Want to Engage Your Staff During Conferences? Here Are Fun Interactive Games for Presentations

If you’re a middle manager in the US, you likely spend about 35% of your time in meetings. If you’re in upper management, you could spend 50% of your work hours in meetings.

But then it’s your turn to give a presentation or host a conference. Suddenly, you don’t want people to be scrolling social media or sending emails. You want them engaged and interested. But how?

Read on for a list of interactive games for presentations everyone will love.

Introduction Interviews

The start of a conference workshop is your first chance to show the attendees that this isn’t going to be your typical boring presentation.

Introducing yourself to a room full of people is awkward at best and intimidating at worst.

A fun conference idea is to reinvent the usual introductions. Instead of having attendees say their name, their job title, and their favorite fruit, have them interview someone else in the room.

Put the group in pairs. Give them all five minutes to find out about their partner. Tell them to find out about the person’s background, professional path, and hobbies.

Then have each person introduce their interviewee.

The introductions will go more like this:

This is Jane. She has been an entrepreneur since she sold her homemade greeting cards at farmer’s markets when she was 10. She has just launched a startup non-profit. Oh, and she can speak American Sign Language and loves to scuba dive.

This conference idea will make the intros more interesting and also help people network.

Two Truths and a Lie

Two truths and a lie is a fun conference idea that works as a great icebreaker. It works well in small groups as well as big audiences.

Basically, you ask someone to share two things that are true and one thing that is false about themselves. The audience has to guess which one is false.

This is another way to make introductions less stiff. You can use live polls to get everyone to vote on which is the lie. Have the results appear on the screen as you go.

Round of Elimination

Any ideas for conference activities that involve standing or walking around are a good idea.

This is a great activity to toss in halfway between when you start your presentation and halfway to the first break.

Ask everyone to stand up. Then have them sit when your statement applies to them.

You might say, sit down if you’ve never attended this conference before and so on.

20 Questions

The good old fashioned game 20 questions isn’t just fun during a road trip. It works great as an interactive game during a presentation.

You can think of a person in your industry, organization and give them a chance to try to deduce who it is. The audience can shout out questions. The caveat is that the questions must be able to get a yes or no answer only.

You can flip this game around and have a word or picture appear on a screen. You are blindfolded and have to ask the audience 20 questions to try to figure out the answer.

Create a sense of excitement by setting a 60-second timer for all 20 questions. When time runs out, it’s time to guess.

Scavenger Hunts

The kid in all of us loves a good scavenger hunt. This is one of those fun conference ideas that get people moving.

It’s best if you have an exhibit hall to work with such as the space available at https://www.midlothiancenter.com/.Send the attendees to match vendors with the clues you hand out.

It’s fun and informative for the attendees and also a good chance for the vendors to interact with more people. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Table Teams

Sometimes, people are thrown together at a table with strangers at a conference or workshop.

One of the best ideas for conference activities is to turn tables into teams. Have each table create a team name, decorate a sign or even make a logo.

Then have teams work together to have group discussions, problem solve a scenario or work on a group project.

This will help the table get to know one another and make connections. And it will get them interacting. This is one of many ways that you can improve team bonding through games.

Would You Rather?

Would you rather is a popular pre-teen game. But you can easily tailor it to be one of your best, fun conference ideas.

It’s best if you have visuals for this game with a live poll. That way, you pose the question and the audience can answer.

Show the results on a donut chart so that attendees can clearly see how they voted as a group. Your questions can be related to your industry or they can be about which type of superpowers they’d rather have.

After the voting, you can take a few minutes to get a select number of people to explain why they voted for their choice.

Human Bingo

If you want your attendees to interact and network, one of the best ways you can do that is by playing human bingo.

Any conference ideas that get people talking to each other will be a hit. And this icebreaker is a fun way for people to get to know lots of people in a short amount of time.

All you do is hand out bingo cards with a bunch of personal and work-type statements. You can have things like “I have more than three pets” and “I have been with the company for over 10 years.”

Then, the guests will have to go around the room and try to find people that fit the statements on their card. The first person to complete their card wins.

It’s a nice surprise if you have a small prize for the winner.

Final Thoughts on Interactive Games for Presentations

There you have it. A bunch of interactive games for presentations that you can use at your next conference or workshop.

Remember, the goal is to get people talking, walking, laughing and thinking. And if you can do that several times during your presentation, you’ve hit gold.

Next, check out these 5 traits to look for when hiring new employees.