Secret Gardens

There is a solid part of my life that is seemingly a constant tug-of-war between avoiding the emotional exhaustion caused by social activities and understanding the necessity of bonding with the people that I work with on a personal level.

I suspect that one day the avoidance part will win, but until then I'm going to keep organising social things for the greater good.

I've not got a lot of normal writing time this week, what with an impending trip to the Atlassian offices in Sydney for yet more intentional togetherness. Combined with the fact that I am still reeling from coming back to work after three weeks leave and dealing with the mental ramifications of a week of anxiety from cyclone Alfred, this is going to be a very quick one.

Maybe so quick as to not even count as a stream of consciousness.

A spurt of consciousness?

That sounds kind of gross though.

Anyway, the most recent social thing that I organised was yet another guessing game intended to help people learn more about each other. The original variant of this sort of thing was the fridge game, and I've done at least one variant involving music as well.

This time it was gardens, as you can probably guess from the title of this blog post. I mean, if you were paying attention that is.

The structure is exactly the same:

• Everyone who wants to participate gives me a photo of their garden, or what counts for a garden in their primary place of residence
• I collate them all together, randomise the order and then put them all in an easily accessible Google Photos album with any identifying information filed off (like the EXIF data)
• Everyone who is participating gets together for an hour or so, with the facilitator showing the photos one by one and encouraging guessing and other conversation
• The person who guesses the most correctly gets something nice at the end

It's pretty simple and can be thrown together in maybe an hour or two? Honestly, it might not even take that long.

All you really need behind the scenes is an album for the photos, a spreadsheet for tracking the guesses, and the will to make it happen.

The results?

Not quite as engaging as the original fridge game, because fridges are surprisingly personal and filled with all sorts of interesting titbits of information, but probably a little bit more engaging than the song guessing game because gardens are definitely more personal than musical choices.

All in all, I'd recommend it for any group that wants to bond a little bit, which is basically any group of people that regularly works together.

Now that I've done a few variants of this guessing game, I think I'll do something a bit different next time, because of course there will be a next time, I am nothing if not predictable and pattern oriented.

Something a bit more competitive, pitting people against each other in a humorous way, while also being entertaining for those who are not directly competing.

And I'm just buzzing with the perfect idea.