This year, March and April (and maybe May and June?) birthdays are getting screwed. Due to shelter in place orders from COVID-19, gatherings have gone virtual.

So when my April birthday bestie asked me to throw her a Zoom birthday, I gladly accepted.

“I can totally do this!” I thought.

After all, I’ve run point on live webinars with up to 1,000 people. I’m a digital marketing project manager with a virtual business. This is where I live. This is what I do.

Let me tell you, it is NOT as easy as it seems. It took a lot of planning, and at times, a lot of failing.

But it’s 2020. Everything is on fire. No one has any idea what to expect at any time. We are all just doing improv.

Just a totally chill candid photo of me and what I always look like in my office.

So let me share with you what I learned:

1. Plan ahead

As with a regular event, this party took lots of planning. I sent out three emails to prospective guests prior to the party:

1. The original invite about a week in advance.

2. An explanation of the game we were going to play two days ahead. (More on that disaster in a second.)

3. A reminder about an hour before.

Every email included the link to the Zoom meeting. I’d say probably 50% of the people I sent these emails to actually read them. So, be prepared to repeat yourself.

But, there’s also the pitfall of planning too much. Because of my past webinar experience, I had an overly complicated tech set up. I had two cameras where I probably only needed one. I had a ring light turned up too bright. These are all what we call “teachable moments.”

Always doing the most….

Speaking of teachable moments….

2. Some things are going to go sideways. Sometimes it just be like that.

During the party, the game I planned turned out to be a complete disaster.

One participant said it was “The most stressful thing I’ve ever experienced.” To put it into context, this friend has a baby and works from home (during a pandemic), so that really says something.

Not that I didn’t do my research. I did a lot of research into virtual party games, and most hit a cap at about 8 to 10 players. I knew I was expecting at least 12 people, so I created my own game – a slide deck version of the “Heads Up” app. I made a slide deck of over 200 celebrity names, and each participant took turns blindfolding themselves and guessing as many celebrities as they could while taking clues from the audience. Each turn was 20 seconds.

I even deputized two of my friends to keep score, just to take it off my plate. I thought I was ready.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

First of all, 20 seconds was not enough time. So we increased it to 30. Still not enough time. Secondly, it’s incredibly difficult to hear people shouting over each other, so there were times were a participant guessed the correct celebrity, but I didn’t hear them, so I didn’t advance the next slide. Thirdly, I was using a really cool, jazzy animated template from an online service, but between the Zoom call, screen sharing, and having a second camera, it was too much of a strain on my Internet, and the slides didn’t advance fast enough when I clicked them. Fourth, I didn’t always reset the timer correctly because I was drinking a bit, and I oop.

TL;DR: It was a total and complete sh*tshow.

Looking back, here’s what I would do differently:

Download the slides into an actual Powerpoint or Keynote on the desktop and kill the second camera. It was too much of a strain on the Internet bandwidth. Even though I have the fastest tier of Internet currently offered by my provider, I would also consider investing in a wireless signal booster in the future.

If you’d like to traumatize your friends, here’s the game in PDF form. You’re welcome. I hope it goes better than mine did. Godspeed.

The many faces of Zoom: Joy, confusion, indifference, and finally, despair.

3. Have an agenda – but also allow for spontaneous conversation

If you’ve ever attended a Zoom call with over 6 people, you know it takes approximately four minutes for it to become a complete circus. There are three people who talk over each other the entire time, at least three people who are chasing after their kids, and a whole lot of people just tuning in, trying to make the best of it.

So, I had an agenda. It looked like this.

6:30: Hello’s, the ceremonial holding up of the pets and babies, small talk.

6:40: Toast and Singing “Happy Birthday.” (I dropped off the birthday girl’s favorite cake from Nothing Bundt Cakes the day before.)

6:42: The Celebrity Game that will give my dearest friends nightmares.

After game: Dance party

Overall, I think that participants were so relieved the game was over, we actually had a good flowing conversation afterward. By then, we all had a little buzz going, and just talked, and that was nice within itself. Some people told stories (both kind and embarrassing) about the birthday girl. A substantive, fun conversation over Zoom is a win within itself.

4. Create a dance party playlist

I created a YouTube Playlist of the birthday girl’s favorite songs. Since we are elder millennials, this included some bangers from today plus some classic 2000’s throwbacks. (I even threw in a couple of Tik Toks.)

I had to play with the volume controls on YouTube a bit since sometimes people want to turn up the music and dance, and sometimes, they want to talk and comment on the videos.

Whiteness level: 100. Also, obviously, I had no idea where to put the participant window. #savage

5. It’s 2020… At least you tried

At the end of the day, the party probably won’t go seamlessly or according to plan, but that’s OK. I screwed up the toast. The game was super confusing to participants. And no one RSVP’d their regrets, even though I asked them to. (Probably because they feared my wrath and judgment, but tbh when the project manager/Type-A/Capricorn side of me comes out, I can be intimidating on emails).

However, it’s the effort that counts. The birthday girl was incredibly appreciative that I spent the time to put the virtual party together, and I received positive feedback from many attendees. We all did our best.

The truth is, it’s incredibly difficult to recreate the feeling of a good party, because a good party is inherently physical. It’s the vibe. The music. It’s hugging friends you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s meeting new people. It’s dancing up on your best friend. It’s breaking off into the corner for a secret conversation. All this is incredibly difficult to reproduce on a virtual level, but we can only try.

Because it won’t always be like this. And when it’s finally OK to get together again, at least you can look back and laugh at the awkward but good-intentioned birthday you had in quarantine.