Call for volunteers
FOSDEM needs you! Every year, the FOSDEM team is assisted by an enthusiastic team of volunteers to help out with various tasks and make the event a fun and safe place for all our visitors. Although we've become pretty good at organising a large conference, we're a small team and can not be everywhere at once. Which is why we enlist volunteers from among our visitors every year. If you would like to help out and give back to the community, please come join the ranks. You can do so by subscribing to the volunteers mailing list. This is where we will coordinate tasks so the event can run smoothly. We promise it'll be fun!
Extra hands are especially welcome during buildup on Friday, starting at noon, and more so during cleanup on Sunday evening. In case you're worried about missing lunch, free pizza will be provided for volunteers so nobody will have to go hungry.
A short overview of the tasks:
- Setting up the venue on Friday: this mostly involves carrying tables to their destination and setting them up, putting up signage, covering the walls in brown paper, ...
- Deploying the network on Friday: rolling out, neatly securing and crimping UTP cables. People with experience crimping cables are very welcome to help out!
- Manning the infodesk: help out fellow visitors who have questions, sell T-shirts, ... Must be a good English speaker, but if you know other languages besides that it certainly won't hurt.
- Moderation: make sure all talks end on time by giving speakers cues near the end of their time slot. Keep an eye out on room security and report potential issues such as overcrowded rooms before it becomes an issue.
- Safety: keep an eye out for potentially hazardous situations such as patches of ice that could trip people up, overcrowded rooms, ... This also involves barring entrance to rooms that are at full capacity so we can keep the conference safe for everyone. This can be combined with moderation.
- Teardown and cleanup on Sunday evening: collecting beer bottles, tear down the network, pull brown paper off the walls, take down the signage, stack the rental tables in neat heaps, broom the floors, ...
In addition to general volunteer work, we are also looking for volunteers specifically to help out with video-related work. This involves:
- Operating a camera in one of the five rooms which will be recorded by the FOSDEM video team;
- Regulating the audio in one of the rooms;
- or operating the DVswitch station.
While A/V experience is of course always welcome, all that's really needed is that you're interested; on-the-job training will be provided.
People interested in helping out with the video team should subscribe to the video team mailing list before the event where important announcements will be made, and be prepared to join us on IRC during the event.
Note that it's perfectly okay to subscribe (and volunteer) to both; just make sure to let the respective coordinators know when necessary.