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[Tam Alfredsson <tam.alfredsson AT hotmail.com>]

Hi,

Sorry for not taking part in the last evaluation meeting. I was on sick-leave 3 weeks after the conference due to the overloaded work that's why  I've not been so active lately. Since I almost  worked on the volunteering aspect, I'd like to raise some points that I learnt during the conference.

 

Walk-through meeting: I suggest that we'll have the introduction meeting with volunteers at least 2 weeks before the conference.

 

Schedule: I've created a new schedule in which all of the gaps between the working sessions are filled during  conference. In the new schedule, the volunteers have some time to deliver and receive a short report from the previous session. Also, we should let the volunteers select the times that suit them best first, then we will set the schedule accordingly.

 

Food: I think we should serve lunches as well, not only dinners. Many of the vistors were not so familiar with Göteborg. They found it hard and time-consuming to go out and look for a restaurant. Also, the vegetarian food didn't seem to be  favourite food for many people as I noticed many of buyers returned the dinner ticket after the first day. We'd better change to some simple and warm food such as lasagne, spagetti or Thai food . To avoid the concern of the lack of food, we could serve the guests or ask the restaurant's staff for helping us with it.

 

Coupons: Lunch/dinner coupons make sense for the oragnisers since we can count how many dishes have been sold, but they are non-sense for the buyers. Because you've just handed over the coupon to the buyer, then you get in back within 1 second. It was kind of awkward! It's enough to tick on the list everytime we sell a dish.

 

Speakers: I think the speakers are completely worthy treating with free meals and drinks during the conference. By that way, they would feel welcomed and well- treated by the oragnizers.

 

Role division: As I thought I was in charge of the Reception and Vonlunteering, I had nothing to do with the Cafe aspect since Fabiana and Andreas would be the responsible ones. However it ended up that Fabiana and Andreas couldn't  even participate any activities of the Cafe at all excepting for buying food. So, next time the role division who- does- what should be plainer.

 

Volunteers: Eventhough we got almost 30 volunteers this year, we still lacked of staff at last because of many factors. One of them was that the students were busy with preaparing for the exam or tired after the exam. Another factor was that half of the scheduled vonlunteers couldn't show up because of having a cold due to the flue season. We can't predict or controll those factors so we need to schedule many volunteers during the working session case any circumstances/ problems may occur. Btw I was so thankful that we got amazing volunteers this time who were really quick, hard-working, helpful  and  considerate.

 

Tickets: Some of the visitors got to know the conference too late to manage booking the ticket. It would be ashamed  that they were not allowed to attend the conference because of missing the booking. So we should sell the ticket during the conference for those who are interested.

 

Conference manager: I think it's neccessary to have a vice- conference manager/ assistant  during the conference in order to urburden Leif-Jöran's work. I felt like he did the work of 5 people!

 

Finally, I felt ashamed that I wasn't able to devote very much time when the conference needed me the most due to my overloaded work. That's why I guess it's better to resign the post of volunteering responsibility for FSCONS 2015 because I can't be sure of that I'm available full time at that time. I'm still willing to be a volunteer though :).

 

Best regards

Tam

 

Attachment: Working schedule for FSCONS volunteers.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document