Have everyone pick a coin out of a bowl. Go around and ask each person to share something they were doing the year the coin was minted. This is great for getting to know someone’s past—and test their memories.

Year of the Coin

Pick your favorite kind of multi-colored candy. Next, pass around the bowl. Once the bowl of candy has been passed around, each person has to answer a question for each color they take. For example, you can assign questions such as:<ul><li>Red: What’s your favorite book?</li><li>Orange: What’s the best vacation spot you have ever been to?</li><li>Blue: What’s your favorite kind of food?</li><li>Yellow: What’s the best part of your work week?</li></ul>

The Candy Game

Get a large bowl and cut up a list of conversation starters. Have everyone go around and pull one out and answer it. If they don’t like a question, they can draw another and try one more time.

Bowl of Questions

Start by asking each person to come up with two facts about themselves and one believable fib. Next, everyone shares their three statements and the group votes or discusses their guess for the lie. This icebreaker is a great way to get to know each other and to have some laughs along the way.

Two Truths and One Lie

Give small groups a list of locations and have them take as many selfies as they can in the allotted time. For this one, you should have a prize ready for the winning team.

A Scavenger Hunt

<ol><li>Pass out different colored sheets of paper to each person attending the meeting. </li><li>Ask everyone to write an interesting fact about themselves on the piece of paper and fold it into a paper airplane. </li><li>Everyone launches their paper airplane to somewhere around the room. </li><li>Everyone retrieves one of the paper airplanes, reads the fact, and guesses whose paper airplane they got.</li></ol>

Paper Airplane Game

<ol><li>Give everyone a list with each person’s name on it. </li><li>Set a timer and have people go around and find one commonality with each person in the room. </li><li>The key is you cannot repeat the same commonality with anyone else. If everyone in the room works at the same company that commonality wouldn’t count. </li></ol>

One Common Thing

Set a timer for two minutes. Ask everyone in the room to find a partner. Turn on the timer and give everyone a conversation starter to answer. Each person has one minute. After both people have answered and the two-minute timer is up, have them find a new partner and assign them a new conversation starter. You can do as many rounds as time allows.

Speed Networking

I host hundreds of meetings every year, from conferences to sales team retreats. One thing I've learned is that an icebreaker truly can make or break an event. Here's the crazy science on this : Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton gathered 221 participants and had them form groups of two to four people.