Open Agile Cluj 2012 – Our Fabulous Volunteers
Since a couple of Open Agile editions we had the idea to ask volunteers to help us with some parts of the conference. It seems that for the Cluj edition we had this idea well-baked in our heads. Alexandra and I took the responsibility to ask who would want to be a volunteer and then to explain our concepts and how the conference would be.
We decided to have a remote call with all the volunteers, a couple of weeks before the conference. It seemed like a very useful ideas as it was also underlined by our volunteers retrospective, made after the conference. We explained during the call what were the areas where we would like help and each volunteer chose at least one responsibility. This was a kind of kick-of of the conference.
The initial idea was to have another remote call with everyone closer to the conference day, but because of our busy schedule we could not do this. It seems that it was not really necessary, as we all met during the evening before the conference. And then we started working on the materials:
- the conference bags with all the goodies from the sponsors
- the feedback door so that everyone can see what was good and what was bad about the conference, and how we organizers could improve it
- the market place for the open space, the conference wall so that the attendees could check-in the conference and tell how they felt and what they would expect to see during the conference
- the conference wall, where everyone could check-in with his thoughts and write what would like to see at the conference.
My, subjective opinion, was that we had the nicest hand-crafted materials I ever saw at an Agile Conference! The materials had personality and they were crafted with fun and pleasure.
Then the next day we needed to put all the conference bags on the chairs, stick all the other materials on the walls (only in the places where we were allowed to stick stuff), help at the registration desk, and do whatever necessary so everything works smoothly.
During the conference whenever I was running from one corner of the room to the other at least one of the volunteers was asking me if (s)he could help me with something. Amazing attitude, thank you for that!
At the end of the conference, we all used the energy that we had left to make the volunteers retrospective. We added post-its on a starfish that looks amazing since we do not have any items in the Stop section and just one item in the Less of section:
I think all in all this conference was a success partly because of our amazing volunteers, so thank you for everything: Adina, Andra, Brindusa, Catalin, Claudia, Gabi, Orsi, Razvan, Reka.
To find out more about Open Agile Cluj 2012 follow this link: cluj2012.openagile.ro
