Virtual Icebreakers to Use at Your Next Virtual Conference

Having a hard time connecting with people or feeling alien at your own virtual conference? As a virtual conference host, keeping your attendees engaged can be challenging. Ideally, people should be dropping comments in the chat box or asking questions in Q&A sessions. But that doesn’t always happen. The daily virtual interactions have exhausted people. To counter fatigue and disinterest, we highly recommend using virtual icebreakers to prompt attendees’ participation and make them feel more connected to each other. 

Let’s look into the top virtual icebreakers that can make your next virtual conference a big success.

What are Good Virtual Icebreakers?

Activities that make people comfortable enough to participate during a virtual event are notably good virtual icebreakers. But there is a catch to it – you’ll have to figure out which virtual icebreaker would suit your particular audience. 

Here are some good virtual icebreakers you can include in your next virtual conference:

Trivia Games

Encouraging a two-way interaction with games is always fun. Gamifying your event lets attendees open up to you and make them feel less alien at the event.

Create a set of 10 trivia questions that are solvable within 2 to 3 minutes, at max. It could be general trivia or company-specific. Depending on your audience and time, put two to three options. Or you can go for open-ended questions too. By the end, the person with the most correct answers wins the game.

The fun part is, you can pick any fun questions for the quiz topic and any template in Kahoot. Here are some questions that you can add to your trivia game if the conference is for your company:

• Who do you think takes a nap during lunch breaks?

• What is the most annoying thing co-workers do at work?

• Who do you think watched pet videos to reduce stress?

• Why do you think this person is called “the top-notch”?

• How many people do you think belong to the IT department?

• Among these people, who would do anything to skip meetings?

To make it more interesting, you can divide into teams and put a timer for each Q&A. Team rivalry boosts engagement, maximizes interaction, and builds strong bonds among the attendees.

Take a Picture of

Turn on your camera and take your best shot! Holding a virtual event with visuals can be a great conversation starter. It’s refreshing, fun, and a perfect break from an information-packed event.

Attendees can share:

• Photo of their team,

• Play a photo guessing game, 

• Share a photo with a fun back story, 

• Their favorite spot/thing in the house, or

• An outside view from their workspace, etc. 

Everyone has to upload photos based on the theme you set for the day. Put it on the Photobooth with a catchy caption. Then, hear the intriguing backstories about those photos. Or put prize money or best photoshoot award!

Nevertheless, it’s better to give a heads up about the photo icebreaker. So attendees are well prepared and also add their own creative ideas to engage in your virtual event.

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Enjoy, make fun memories and instantly form bonds with your audience. Virtual scavenger hunt lets your virtual audience collaborate in real-time. 

Prepare a list of common-yet-interesting items before the event. Add them into the virtual environment of your online conference. Ask your audience to hunt for it. You can go with this virtual icebreaker recursively for about 1 to 5 minutes. 

You can make your audience hunt for:

• A coffee mug,

• Something with yellow color,

• An item starts with “A”,

• Conference-specific objects, and whatnot!

The best part is, you can add your own creative ideas to the virtual scavenger hunt icebreaker. So, be sure to make it fun and engaging for a global audience.

What are Fun Virtual Icebreaker Questions?

Back to back presentations and talks can exhaust your audience. So fun virtual icebreaker questions are used in between the event to excite people. At times, you can also call it a wake-up activity.

You can ask them:

• If you were a potato, how would you like to be cooked?

• Have you ever been mistaken for someone famous?

• What song describes your life right now?

• Have you ever tried strange food combinations?

• Which one of Avengers’ characters best describes you – Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, or Loki?

Here are some ideas of fun virtual icebreaker questions along with virtual icebreakers to make a lively environment at your virtual conference:

Round-Robin Questions

Looking for a virtual icebreaker that fosters your attendee’s productivity and creativity? Then go for the round-robin questions. It is a great way to relax and loosen up everybody – even if they are almost strangers to each other. 

Post a question in the event group chat or on a whiteboard using Miro within a welcome webinar session. Each participant has to share their insights or opinions within 15 to 20 seconds. After the circle completes, you can proceed with the session or ask another question. 

Some fun virtual icebreaker questions that you can ask your audience in the activity are:

• The best thing of the day?

• Favorite spot: beach or mountain?

• What was the last movie you watched?

• Who do you look up to as a hero? And why?

• If you were an animal, which one would you be?

• Let’s talk about the last time you took a crazy risk.

Not only do people enjoy these questions, but they come with innovative ideas too. As a matter of fact, this virtual icebreaker is best used as a fun brainstorming session. So, make sure to think of two to three engaging questions before the event begins.

A Ride in the Time Machine

Worried about people leaving in the middle of a session due to boredom or fatigue? Don’t worry, cause that’s the right time to make people go for a ride in the time machine with some icebreaking questions.

Ask them:

• If you could travel, where would you go? Past or future?

• If in the past, to which time period would you choose? Why? What would you like to change in your past?

• If in the future, where do you see yourself? How do you think you reach your goal?

• Would you just want to stay or come back? Why?

Aside from enjoying and learning from their past silly mistakes, the responses might amaze you. Because often people may discover interesting facts about themselves during this icebreaker.

That is why it is one of the best ways to engage an audience in a virtual conference specially designed for employee training. Also, it is kind of fun and pleasant to explore people’s potential in this way.

Rapid Fire Questions

When it comes to knowing your audience in the quickest way, use rapid fire questions. It lets you engage the audience with short talks in less time.

You can use two-option questions using live polling, like:

• Summer or winter?

• Texting or talking?

• Novel or movie?

• Dog or cat?

• Blue or pink?

• Day or night?

But, you can also go for long questions, such as:

• How much do you think you talk a day?

• What is your guilty pleasure?

• Describe yourself using 5 emojis.

• What is the strangest gift you have ever received?

• If you could say one thing to me right now, what would you say?

• What’s the most embarrassing fashion trend you used to rock?

Besides these questions, you can add event or topic relevant questions too. 

For instance, if your virtual conference is about health and fitness. Then you can ask rapid fire questions related to favorite food, fruit, breakfast place, meal schedule, etc. It gives you an insight into their diet plan – giving you a chance to talk about their pain points and connect with them instantly.

What are Good Virtual Icebreakers for Zoom Meetings?

Zoom meetings are something that people often don’t look forward to. Why? It’s because the daily meetings at Zoom have tired people, affecting their productivity and engagement.

So, using good virtual icebreakers for Zoom meetings is actually a great way to bring people together. As it lets them break the cycle of the same old routine and have fun together – virtually!

The top effective and engaging virtual icebreakers especially designed for Zoom meetings are:

Emoji Battle

There are tons of ways you can use emojis as a part of your virtual icebreaker. In fact, it creates a fun and pleasing experience for the audience who are creative and are emojis users.

You can use it to:

• Play riddles,

• Guess song names,

• Depict the mood of the day, or

• Sum up your thoughts in a funny way.

You can create a series of emojis and. Use it to convey a movie name, famous song, or any well-known quote using presentation slides. Show your audience each slide via screen share feature and ask about the hidden message. The person with the most correct answers becomes the Emoji King!

Undoubtedly, this is a powerful way to connect with others, even if the audience is global or diverse. So be creative and take this chance to highly engage everyone at your Zoom meetings.

Zoom Background Challenge

Using Zoom background challenge as a virtual icebreaker makes your audience come up with engaging visual presentations for their ideas – which are creative and exciting for you too!

You can use Zoom background challenge to play:

• Find the hidden object,

• Guess the place name,

• Name of the character,

• Guess whose is in the photo,

• Tell the recipe of the meal, or

• Recognize the famous trademark of a place.

You can go for other creative and fun ideas too. To involve every person in the meeting or breakout sessions, ask them to upload a photo. Maybe, any of these things or some other creative visual ideas as their background. Then, challenge others to tell what their background photo represents.

So, instead of posting pictures in group chats, upload eye-catchy and playful background images for your Zoom meetings. You can find many backgrounds in its app, Zoom, or you can take a live photo and upload it.

One Word Summary

Need a quick virtual icebreaker with no preparation at all? Then go for a one word summary. For this icebreaker, you can interact with your virtual audience either through chatbox, comment section, or pass virtual mics to each other. The audience engages with just a word for anything they hear or see visually in your virtual event. 

You can show them:

• A video,

• An image, or

• Simply just a topic name…

It lets you get an idea of what goes in their minds when they hear or see a particular thing. To make it more fun and dynamic, add a spin the wheel game in this icebreaker. On the name of the person the wheel stops, have to say one word. It has to be about the particular thing you showed during the virtual event.

There are many other ways you can use to customize one word summary. This icebreaker is highly adaptable to almost any type of content and works like a charm with a global audience. One thing is for sure, this is the best way to keep the attendees engaged and on their toes during the whole event – Whether it’s a virtual conference or just a Zoom meeting.

To Wrap Up

Using virtual icebreakers lets you reduce the alienated feeling of the audience and makes the conference engaging and productive – which is definitely a good move! 

But interestingly, some people would even open up to build a business network with you. Leading you to have excellent opportunities for your own business and also getting great people in your connections.

So if you are not doing them, it is definitely something you should consider adding to the next virtual conference you host. And if that’s not enough, gamifying your events takes you a step ahead. Here is more on what games to add to keep your attendees engaged.