Successful Meetings - January 2008 - (Page 60)

Fortune 1000 Casualty division. On the first day of the event, the 15 participants met with human resources and senior management, attended classes, and heard presentations promoting leadership goals of creativity, professionalism, and “thinking outside the box,” LoPinto says. The organizers then wanted an activity for the second day that would encourage attendees to put those goals into practice. Facilitating the activity was City Hunt (www.cityhunt.org), a Manhattan-based “experiential adventure agency” that specializes in building custom-designed scavenger hunts for groups. The hunts are designed to combine competitive fun with overall corporate goals by giving teams a series of clues, challenges, and picture tasks to complete to advance through the game. “The goals often involve generating cohesiveness, getting the group to understand the culture of the company—and that’s where we come in. We try to help the attendees feel as if they are part of a team,” says City Hunt CEO Ben Hoffman. For example, to achieve a goal of creativity, City Hunt may challenge attendees to take a picture of a teammember under water, Hoffman says. How the team chooses to complete that task, such as by holding a glass of water above their heads, helps attendees understand to look for creative solutions to problems and challenges they may face in their jobs. LoPinto says attendees were not told the specifics of the scavenger hunt ahead of time, in order to build anticipation. “The only thing that we told them was to wear comfortable walking shoes,” LoPinto says, and that generated speculation among attendees that the activity would require anything from sneakers to combat boots. “Their interest was piqued. They are a very competitive group internally and they wanted to be prepared. They took it on like they were going to be on an episode of The Apprentice,” she says. Fifteen attendees participated in the Get Your Game Face On A group of newly promoted managers from AIG Executive Liability, a member company of insurance giant AIG, capped off a two-day training meeting by hitting the streets of lower Manhattan on a scavenger hunt to accomplish a series of tasks designed to reinforce the management values and lessons they learned in the classroom. activity, and were split into five teams of three. City Hunt provided then the teams with digital cameras, a list of clues, and a phone number they could call for help if a team became stuck on a difficult task. “Everybody had the same list of tasks, and a lot of it was taking a picture of your team or an individual on your team doing one thing or another in the downtown area,” says Jillian Alger, senior marketing manager for the company and a participant in the City Hunt program for AIG. “Everybody was off and running in different directions.” The teams had two agendas: to follow clues leading them around the Wall Street area to the finish line, and a list of tasks to complete, such as taking a picture with a police officer, or taking a picture of a team member cooking at a local restaurant, some of which could earn them additional points. Many of the pictures the teams were mimegasite.com challenged to take reinforced the lessons they learned the previous day during classes, Alger says. “We had to take a picture of our team overcoming boundaries, so we went into a bookstore and took a picture of ourselves with a map,” she says. The hunt was also fun for attendees that were unfamiliar with New York, as it led them around to well-known sights such as Wall Street and South Street Seaport. “Two of my teammates were from the West Coast,” Alger says, “and I work in New York but I haven’t done too much exploring, so it was good for all of us. One thing we had to do was go to Battery Park and take a picture of the Statue of Liberty.” After the event the teams regrouped at AIG Executive Liability headquarters, and were served refreshments as City Hunt took 15 minutes to upload the teams’ JANUARY 2008 SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS 60 http://www.cityhunt.org http://mimegasite.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Successful Meetings - January 2008

Successful Meetings - January 2008 Contents Editor's Note Associations Research Events Suppliers Associations On the Record Associations Suppliers Planner Spotlight Websites of the Month Management Matters Meeting the Law Personal Success Mouth for Sale Food & Beverage Professional Development On Site Pre-Event Tools of the Trade Veggie Power Tennis, Anyone? Seeing is Believing The Wild Green Yonder Game On Places & Spaces Galveston & Texas Beaches Greater Seattle Singapore Gurus

Successful Meetings - January 2008

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