Meeting types · Culture & social
Teams that only talk about work stop knowing each other
The remote fix is usually an hour of scheduled bonding that the quiet half endures and the wrong time zone misses entirely. It lasts about four weeks.
Curact collects the social material async — a photo, a line, a silly question answered from a phone — and puts it at the top of a meeting the team already has. Two minutes of real life, no host required, and it stays in the deck instead of scrolling away.
30 days, no card, cancel in one click.
How do you build team culture in a remote company?
Remote team culture is built through small, frequent rituals rather than rare, mandatory social events. It works best by collecting social material like photos or highlights mid-week and spending the first two minutes of an existing meeting on them. This ensures everyone is included across time zones without the dread of 'forced fun' sessions.
- 01Choose a specific weekly prompt like 'best thing you ate' or 'a photo of your desk'.
- 02Post a collector link to your team channel on a Wednesday or Thursday.
- 03Allow everyone to contribute a photo and a line from their phone in under a minute.
- 04Put the results at the very top of your Monday weekly meeting deck.
- 05Spend exactly two or three minutes on the highlights before moving to work.
- 06Leave reactions open so colleagues in other time zones can take part later.
Today
Why does remote social time keep dying?
Not because people do not like each other. Because the format asks for time, an organiser and a shared hour — and eventually one of the three runs out.
The mandatory Friday call
An hour booked for bonding. The same three extroverts fill it, the rest keep their camera on and wait, and everyone quietly hopes it gets cancelled.
The ritual that needs a host
Virtual fika, quiz night, coffee roulette. They work for a month, then the person who organised them gets busy and it stops without anyone deciding to stop it.
It scrolls away in Slack
The good stuff — the dog photo, the marathon, the new flat — lives in a channel for four hours and is gone. A year later there is no record of anything but work.
The same third is always excluded
Whatever hour you pick, the colleagues in the wrong time zone hear about the fun afterwards. Live-only social time quietly ranks people by geography.
The flow
What happens before, during and after?
The social part belongs inside a meeting that already exists, not in a ritual that needs its own owner.
Before
A collector link goes out mid-week with one specific prompt. People answer from their phone in under a minute, whenever it suits them, and can skip it entirely without anyone noticing.
During
The contributions are already a slide when the meeting opens. Two or three minutes, reactions from phones, one quick round — then the deck moves on to work. Nobody is put on the spot.
After
The deck posts to Slack so other time zones see and react to the same thing, and the slides stay in the archive — a record of the year that a chat channel would never have kept.
Collected on a link over the weekend and shown as a grid slide, names credited alongside each one.
A this-or-that round answered in seconds from a phone — silly on purpose, and everyone can join in.
Slide types
Which slide types make a team feel like a team?
Six blocks, mixed and rotated so the same thing is not asked every week.
Photo collector
Weekend highlights, desk setups, pets, the view from your window. A link, a prompt, a deadline — text and image, from a phone, with or without a name.
This or that
A two-option round answered in three seconds. Silly on purpose, and the fastest way to get twenty people to press something in the same minute.
Word cloud
One word for the weekend, or for how the week feels. It shows the shape of a team's mood without anyone having to speak first.
Emoji reactions
Live reactions floating over whatever is on screen. It gives the quiet half of the team a way to take part that costs them nothing.
Celebrations
Work anniversaries, launches shipped, a thank-you someone wanted to say in public. Collected in advance so the person is actually recognised, not remembered at the last second.
Quiz round
Questions, teams and a scoreboard as slide types in the same deck, played from everyone's phone — no second tool, no separate link.
Example
What does one week of this actually look like?
A twenty-two person team across four time zones, three minutes at the top of the Monday meeting.
- Wednesday
A collector posts to the team channel with one prompt: send a picture from your weekend, one line about it. Deadline Monday morning, no account needed.
- Thu–Sun
Fourteen contributions arrive from a team of twenty-two — a rescue dog, a mountain, a badly decorated cake, a first concert since 2019. Most sent from a phone in under a minute.
- Monday morning
The host does nothing. The contributions are already a grid slide at the top of the weekly meeting, names on each card, in the order they arrived.
- Monday, 3 minutes
The grid opens the meeting. Reactions come in from phones while people look, there is a this-or-that round to finish, and then the deck moves on to work.
- Monday afternoon
The deck posts to Slack. The colleagues who were asleep during the call react to the same photos, and their reactions count the same.
- Later
The slides stay in the archive. Twelve months in, the team has an accidental record of its year that no Slack channel would have kept.
Async first
How do you include people who are asleep?
Four rules that keep social time from quietly ranking colleagues by geography.
A four-day window means nobody has to be awake at a particular hour to take part. Most contributions arrive outside anyone's working day.
No reminders chasing individuals, no participation stats. The people who want to share do; the people who do not still enjoy looking.
Votes and reactions do not close when the call ends, so a reaction sent the next morning lands on the same slide as everyone else's.
A specific question beats a general one, and a new one beats a repeated one. Curact suggests the next prompt so the facilitator is not inventing it every week.
Agenda
A 7-minute social agenda, and the days around it
Copy it, change the wording, run it in whatever tool you use today. It works without Curact — Curact just automates the collection.
Yours to use, with or without Curact. No signup for the template.
Templates
Three ready-made versions of this meeting
Pick the depth that fits the week. Every template opens as a real deck you can edit, reorder or throw away.
Short
The 3-minute opener
A weekend highlights grid and a this-or-that round, bolted onto a meeting you already have.
5 min · 4 slides
- 1.Get Together
- 2.Weekend highlights
- 3.Beach holiday or mountain holiday?
- 4.Back to work
Standard
The full social break
Highlights, a poll, celebrations and a word cloud — a proper ten minutes of being a team.
27 min · 8 slides
- 1.Get Together
- 2.Join in
- 3.Weekend highlights
- 4.What should next week's prompt be?
- 5.Tea or coffee?
- + 3 more
In depth
The quarterly team social
A proper 50-minute get-together: highlights, celebrations, a game and open floor to talk about anything.
50 min · 10 slides
- 1.Get Together — the quarterly one
- 2.Join in
- 3.Highlights from the quarter
- 4.Celebrations
- 5.Sweet or savoury breakfast?
- + 5 more
FAQ
Questions teams ask about social slides
Does this need its own meeting in the calendar?
No, and it works better when it does not. The social material is collected on a link and shown as the first two or three slides of a meeting the team already has. A separate social call needs a host and an occasion; two minutes at the top of an existing meeting needs neither.
What if people do not take part?
Participation is optional by design, and a slide with five contributions from a team of twenty is still a good slide. What usually changes the rate is the prompt: a specific question — best thing you ate this week, a picture from your window — gets four times the answers of a general one.
Can contributions be anonymous?
Yes. Every collector has three modes — names required, names optional, or fully anonymous. Photos and highlights usually carry names because that is the point of them; polls and this-or-that rounds are often anonymous so nobody's answer is a statement.
How do you avoid this becoming forced fun?
By making it asynchronous and short. Nobody is put on the spot on a call, nothing is mandatory, and it lasts two minutes rather than half an hour. Forced fun is mostly a scheduling problem — an hour booked for bonding is what makes people dread it.
Who can see the photos people upload?
Only people in your workspace, and the meeting they were submitted to. Contributions are not public, are not used for anything else, and a contributor can withdraw what they sent before the meeting runs.
How does it work across time zones?
Collection runs over several days and reactions stay open after the session, so someone eight hours away contributes and reacts on the same terms as someone in the room. The deck is readable on its own afterwards, which is what makes the async half work.
Instead of
What does this replace?
Most remote culture happens in a dedicated Slack channel or a monthly social call. One is too noisy to follow, the other is too rare to build a habit.
A #social Slack channel
Great content and photos scroll away instantly.
Highlights are part of the meeting record, building a searchable history of the team's year that everyone can revisit.
A separate 'Fun Friday' call
Hard to schedule and often the first thing people skip.
The social part takes two minutes at the top of the meeting everyone is already attending, so it actually happens.
A third-party icebreaker bot
Generic questions that eventually start to feel like work.
The prompts are yours, the photos are yours, and the ritual belongs to the team's existing workflow.
Curact does not replace Slack, your boards or your video call. It sits next to them: the deck is the meeting, and the tools you already pay for stay where they are.
Built by Textalk
Curact is made by Textalk AB in Sweden, a software company that has run its own distributed weekly meeting for years. This is the tool we built for ourselves first.
Participants need no account
People join from a link or a code on screen and answer from their phone. Only the people who build the deck need a login.
Works next to your stack
Slack for the reminders and the recap, your boards for the source material, any video tool for the call itself.
30 days, no card
The trial is the full product, not a stripped demo. Nothing to cancel if you walk away.
Written and reviewed by the Curact team. Last reviewed August 2026.
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Read moreGive the team two minutes of each other every week
Set the collector up once and it runs on its own: a prompt mid-week, a grid slide on Monday, and reactions from every time zone afterwards.
30 days, no card, cancel in one click.