Saturday, September 27, 2008

IdeaFestival - Through the Eyes of a Volunteer

Volunteering at the IdeaFestival can be fun and you have the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people.

My volunteering experience began at 8 AM in the morning where I encountered a number of police who where shutting off street access for a run that was about to happen. Luckily, they let me get to the parking lot I needed to. As I was walking to the convention center, I encountered the runners just starting (see last picture).

Once inside the center, I was assigned to assist with the 8:45 AM presentation by game designer Jane McGonigal entitled "Serious Play". The second image shows the room before she began her talk. One think I learned was I need some sort of tripod to help take low light shots. My other pictures of presentations turned out quit blurry. The lesson I learned as a volunteer is direct the people first showing up to the farther side of the room because people coming in late need to sit at the seats closer to the door. By the end we had a lot of people standing along the room edges.
Also run power cords to the tables for the bloggers or have seats that are near outlets. I directed computer users to these seats for the next two presentations I was assigned to.

The next presentation at 10:15 AM, John Gauntt's "The World in Your Pocket", I collected tickets and stayed in the hallway to let late comers in the room. You can see the empty hallway shot so at times there was not much to do. A group came and started to install art for the next speaker who was using it to raise money for their cause. This presentation was the 11:45 AM "Making a Difference 3.0" by Kenn Parks and Christophe Poizat. I was in the room for most of this one since it did not require tickets.

After this was over by 1 PM, my shift was over and I walked to the Louisville Science Center to volunteer there. My time there was spent helping people with the new Nanotechnology exhibit and older World We Create exhibit.