Recently I convinced the institute to let me buy pizza for the campus once a month, not as a moral boosting strategy, but as bait.
Today with the postdoc committee, I hosted the first Pizza Solves Everything event
Rather than having seminars on polished, finished projects, I invited people who were stuck and struggling to overcome a research problem to come and do a short presentation explaining their struggles. Importantly no one would be questioned in front of an audience.
Following the four 5-10 minute presentations everyone got free pizza...
Well, almost everyone. So many people came that 96 slices of 18-inch pizza were insufficient.