by Simon Pearton-Hindley
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08 Jun, 2020
Let's face it, with the current situation it's hard to know what day it is, and with the random weather even what time of year it is :D With that in mind my idea is to bring an adaptation of Secret Santa to our now much more frequent virtual meetings. If you don't what Secret Santa is; it is a simple idea where you take the names of all your team members and randomly give each team member one name (making sure they don't receive their own). Each team member must then buy that person a gift up to the value of a predefined budget. Gifts are then left in a secure location with the name of the recipient but not the name of the giver; this is to keep the gift-givers anonymity. This means that each team member receives one gift and there is a high chance of hilarity when the gifts are opened. Knowing how much fun Secret Santa can be, I decided to put a spin on the idea and spice up our now more frequent virtual meetings. I initially did this with friends and the outcome was so good that I am confident that with a little bit of buy-in from your team members your next meeting could be one that is talked about for years to come. The idea is simple: Just like with Secret Santa, each person is given the name of another team member; but instead of a random gift, they are tasked to order the person lunch. Simply agree to a budget between you and then order the food online to be delivered to the secret recipient. Each team member will then receive a surprise meal to enjoy during the meeting :D In the spirit of niceness, it is worthwhile finding out peoples dislikes, allergies, or dietary requirements before placing any orders to ensure everyone receives a meal that they will like. If the sharing of your team members home address is not acceptable to all, get the team manager (who will most likely have all the addresses already) to place the orders the team’s behalf. Now sit back, warm up your appetite, and let your meeting 2.0 begin. bon appétit