Behind the scenes of a major event
This will be the first half of what I expect to be a long and tiring week / weekend helping with the organisations' annual flagship event. As I write this in the hotel, just arriving in Manchester where the One Young World Summit will take place, there is an air of excitement amongst colleagues. This is because this conference is the culmination of painstaking work, forging connections and networking, managing last-minute agenda changes, speaker drop-outs and late evenings and weekends working, for the majority of the people that make this event happen: OYW employees / volunteers.
I have attended conferences but never helped the arrangement of an event so this is a first for me. I hope to provide a reliable service to my team, to support other teams and represent the organisation in the manner that they expect.
I won't dwell on Monday to Friday as it was mostly admin duties, back and forth webpage changes, nothing development related.
3rd Sept
Saturday consisted of travelling from home to Manchester, some orientation around the main venue, one more team meeting to raise morale. All in all, a long but less stressful day. Tomorrow, we will do registration, familiarising with the locations around the venue and meet our volunteers. They will have an afternoon to familiarise with the tech support software, to moderate digital meetings and generally help out where an extra pair of hands is needed. That is a lot to ask from volunteers IMO.
4th Sept
Very tired from an unfamiliar sleeping environment however, it didn't matter that much as today was also a familiarisation day. We fielded a few questions online- it was so much easier to turnaround the answers when we were all together in one room bouncing potential responses off each other. We also got a quick whistle-stop tour of the main venue but luckily our remit means that we won't be giving directions too often because we will be locked away in one of the war rooms!
Let's see how things pan out when attendees/ partners/ sponsors/ speakers arrive for in-person registration!