Zapier First Metaverse Retreat Party for Employees

Zapier is a company that specializes in eliminating routine work. Its mission is to make automation incredibly easy and accessible to everyone. With Zapier, users can integrate apps like Salesforce, Intuit, Google, and Dropbox, to automatically move data between them and focus on doing their most important work.

The company is 100% remote with teammates spanning 36 US states and 30 countries around the world. Every year, the company hosts a retreat where all of the teams from around the world come together for one week in a single place. 

Working remotely, each team member spends many daytime hours chatting on Slack and talking into webcams during meetings. Twice a year, before the pandemic, the entire company would get together in a different city to see what happens when everyone comes together in one place.

It is more important than ever for the team to be united and understand each other from a distance. That’s why the company arranges retreat parties every year. This helps team members to get to know each other better, have fun, and just talk about whatever is on their minds without having to think about work issues.

The Solution:

The first step in creating the “Zap to the future” metaverse event was choosing the right time for hosting the party and generating virtual retreat ideas for games and activities. Teams are located all over the world, so whenever it is daytime for some teams it is nighttime for others. Therefore, we planned two days’ worth of activities at different times. This way, the event’s happenings would be convenient and engage the maximum number of people from the Zapier team to take part in retreat activities, no matter their location.

The retreat party was filled with virtual activities in the metaverse which were made up of mixed groups by day and time. Among the most popular activities were:

• Corporate Quiz Night. All colleagues divide into separate teams and answer questions related to their company/industry/any other topic. The game is hosted by a Quiz Master who does Trivia nights for different teams.  
• Masterclass “The Startender” from our friends Hey Bartender: great bartenders deliver the speakeasy atmosphere with creative garnishes and a few stories about the drinks. It’s an excellent way to learn something new and impress your colleagues.

• Treasure Hunt – every guest roams around the space, scans the QR codes, and completes tasks to win the game. 
• Virtual Dance Party – all you have to do is decide what genre you want and the DJ takes it from there. Also, participants vote for the next song to involve the audience in the activity.
• Music Gameshow “Pop Quiz” – the host guides the team through the history of music in this game show quiz. There is singing, laughing, and competing against one another to win the prize.
• Built-in table games such as “Who am I?” and “Pictionary”.
• Speed Networking.
• Karaoke Trivia “Famous First Words” – this is a combination of a quiz and karaoke at its best. The host starts singing the first lines of a song and players should take it from there. The first person to sing the lyrics gets points, players are spotlighted on the main stage.

Choosing the right set of activities for a two-day metaverse party was a real challenge. Based on our experience, we loaded the party with as many trivia games as we could think of to kick off the event and help break the ice among guests.

While all the teams were working remotely, they needed some free time for networking. At Party.Space, users can do more than one thing at a time. For example, guests can enjoy a DJ performance and discuss it with other guests at the same time.   

Party.Space was really fun to explore and I loved discovering surprise features along the way. The audio/video worked great and having guests on stage, like a DJ and a quizmaster, felt natural. Party.Space gave us the opportunity to connect with each other in a way that we normally wouldn’t have since we don’t live in the same cities.

Joe S., Product Marketer at Zapier

The Results

Metaverse visitors were logged in to the online virtual party retreat for more than 7 hours on average. 

Many participants said that they appreciated how chatting, table interactions, and video faces were set up to move throughout the event. Newcomers mentioned that it was awesome to interact with colleagues that they usually only exchange emails with, in a social way, as if they’re at a holiday party or something. Everybody enjoyed the customization options and add-on capabilities.

We really enjoyed our Metaverse party that was hosted on the party.space platform. There were a ton of games and activities that kept our employees engaged and connected with each other throughout the event. I highly recommend using Party.Space!

Shanèl Dear, Event Planner at Zapier

With Party.Space, you can organize and host any type of metaverse celebration, including retreat parties, team building activities, product launches, and anniversaries. Check out our portfolio for more virtual parties.

Have you visited one of our virtual events recently? Feel free to write a review of Party.Space on G2 using the link and G2 will donate to Razom for Ukraine, a Ukrainian non-profit organization.