posted by
Jason
on
11th July 2026
Big First Games are now live at big.first.name/games - a collection of free ice breaker games that run on the big screen.
What's a big-screen ice breaker?
You know the moment: a room full of people who don't know each other yet, all waiting for someone else to talk first. Screen-based meet-and-greet games fix that. You add your guests' names, project your browser onto the big screen, and let the screen run the show - music plays, names shuffle, and random pairs, trios, and teams appear on screen for everyone to see. The screen is the host, everyone is in the game, and nobody needs an app, a download, or a sign-up.
They work anywhere people meet for the first time: weddings, conferences, classrooms, youth groups, team off-sites, and birthday parties. And they work best when everyone is wearing a name badge - that's rule number one.
The games
- Mixers — music plays while everyone dances and mingles, then random pairs, trios, and conga lines appear. Last group to form up in the room loses!
- Conga Race — everyone splits into two big conga lines; the first complete line wins.
- Conga All — one big conga line of everyone.
- Speed Meeting — new pairs every round with a countdown clock, and nobody meets the same partner twice.
- Spin the Wheel — a spinning wheel of names picks a winner, or play elimination until one player is left standing.
- Freeze Dance — dance while the music plays, freeze when it stops.
- Reverse Charades — everyone acts at once while one player guesses against the clock.
Plus two quick tools: Instant Draw for drawing random groups and Teams for splitting a room into fair random teams.
Got a game for us?
If you have a great meet-and-greet or get-to-know-you game that belongs on the big screen - a playground classic, a camp favourite, or something you invented for your own events - we'd love to hear about it. Tell us how it's played, and we'll see about adding it to the collection.
posted by
Jason
on
7th June 2021
A new free tool has been added to Big.first.name. The Free Wifi Network Password QR Code Poster Maker can be used to make a poster for your wifi network details. Simply add your network details and click Generate Poster.
posted by
Jason
on
14th August 2017
We're excited to announce two new Advanced Designs, Josephine and Maria, featuring some interesting new backgrounds and fonts.
To learn more about how to use these name badge designs with Big.first.name, please watch our short intro video.
posted by
Jason
on
24th June 2015
We've just added two new designs to our Advanced Design Collection. Both designs were created using our custom designs application.
These designs are perfect for Name Badges and Tent Card Place Name Cards.
posted by
Jason
on
13th August 2013
We're happy to announce two new designs featuring Barcodes and QRcodes. Both designs were created using our custom designs application.
These designs are perfect for Name Badges and Tent Card Place Name Cards.
posted by
Jason
on
28th May 2013
SF New Tech founder Myles Weissleder has been using Big.first.name at some of their recent events.
Checkout this news broadcast below from ABC news covering an event last year.
How many names can you spot?
(or view the video here)
posted by
Jason
on
7th March 2013
Looking for something extra for your Easter Egg Hunt, or Easter Party, or Easter professional business conference? These two new easter designs are available for your name badges, nametags and tent cards.
Our name badge designers have been hard at work[1] creating four new designs that have now been added to our collection. Introducing...
Easter Egg Event Hunt and Happy Easter Celebration
posted by
Jason
on
30th January 2013
Our name badge designers have been hard at work[1] creating four new designs that have now been added to our collection. Introducing...
New Connections and Messy Meeting
Industry Icebreaker and College Reunion
These designs work great on all Name Badge and Tent Card standard template sizes.
[1] (Ok - so it only took a few minutes using the Big.first.name custom designer application.)
posted by
Jason
on
19th October 2012
Spooks, spirits, spectres, ghosts, ghouls, phantoms, Frankenstein, witches and superheroes. Halloween can be a confusing time trying to work out exactly who is who.
We're happy to announce two new designs to help add something special to your Halloween festivities.
These designs are perfect for created Halloween Name Badges and Halloween Tent Card Place Name Cards.
posted by
Jason
on
23rd July 2012
The Big.first.name Free Event Direction Sign Maker is now available! We've made this so that your first-time attendees can easily find your room or location.
It's very easy to use (try it now!). We you hope you find it useful.
posted by
Jason
on
6th April 2012
We've added support for QR-Codes so you can create Nametags, Name Badges and Place Name cards that contain QR-Codes using Big.first.name. The QR-Codes on your name badges can contain any information about your guests or event.
Big.first.name will automatically scale the design and QR Code so that it fits the badges or labels you are using. Using a custom design template you can create your own design for badges or cards that contain a QRcode.
Using the QR-Code Label design or a similar custom design you can easily print QR-Code labels for any purpose.
posted by
Jason
on
19th December 2011
We've added some new advanced designs with Christmas theme so you can now make your own printable Christmas Dinner Place Name Cards and printable Christmas Party Nametags using Big.first.name.
Using a custom template you can create your own design for badges or cards.
Have any photos of your Christmas Dinner table and Christmas place name cards? Let us know support@big.first.name
posted by
Jason
on
6th November 2011
Big.first.name Name Badges were used at the recent
Mr Mobbles Magical Emporium event.
Flickr has more photos and name badges from the event.
posted by
Jason
on
31st October 2011
A new addition to Big.first.name - Name Place Cards (aka: Place Name Cards, Place Cards, Name Cards, wedding place cards, Tent Cards).
Standard tent card sizes have been added to our system to eliminate the pain of configuring templates correctly.
Our designs automatically rotate guest names upside-down for easy printing on two-sided folding tent cards.
Place Name Cards can be printed on your printer just like our Name Badges. In fact, you could use the same event list to print out both Name Badges and Place Name Cards!
For further information, see the official press release, New Web Application Benefits Events Organisers Working On Tight Budges.
posted by
Jason
on
28th July 2011
Big.first.name has just added 12 new name tag template designs to our collection!
Included are:
- Color Texta
- Old School Texta
- Classic Black
- Original Black
- Bold Colours with Avatar
- Big.First.Name.Only
- Bold Inverse
- Friendly Black
- Everything Plus
- Big Picture
- Big Logo
- Small Logo
View all of the name badge templates. If you have a suggestion for a new design then please get in touch!
posted by
Jason
on
3rd February 2011
Big.first.name name badges were once again on show at today's Hacker News HNLondon Meetup in London, hosted by Skills Matter.
Pictured below are Daniel Todd CEO & Founder of Time Toast and Laurie Young CEO & Founder of HabitualApp - both proudly displaying their Big.first.name Name Badges
posted by
Jason
on
20th September 2010
My new website project staff rota management using Rotaville is now live!
Rotaville inherits much of the technology that is used to power Big.first.name Name Badge Software.
Rotaville is a new online webapp for managing workplace rotas/rosters/staff schedules. Staff and Shifts can be easily scheduled by managers with an intuitive drag 'n' drop real-time web user interface.
Many business still rely on pen and paper or they are using an excel spreedsheet that is typically only available on the managers PC. Rotaville puts the schedule online so that it's available for all staff members to access from any computer. An iPhone or Android mobile version of the website is also available so that staff can check their shift times anytime anywhere.
Rotaville generates weekly schedules in a calendar format style that can be printed or emailed in PDF format.
Other features include reminder notifications, multiple manager support, staff list printing, and workplace discussion forums.
Check out Rotaville Rota Software at http://rotaville.com/.
posted by
Jason
on
2nd May 2009
XING event guest lists can be exported as xml and then imported in to big.first.name to create name badges.
The import will automatically include the XING profile picture of each guest in to the big.first.name avatar field. So that your name badges generated will include the familiar profile picture from the XING website.
posted by
Jason
on
4th February 2009
Ryan Pamplin, assistant organizer of the Meetup202: NYC Affiliate Marketing Meetup Group, used Big.first.name to make some name badges for their recent First NYC Meetup.
Ryan reports about the name badges he made:
People were impressed by them. Your web app saved me a lot of time and hassle. (I was going to use mail-merge in Word). The badges printed properly (lined up) on the first try, which was a pleasant surprise. Thank you.
Here is a photo from the event:
posted by
Jason
on
11th July 2008
On July 10th Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK hosted TechCrunch Pitch! in central London. Some Big.first.name Nametags were in action...
Many more photos from the conference can be found on flickr
posted by
Jason
on
12th June 2008
When printing out your nametags and name badges it sometimes can be hard to align the printer correctly. Printing on plain paper first can help your with this.
It's important to check that the print settings on your computer isn't scaling the print job up or down in size. Check that Page Scaling is set to "None" (and not say "Shrink to Printable Area").
posted by
Jason
on
23rd March 2008
On March 13th the XING Pest and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok regional group had a meeting at the Savoya castle hotel in Ráckeve, Hungry.
Many more photos from the meeting can be found on flickr
posted by
Jason
on
26th January 2008
On January 24th Got Social Media? (a conference about communication) was held at the Houston Technology Center. Some Big.first.name Nametags were in action...
Many more photos from the conference can be found on flickr
posted by
Jason
on
23rd September 2007
Florian Görsdorf from the RubyUserGroup Berlin printed 420 big.first.name nametags for the recent Bratwurst-on-Rails event. Congratulations to RUG-B for organising such a successful opening event for RailsConfEurope 2007.
I was there and took some photos...
Many more photos from the event can be found on flickr
posted by
Jason
on
30th June 2007
Markeys branding recently held one of their Afternoon Seminars featuring some great big.first.name nametag action.
(images link to full size images on flickr with attribution)
View the full set of photos here.
posted by
Jason
on
29th June 2007
Ben did some big.first.name nametags for railscamp07
(images link to full size images on flickr with attribution)
