Nashville Corporate Event Photography | CBIZ Nashville Summit – Guitar Build Team Exercise at The Conrad
GUITAR BUILDING TEAM BUILDING AT THE CONRAD
During their Nashville Summit, CBIZ ran one of the more unpredictable team building exercises I've covered: building guitars, together, as a competition. It's a format I've photographed a few times now around Nashville, where live instruments show up in team building more than people expect — and each time, the job comes down to the same thing: staying ahead of the room instead of catching up to it.
A ROOM-WIDE GAME OF ROCK PAPER SCISSORS
The exercise opened with a rock paper scissors game that ran the whole room. Lose, and you fall in line behind your opponent, becoming part of their team for the next round — long trains of people forming and merging until the entire room narrowed down to two players. I climbed up on a chair to shoot it from overhead, since height was the only way to keep a clear subject in frame while still showing the size of the room.
BUILDING GUITARS FOR GUITARS FOR VETS
From there, teams moved into building guitars for Guitars for Vets, guided by an iPad that walked each group through the build and threw in extra challenges along the way — some tied to rock songs — with bonus points for a photo or video proving they'd completed a task. That competitive layer kept the room loud and constantly moving, spread across a lot of ground, which meant listening as much as shooting — a table getting louder is usually the first sign something's happening before I can even see it. In a room that loud and that spread out, staying fully present isn't optional.
WHY THIS KIND OF PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS
Marketing departments need documentation of the event first, but what actually gets used afterward is proof that people had a genuinely good time while doing something good — not another standard team building exercise. That combination is what holds up in a recap, a deck, or next year's pitch to leadership: attendees fully engaged, having fun, working toward a cause like Guitars for Vets.
PLANNING A CORPORATE TEAM BUILDING EVENT IN NASHVILLE?
I'd love to hear about it. Reach out through my contact page, or learn more about my Nashville corporate event photography work. For more from this event, see my post on the CBIZ Nashville Summit at The Conrad.