Conference Icebreakers Set the Stage for a Great Event
Great conference icebreakers set the stage for successful meetings and events. These short opening programs are often overlooked or undervalued. But they shouldn’t be.
An engaging, interactive session will help ensure attendees are tuned in, motivated and ready to go.
Our icebreaker programs are the perfect way to kick off a meeting. Led by our Grammy-winning hit songwriters, our musical programs will inspire your participants as you create and perform a song that celebrates your organization’s culture.
How do you utilize brief time in your agenda to begin a spectacular conference? Our opening programs are designed for this. We begin with a high energy introduction and musical performance. Then we move into our interactive song session.
Based on the pre-program input you give us, we develop the right questions to set the tone. Participants share ideas using wireless microphones and our audience participation platform. The session builds momentum as ideas become song lyrics and we put it all to music.
The program culminates with everyone on their feet – singing, playing percussion and recording your song.
- Group sizes range from from 50 to 5,000.
- Agenda times range from 20 minutes to 90 minutes.
- This program works well for most groups including companies, associations and non-profit organizations.
Client Success Stories
How We Do It
You don’t have to be musical to feel comfortable and participate in our conference icebreakers. Both introverts and extroverts will find easy ways to participate.
With our hit songwriter-leaders on stage and moving throughout the crowd, everyone gets involved. As we ask questions, ideas flow. Your musical brainstorm and song lyric takes shape as ideas are shared on video screens throughout the room.
Collectively, you’ll be crafting your lyric (your story) as we put it all to music. When the song is complete, we get everyone on their feet, joining in as we record the live performance.
While there’s never pressure to perform, we find a high level of performance participation – there’s opportunity for attendees to play percussion, harmonicas, sing and more.
You should do this because it’s fun and because it works – but an additional bonus is the song you create and record. It’s a powerful take-away and will become a lasting part of your company’s identity.
MP3 recordings of your song will be available following your event.
Why Icebreakers Are Important
I can’t overstate how many times we’ve been on the phone with a potential client who’s been tasked with finding program content, but their heart isn’t in it. Why? Because they’ve sat through too many boring sessions.
A good session will help you transition. Attendees often arrive with skepticism about the value of a conference. Or maybe some of them are tired from travel. Everyone has different expectations and attitudes.
So it’s vital to create an opening that motivates and unifies the crowd, prepping people to be excited and receptive for the rest of your conference programming.
Every organization has different reasons for planning a conference. It may be anything from a quarterly review to launching a new initiative. Whatever the reason, you want to create an environment that draws people in and opens them up. Our programs do this really successfully.
Music, The Universal Language
Everyone relates to music. Even if you can’t carry a tune or play an instrument, music and song is an integral part of your life. Whether you’re looking for icebreaker programs for small groups or for a large conference event, starting with music is impactful. You’ll draw people in with emotion and energy, rather than just talking at them!
Songs tell stories and most simply put, we help you tell your story through song. The combination of entertainment, story, participation and song creates a fun and relatable experience.
We get a high level of buy-in because we invite participants in through a step by step process. We don’t jump off stage and say, “Susan, put on a purple wig and sing.” That would be embarrassing. We begin with questions, building momentum through ideating and conversation which culminates in a unified musical performance.
Meeting Icebreakers For Small Groups
Small conferences need opening sessions to set the stage for success too. With fifty or a hundred people you may worry less about participation and interaction, but it’s actually just as easy for people to become bored or tune-out in a small group.
While our foundational strategy is similar in approaching all of our opening sessions, if your conference is on the smaller side we’ll spend time during the session breaking into smaller sub-groups.
We take time with all of our clients to do pre-program work, to get to know you and your goals. No two clients are the same and even when we work with repeat clients, each conference will have a specific set of goals.
One Client’s Experience
We led a program for a client who needed an icebreaker session for 1,700 people with an agenda time of forty minutes. Their goals were to find something out of the box and highly interactive – a session that would create energy to send people off into the general conference feeling enthused and motivated.
We start with our team on stage. During our program introduction we play a mock-up song about your company or organization. It’s great entertainment but it’s also a light-bulb moment. It shows everyone in the room that they can indeed write a song about anything…even your organization!
After the opening performance we join the crowd with wireless microphones and start with simple questions that get people involved. Questions like, “what do you do?” or “what differentiates you?”. As people share ideas they are projected overhead to video screens. We integrate our audience response system to ensure everyone in the room is hands on.
Even with well over a thousand people in the room we allow time for table groups to come up with themes and song titles and then share them back with the larger group. Strangers at tables will soon be laughing and rhyming; breaking the ice through conversation and shared challenge.
With our musicians on stage and our songwriters covering the room, we’re able to keep the energy of the music going while the song is developing. The large group lyric brainstorm on the video screen soon becomes a finished song and then we get everyone up on their feet to join in as we sing and record.
We’re a small and personal company, but we’re proud of our large base of Fortune 500 companies. Our testimonials say it for us. Organizations including Salesforce, Microsoft, Unilever, Dell Technologies, Spotify, Apple, L’Oreal, Cigna, Sotheby’s, Ford Motors, Pfizer, Novartis and many non-profits trust us to create the perfect opening to each of their conferences.