How to Zoom a reunion?

[Noah930]

Not wanting to hijack pwd's thread about HS reunions, I wanted to see what ideas the braintrust has in planning a virtual social event. This isn't the thread about how much you hated all the other kids in HS and have no interest in participating. Rather, how do you plan a medium-sized social event for people just to get together? We had about 140 kids graduate. Maybe 120 of us attended school together for 6 years. All guys. Maybe that's what bred a fair degree of camraderie. The majority of us actually like each other and have kept in touch to varying degrees. Probably about 70% of us live in the SoCal area FWIW.

So we have a 30th HS reunion coming up, and about 10 of us volunteered to be on the planning committee. We had one Zoom meeting to toss ideas around. Not knowing what COVID will be like--even in 2021 or 2022--we don't want to just punt to another year. Maybe we'll have a Zoom get-together in the spring, and if conditions allow, a real face-to-face event in the fall.

In the meantime, how do we host a virtual event? We've thought of the main room/breakout rooms idea. Maybe scramble the participants in the breakout rooms every 15 minutes like a speed-dating event. Do we have entertainment? Do we pick a couple guys to be speakers to give the event a theme? We have a budget and there's no fee for participation (just RSVP), so we could send swag/grubhubbed food/etc. beforehand, to make DIY or prepared drinks or food. (But then how do you ensure people participate and not just flake?) How do you have 60 or 80 people get on a Zoom meeting together and just catch up? Send out questionnaires beforehand? Have people make individual quickie videos beforehand to give 60-second updates on where they are/kids/job/family/etc?