Volunteers needed for the conference

As you know, the third international openSUSE Conference is happening in a couple of weeks from now, you already should be registered! For the organization team this means that we are really picking up pace now and start to feel dizzy. One of the reasons for that is that we are short on helping hands. We especially miss “boots on the ground”, **we need your help! **

Being a boot on the ground means we need people to help us at the conference in September. There is no special knowledge about the location or other details needed. So far we have 5 tasks where we desperately need people to help out. Venue setup, Registration Desk, Session Chairs and the Snack Bar. Read on to learn how you can contribute to the success of the conference.

Venue Setup

The Zentrifuge is not an event location in the classical sense so we have to do a lot of setup tasks the days before the conference starts. For instance we need to make sure that the seminar rooms have enough chairs, multisockets and a working projector. We also need to setup the lounge with sofas, equip the Beergarden with tables, distribute waste bins and so on and so on. Most of this we will need to do on Friday/Saturday before the conference and it’s a lot of physical labor. If you can help with this please lets us know on the volunteers page or let us know at opensuse-conference@opensuse.org.

The Registration Desk

At the conference, every morning from 9:00 to 10:30, we will have a registration desk. It will handle the registration of new visitors,  distribution of info materials and answering of general questions and such. We need two people per day to man this desk during the conference. On Sunday, as it’s the first day, it better be three! If you can help with this please lets us know on the volunteers page or let us know at opensuse-conference@opensuse.org.

Session Chair

We have two floors in the Zentrifuge and both have a main room and some smaller rooms for workshops and birds of a feather sessions. For both floors we need two people per day to be a chair for the sessions that will take place. Being a chair means that you introduce the next presenter, make sure the sessions stick to the schedule and answer all questions speakers might have. This task takes a bit of experience as speaker/moderator to make the introductions, a wristwatch and, ideally, some technical knowledge with projectors/laptops. If you can help with this please lets us know on the volunteers page or drop us a mail at opensuse-conference@opensuse.org.

The Snack Bar

This year we will run our own snack bar at the venue. The organization team has already seen to that foods and drinks are available and that we have a fully equipped snack bar ready.  Now we need people that help us to man the snack bar to sell, sell, sell. You would need to sell snacks and drinks, make sure that we don’t run out and count the moneys! If you can help with this please lets us know on the volunteers page or drop us a mail at opensuse-conference@opensuse.org.

Evening Manager and Lock Service

One nice side effect of the Zentrifuge not being a classical event location is that we will have very long opening hours. People can continue to collaborate and don’t have to leave the place until 23:00. But this also means that we have to have at least one person per day that makes sure it doesn’t get to wild and that closes everything in the night. If you can help with this please lets us know on the volunteers page or drop us a mail at opensuse-conference@opensuse.org.

Other tasks

The team held couple of meetings which resulted in a nice list of stuff to do, like organizing hardware for the venue, ordering internet, food and drinks and so on. If you rather want to help with this, you’re more than welcome to contribute to the conferences success! A good start is to subscribe to our mailing list and participate in our meetings.

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**Thanks a lot in advance! **