission to a Whatsapp group or Slack channel as you go to create a sense of co-presence.
Step 5: Reconvene at a certain time back on Zoom to compare notes, and talk about how everyone completed their missions.
To create a sense of togetherness, you could also have people work in pairs. Pairs could meet up (safely and masked) in person outdoors or collaborate together remotely. When everyone comes back together, drink-in-hand and funny SnapChat filters on, each pair talks about the most fun moment they had completing the missions or the mission that they are most proud of.
***
Whether you actually host a “holiday adventure” for your team or Ida’s insights spark other imaginative responses, I wish for you and yours moments of shared mission and motion this season.
Inspirations
I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I did having it. Though I’m the guest, pay close attention to Brené as host. She’s an incredible interviewer and the range and tone of what we cover is because of how she navigates the terrain.
A Mission to Make Virtual Parties Actually Fun
I loved this piece by Gretchen McCulloch on the next generation of virtual parties. She’s a linguist and the author of the wonderful Because Internet.
Use This Startup's Playbook for Running Impactful Virtual Offsites
This incredibly detailed article is a generous, transparent, helpful guide on how to host a powerful virtual team retreat.
The World’s Longest Zoom Event
Apparently, the Lubavitch community hosted the world’s longest Zoom event this November. Originally planned to be 22 hours long, the global community gathered for 120 continuous hours of prayer, translation, interpretation and study on Zoom. Thanks to AOG reader Baila Olidort for sharing.
The Bigger Picture: Lighting of the Lawn, 2020 Style
My alma mater took one of their most beloved rituals, called Lighting of the Lawn, and figured out how to still let current college students this year be a part of it. Check it out.
