Wikimedia Product/Technical Program Management/Virtual Bonfire

A virtual bonfire is a 60 to 90 minute event held around the theme of bonfires, and by extension, camping, other outdoor activities, and vacations. For the actual bonfire, the host can present a bonfire from a streaming platform, for example, 10 Hours Big Bonfire Video and Soundscape. It is preferable if the streamed video does not include advertisements aside from perhaps at the beginning.

Format

Pick ideas from the following list, optionally consulting the team agreement / inclination. It is unlikely that your team will be able to do all of them at one event. The target durations are pulled out of thin air; feel free to substitute your own durations.

1. Welcoming remarks / introduction (Target duration ~ 5 minutes)
2. Ice breaker / setting the mood (Target duration ~ 10-15 minutes)
3. Ghost Story: a team member or the host can volunteer to find and read a story, but one could conceivably find a reading done online (Target duration ~ 20 minutes)
4. Sing-Along: this needs 100% buy-in from the team, obviously. Team members from various countries and cultures can volunteer to teach the team a camping or children’s song to expand our horizons (Target duration ~ 20 minutes)
5. Virtual Camping Trip / Virtual Vacation: team members send the host photographs from camping trips / hikes / skiing trips / favourite vacations, and the host combines them and presents them to the team, with commentary from the contributors and other attendees (Target Duration ~ 20 minutes)
6. Cooking / Snack time: Each team member acquires a candle and cooks marshmallows (or s’mores, suitable adapted to other regions where a key substrate ingredient cannot be found); alternatively, attendees can make and consume camp staples like hot chocolate or cocoa, popcorn, or trail mix or gorp, washed down with water, beer, wine, or soft drinks. (Target Duration 10-20 minutes)
7. Trivia Contest: The host can put together a presentation containing trivia questions and answers tailored to the team’s knowledge, or make use a web site that provides general trivia questions, like Random Trivia Generator (Target duration: ~ 15-20 minutes)

Planning

Send out the invitation one to two weeks before the event; you can give the team additional notice by asking for photographs for the virtual camping trip portion, volunteers to read ghost stories, songs to sing, or trivia questions, a week before setting up the meeting. If the team is going to cook marshmallows or s’mores, remind them to obtain candles, matches / lighters, marshmallows, and skewers for cooking before the bonfire.