Volunteering at WordCamp Boston

Note: The following post is written by Alexis Lyon.

A few weeks ago, my friend Lanna asked me if I wanted to go to WordCamp Boston. As I have been curious about WordPress, I signed up right away, crossing my fingers that I would get to go even though I was on the wait list. Soon after I got an email checking to see if I had any interest in volunteering. I would get a free hoodie, work a long day, and get to be at the conference. I already had a cat sitter for that weekend, so I decided to go for it.

Lanna and I drove down from Maine after work on Friday night to sleep in a nearby hotel, as we had to report for duty right at 6 AM. We woke bright and early, and walked on over to the NERD center before the sun came up.

I was excited to see this NERD center. I wasn’t sure if they would let me in with an iPhone in my pocket and Mac running through my bones, but they sure did. We were among the first volunteers to arrive. One of the organizers handed me a sweatshirt with a space to write in my Twitter handle. This was a good sign that this would be a good place for me. Then she handed me a name tag and a sharpie and told me to fill out my info and to “be expeditious.” Even better. I was surrounded by smart people. We were off to a good start.

Oh, and another thing: not only was I wearing my twitter handle with pride in the NERD center, but I was also about to become part of a FourSquare swarm. I was a part of something big! Never before had I been checked in with 93 people at the same location on FourSquare!

Our first task was to post the day’s schedule on the big dry erase board. I quickly learned about each and every presenter and topic as we wrote it up while the sun rose behind Boston and gleamed off the icy Charles. Once the rest of the volunteers arrived and we all had our assignments, there were a few minutes to chat and explore the 10^th floor as the attendees started to arrive.

The NERD center was intriguing and fascinating with it’s gorgeous views and touch screen coffee tables, not to mention seats of every height, softness, and privacy level. One particularly attractive nook had plush furniture in the shape and color of smoothed stones.

As the sun came up, the networking began. I enjoyed finding out more about the other volunteers, what they did, what they wanted to do, and how they ended up at the conference. It was a great crew to be surrounded by. I found myself inspired and encouraged as we articulated our life and career experiences.

The morning was especially busy. As soon as we made sure everyone had found their first workshop or two, it was time for the big production of getting lunch ready. We created a sort of assembly line, opening packages of drinks and snacks, and making sure each bag was deliciously full with the right assortment of lunch items. We were super efficient, and as more and more Vollies showed up to help, we shifted and optimized productivity without skipping a beat. Our next daunting task was to feed 450 people in 20 min. Somehow, with the right combination of bouncer like ability and organization, we got lunches into everyone’s hands within 12 minutes! It was kind of a thrill.

In the afternoon I had more chances to listen to some of the talks, between tasks like finding the key to the car in the garage with the most rusty bumper in order to complete a can donation transaction. I got to hear a good chunk of the SEO analysis presentation after going on an important search to find a lost hand from one of the sumo wrestler costumes.

As we got closer to the implementation of super secret surprise events, I slid into a sort of bouncer-ish role, body blocking participants from seeing men don sumo wrester costumes through glass walls. The good thing about that body blocking role was that it was right up near the front of Steve Garfield’s presentation about video on the web, which gave me some interesting information about coordinating auto posting that I may at some point apply to my vitamin video project.

While I was body blocking, other Vollies were preparing the distribution of RackSpace Cloud cotton candy. We moved the crowd upstairs to their sticky surprise. Before the scene spilled back out into my view with bags and handfuls of blue cotton candy, I was seeing child like happiness in the #wcbos twitter stream talking about sticky fingers on laptops and the like.

At the very end I got to go sit in on the Ignite talks, which to me are like a short attention span theatre for nerds. I loved them. I was hot, and tired (we’d been working for 12 hours on little sleep and lots of energy drinks) and it was a relief to settle in amongst the blue tongued attendees to absorb a few more tidbits before I got a chance to head back to the hotel room, put my feet up, and eat my very own RackSpace Cloud.