Ideas for a weekly team meeting

The weekly team mee­ting. So many places have them, so few deve­lo­pers like them. Why is that so? In my expe­ri­ence, more often than not, the goal of tho­se mee­tings is enti­re­ly unclear: why should we all get tog­e­ther once per week, was­ting per­fect­ly good work hours – or may­be even the time they had alre­a­dy plan­ned to take off! – if the­re isn’t even a clear, obvious reason to or at least a decent enough agenda?

Here’s a few ide­as to make it more fun and more inte­res­t­ing – dare to turn the mee­ting into an event peo­p­le actual­ly look for­ward to!

• Have peo­p­le pre­sent a tru­ly good idea they had this week
• Have par­ti­ci­pan­ts give a ten minu­te pre­sen­ta­ti­on on a tech­no­lo­gy clo­se to their heart; it need not be some­thing rele­vant to the pro­ject; it should be some­thing the others actual­ly learn some­thing new from.
• Encou­ra­ge brain stor­ming and thin­king deep about the given sub­ject. Like: In an ide­al world, what things could we be doing to impro­ve our pro­duct? What ide­as does ever­yo­ne have and has not dared to share yet? What would be a sin­gle thing that would impro­ve the pro­duct greatly?
• Sur­pri­se the team once in a while: is it hot? Bring a bucket or three of ice cream. Is it cold? Arran­ge for ros­ted chest­nuts to be brought along. 

By the way: do you have a team mas­cot yet? If so, have a few of them made as plushies.