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Wikimedia Product/Technical Program Management/Virtual Bonfire

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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

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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

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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.