Human Traffic
Walk. Freeze. High five a stranger. Repeat.
Everyone walks the room while you call commands, and most of those commands end with them meeting somebody: high five three people, shake hands and say your name, groups of four. The walking is only what happens in between. Every call is one action you can do without thinking, which is the point — by the time anyone notices they have been introduced to eleven people, it has already happened.
Everybody up and spread out, and start walking — not in a circle, not following anyone. Keep walking unless a card says stop. I'll call things out as we go. Some involve a handshake or a high five; if you'd rather not, a wave does the same job.
The room has gone flat, or half of them have not spoken to the other half, and you want that fixed in five minutes with nothing to set up.
Props: None
Run this when…
If none of these is your room, pick another.A flat room that needs moving in under five minutes
The first activity of the morning, before anyone has spoken
Straight after a long presentation
How to run it
Written to be glanced at mid-room, not memorised.
- Ask everyone to stand and spread out into the space.
- "Walk around the room. Don't follow anyone, and don't walk in a circle."
- In the briefing, say once that a wave does the job of a handshake for anyone who would rather not touch. Then never mention it again — it belongs in the set-up, not in a card that singles people out mid-run.
- Start with movement only — FREEZE, SLOW MOTION — so they are comfortable before anyone has to meet anyone.
- Then the first meeting card: HIGH FIVE THREE PEOPLE. This is where the noise arrives.
- Every call is one action with a number or a target on it, so nobody has to hold two instructions at once while walking.
- Alternate from there. A movement card is the breath between two meeting cards, not the point of the exercise.
- Say "keep walking" out loud as you call the greeting cards. On a wall, HIGH FIVE THREE PEOPLE reads as an instruction to stop and do it — the cards say otherwise now, but your voice is what the room is actually following.
- The grouping calls take longest, because a room has to physically sort itself. Save them for once it is loud, and call the next card the moment most groups have formed rather than waiting for the last one.
- End on a sudden FREEZE, then straight into whatever is next.
Running it well
Only the host sees these. Participants never do.
- Call every command out loud as you show it. A room walking at pace cannot safely keep its eyes on a screen, and the people who most need to hear it are the ones with their back to you.
- Do not explain the commands up front. A list of five rules read out to a standing room kills it before it starts — introduce them one at a time and let people catch up.
- Your own energy sets theirs. Called flatly, this is people shuffling around a room.
- The laugh is in SLOW MOTION. Save it until they are moving quickly.
- Give the meeting cards longer than feels right. A high five takes two seconds; finding somebody dressed nothing like you takes fifteen, and cutting it short is what turns a real introduction back into a drill.
Watch out for
Space, safety and the traps worth knowing before you start.
- Most of the cards ask for contact. Offer the wave as an equal option at the start, in one line, and take it as read afterwards — people opt out quietly or not at all, and a card that singles them out later is worse than no card. It matters for anyone who does not want to be touched, and in mixed-culture and mixed-gender rooms where a handshake is not neutral.
- Keep it to a walk. If the room is tight or the floor is hard, say "walking pace" as you start rather than after someone jogs.
- Clear bags and chairs out of the walking space first.
- Over about eighty people, split the room in half and run two rounds so nobody is shoulder to shoulder.
Seated version
“Everybody stand up” is not a neutral instruction. Offer this alongside, not instead.
Run every command from a chair: FREEZE holds a pose, SLOW MOTION applies to arms. The meeting cards become their at-a-distance versions — wave at three people, thumbs up, nod at someone looking back — which is most of the run intact rather than a lesser version of it.
Variations
For the second time you run it with the same group.
- Silent version: stop calling and switch to hand signals, so they have to watch you rather than listen.
- Hand the calling to a participant for the last thirty seconds.
Run it yourself
Free for thirty days, no card. Put it on the projector and step through it — nobody in the room needs a phone.
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- Where
- Needs a room
- Props
- None
- Big screen
- Required
- Teams
- Individual only