Hey reader,
I heard you were curious, so here are some reflections.
Day of Event (DOE): Overall, I felt pretty good about my work on the day of the event. The week leading up to Visions was really difficult for me (and my whole department, for that matter.) I'd been working on locking people in for several weeks, but when I started fitting people into slots, sending schedules, and asking for confirmations, I ran into a couple of problems: people dropping out, changes in availability, not enough people agreeing to work in the morning, etc. Trying to combat all of this and cover my bases was a whirlwind, but I really feel like I got everything pretty settled by the day-of. I had to ask for a few volunteers from the class to help cover some morning A/V slots (and they were awesome to agree... though I found that all of the camera volunteers from last year were actually Visions staff members, so having to ask only a few to help this year wasn't so bad.) My volunteers did some awesome work on the day-of. I only had one no-show (his name is Andy Nielson for anybody who's counting!). I think every single one of my people showed up early, and some even started volunteering well before their shift was supposed to begin. They were all really eager, hardworking, and friendly, and I think they did a great job at representing the face of Visions. The registration hustle in the morning created kind of a whirlwind for me, because some of my facilities volunteers were being roped into pass/reg. table duty, so I had to get that covered with the people I had. After the event, I was informed of another gap in volunteers during breakdown in Fisher, while most of us (including me) were driving guests to the after party. I didn't have anyone scheduled to help with breakdown; I think there was a miscommunication that led me to think that nobody was needed during that time. I included info in my manual about combating issues like this in the future - the volunteer coordinator should work with the class directly to ensure that everybody has all of the people they need at the times they are needed. If the class and department heads are aware of all of their options, and everybody approves the schedule, then there should be no issues. I had people look at the final schedule and asked for approval, but I should have done that in person. It's tricky because I didn't have the final final FINAL schedule until Thursday. Hopefully this can be avoided in the future though.
Semester as a whole: I knew going into Visions that it would be a challenge, and maybe that's an understatement now that it's over. A lot of passionate arguments, late nights, early mornings, all-nighters, and stress implosions later, I've made some amazing friends in the class and at the festival, and have experience under my belt that'll be useful for my entire career. In summary: it was hard, but we did a thing, and people had fun, and it was pretty cool.
To infinity and beyond,
~~~Ashley!
