The HM Social Calendar is for setting up social activities to do with other humans. There are always short games running throughout the week but you can add activities yourself. Working remotely can get lonely so it’s good to be able to connect in different ways.
What kind of things can I add?
Anything that you want (provided it is safe for work!).
If you want to ask questions about adding items or brainstorm ideas you can drop into #people-social on Slack.
There are some ideas in the handbook page on games. If you have any of your own ideas add them to the page.
Here are some ideas:
- Board games – we have used Board Game Arena and Jack box games in the past
- Walk and talk – go for a walk at the same time and chat about stuff
- Computer games – play Age of Empires or Animal Crossing or whatever it is that people are playing right now
- Book club – talk about a book
- Coffee/tea break – grab a coffee together
- Virtual drinks – grab a beer or a wine or a gin and have a drink together
- Skill-sharing – share some of your non-work skills – paint a watercolour, compose a tune, do a yoga class, write a poem, show off your dog grooming techniques, demonstrate how to make soap.
- Remote conference – pick a conference video online and watch it together. Chat about what you are watching and what you’ve learned.
- Kids catchup – get some of the kids of HM together to meet and do some activities.
- Flashtalks – corral a group of people into doing three minute flash talks
Guidelines
Below are some guidelines for adding things to the calendar:
- Add whatever you want. You can add things that are speculative and plan to delete it if no one signs up for it.
- Advertise your event. Post it to updates – tell people what you are planning and what the minimum attendance is.
- RSVP. If you want to attend, RSVP by adding yourself to the event on the calendar.
- Commit to showing up. If you have RSVPed, you should attend the event. If you are unable to you should let the organiser know as soon as you can. Sometimes life will get in the way, but not showing up because you don’t feel like it isn’t a good reason. Organisers will make plans based on the number of attendees and it’s unfair on them to cancel without a good reason.
- Feel free to delete. If you set up an event and you don’t have enough attendees, delete it.
- Don’t stress about time zones. You will never be able to include everyone. The goal is to have multiple activities running, not to have everyone be able to attend all the things.
- Duplicate! If there is something you want to attend but you can’t., duplicate it and run it yourself.
- For the ongoing games, if there isn’t a time that works for you, either change the time of a slot or create a duplicate and add another.
- This isn’t something that we will be allocating time for. Think of it as the drink you are having after work or the walk you take at lunchtime.
- If you set something up, then you are accountable for it. This includes running the thing, updating attendees if there are changes, and finding a replacement for yourself if you can’t make it.
- Add the tag
[slack:#channelname]to have a reminder sent to a channel just before the event. You will need to change the channel name to the correct Slack cannel. If you don’t add it, it will pipe into the general channel. - If you need a Zoom meeting space for more than 2 people and for longer than 40 minutes and don’t have a Pro account, please log into the HM General Calendar zoom account to create a meeting link. Do check the HM General Calendar to see if the zoom account is in use for any other meetings.