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Mingle Bingo

Take away that awkward feeling of walking into a room full of new people and worrying about coming up with a clever topic to break the ice. This is a particularly great activity for when people are arriving at slightly different times; it gets the conversations bubbling immediately while waiting for the full group to assemble. Everyone gets a Mingle Bingo template and aims to put a name to each question on the form, striking up conversations and learning names in the process.
6-any
10-30 min

Medium

Preparation

  1. Create and Print: Prepare a 5×5 Bingo template for each participant (see sample questions below).
  2. Define the “Repeat” Rule: Decide how many times a participant can use the same person’s name on their sheet. Write this rule on a whiteboard or flip chart.
    • Large Group (26+): Each name can only be used once.
    • Medium Group (14-25): The same person can be used 2 times.
    • Small Group (10-13): The same person can be used 3 times.
    • Tiny Group (<10): The same person can be used 4-5 times.

Steps

  1. When people arrive, give them a bingo template and a pen.
  2. Show them, and tell them if possible, the instructions:
    • The aim is to fill your Mingle Bingo form with different names. 
    • Mingle and introduce yourself. 
    • Ask the questions on the form.
    • When you find a person who matches one of the questions, you add their name in that square. 
    • The same person can only be added once (or more times if less than 26 people).
    • Yell out Bingo once you have completed the form. 
  3. The game either finishes when someone has got all squares with a name, or you may time-box it. If no one has got all the questions answered, the winner is the one with most names filled out.

Debrief

You may choose to only use the activity for breaking the ice and not do a debrief. But you can also ask questions about what they shared and learned, making them reflect on how easy or difficult it can be to mingle.

  • What was the most surprising thing you learned about someone?

  • What question did you come up with for your wild card question?

  • What would you have done if there wasn’t a bingo available (e.g. would you have been talking with as many new people?)

Bonus tip

Set a theme for the final scene in the last step of drawing — make it relevant to their situation (for example ‘Working here at company X’, ‘The last year in project Y’).

  • While the activity is great for mingling with new people, you can also try it with an established team. You can even create your own form with specific questions, to find out surprising things about each other.

  • If you are short on time, you can make it more focused on energy and competition — whoever gets first to 5 in a row is the winner.

  • If you are a distributed team, tell everyone to use private messages channels (like Slack, WhatsApp etc) to ask the other participants the questions, rather than a group chat channel. Send out the Bingo template in advance so that they can choose to either print it out or use a tool like Adobe Reader, to keep track. You can also choose to do this as a pre-event activity, giving the participants a few days to fill their bingo forms. Make sure everyone knows how to easily contact each other electronically.  

What you need

  • Bingo Template

  • Pens

  • Rules print-out (optional

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