The novice week, the first event in Lund for most of us LundaEkonomer. This week you meet your first friends in Lund, maybe your future partner or your study group for years to come. It’s an intense week where activities and competitions mix with loads of interactions and new impressions. The week will give you a roller coaster of emotions, from an overload of happiness and laughter to early mornings when you dry your tears before you get out of bed. So the novice week is the best start you can get in Lund, and it builds a common group for a bunch of new students (or the ones doing their exchange semester in Lund and looking for some more fun).

The Conditions

But this year we all were worried that the novice week, just described, would go to waste. You can’t meet up, you can’t play all the games, have fun competitions, interact with new people. A new LundaEkonom here in Lund would have no one to turn to since everything is canceled. So what can you do? How do you casually build a social surrounding without putting yourself out there? Well, luckily for you we decided not to cancel the novice week, instead we let the week take a different turn, in order to match the restrictions we’ve all heard a thousand times by now. So how do you take such a large event online?

First of all, is it possible? Think about it, imagine yourself in a job position, you get an assignment from your boss that you and your group are responsible to plan the kick-off for the whole company, compatible for 300 people if everyone attends. You hear him or her tell you:

“And yeah by the way it has to be digital since we can’t meet up. And before I forget, it’s not just during an evening, it’s five days from morning until evening.”

You accept the challenge, of course, and ask for some do’s and don’ts.

“Well yeah, you are free to do whatever you want but make sure to not host a simple zoom “party”, we want this week alcohol free.”

You get the point. So one last question, what budget do you have, 1000 kr per person per day maybe?

“Well, that’s the thing, we don’t know if you have a budget yet. But you can count with 6000 kr, give or take.”

That’s a fair deal, that’s more than expected.

“Yeah… You know that’s the total for the whole week so 6000 kr over five days for 100-300 people… Good luck and don’t forget to have fun!”

That was the game plan… Such lovely conditions.

So we self-educated in OBS, Twitch, and Zoom as much as we could. We figured out different ways to use these programs together to make the week more interactive. We wanted to live stream as much as we could, since it gives us a better opportunity to make it more interactive for you guys as well. Of course, we ran into a lot of technical difficulties during the week but in conclusion, we managed to make both games, game shows, talk shows and group chats, both fun and collective.

Monday – The Week Starts

We divided all of the novices (new students) into different teams and thanks to the wonderful fadders (old students that act as team leaders for each team), novices could establish a safe and social base here in Lund. So the first day started with some group chats, get to know your team and your fadders. The fadders got some examples of games to play and so on, just to
break the ice.

Then everyone got to see the traditional speech of the dean! Don’t we love that part!? But this time something was different, at the end of the speech Andreas, the vice project leader, was kidnapped by a person in full bodysuit. This mystery, of course, left some clues for the novices to follow, through social media, interviews, and an investigation by Kaj&Kaja (the
mascots) we live-streamed a kidnapping mystery and everyone in the novice committee were a suspect and interrogated!

After, the groups followed up all the clues and together they decided who could be the possible kidnapper. Then they posted this on their Instagram with their best possible argument as to why this person was the kidnapper.

Tuesday – The Mission Day

Since Monday was a day to get to know each other more, Tuesday was filled with competitions and missions for the different teams to compete in. The novices had over 40 missions to complete under time pressure and post them online before the deadline. Simultaneously we had some competitions for two teams at the time, so every team always had something to do. The day went on and more competitions were held with success over Zoom and the last event of the day was ahead.

The infamous Uppesittarkväll with Färgfemman started at 18.30 and was a live-streamed event on Twitch, a lot like the traditional Swedish Bingolotto but with some extra features, there was bingo, a rhyme cabin, what the fuck’s playing, the techno kitchen and, of course, SPIN THE WHEEL! Loads of prizes were given out to novices who called into the show through Zoom. Some won a whale safari, a mixer set, a go-kart experience, and the last price was something every LundaEkonom needs. A BIKE! The plan was to end the stream at 21 but we couldn’t drop the Bingolotto spirit until 22:45, it was a great night!

Wednesday – The Chill Day

After a long Tuesday, we planned a chill day for the novices, we played some more games with each group. One or two novice committee members hosted a Zoom meeting for each group and played games like Who did what? where novices sent in odd or funny things that had happened to them. More games went along, some Wild Kids inspired. We all had a really
fun day that ended quite early for the novices in order for them to have a chance to talk on their own as well.

Thursday – The Active Day

Followed up by Thursday the novices got to move a bit more, we held a Zumba session with a real instructor to really make us sweat. I don’t think anyone would say Zumba is easy after that experience but it was great fun! This day of course had some chats and smaller games to go with it since the groups knew each other much better at this time of the week. We gave them a longer break to make them ready for an online sitting with a live-streamed gameshow to go with it. All groups had their Zoom room, with one of the novice committee members as Zoom moderator to collect their answers for the gameshow’s different questions. This was a great success where the questions were both in a pub quiz format but also had segments like the Swedish show På spåret for example.

Friday – The Conclusion

We wanted this day to be some sort of conclusion and make it a clear ending. So we took inspiration from Agnetas Nyårskarameller but instead of Agneta we brought someone even better, Manges Novice Caramels. He concluded the week and summed up some bloopers sent in from all the groups mixed with a segment of Fill or Spill your Guts, where committee members were interviewed with questions that novices and fadders sent into the program. It was a great end to the week, we kept all the attending novices on their toes with activities and gave them a chance to get the best possible start during these circumstances, to the Lunda-life that we all share and love! <3