In reply to @diversemix:matrix.org
It's been more than 15 years (and two Grandchildren later) that I've helped at an event. This was my first FOSDEM so I volunteered, I only managed 4 hours of shifting tables. But I have a new found respect for the sheer energy that is put in, something I took for granted when younger - kudos to you all, you are much needed!

In reply to @testman42:matrix.org
Allow me some constructive feedback:
There were some moments, when the volunteers were in an idle state, either waiting to be given work or waiting for confirmation that some task is in fact supposed to be done.
My suggestion for staff:
during this year, go play some Real Time Strategy video games.
For start just single player, and later cooperate against AI opponents.
As an excersise for micro-management and macro-management muscles.

rss fosdem: Video transcoders churning away

In reply to @testman42:matrix.org
Allow me some constructive feedback:
There were some moments, when the volunteers were in an idle state, either waiting to be given work or waiting for confirmation that some task is in fact supposed to be done.
My suggestion for staff:
during this year, go play some Real Time Strategy video games.
For start just single player, and later cooperate against AI opponents.
As an excersise for micro-management and macro-management muscles.

I assume you're referring to the cleanup on sunday?

I think I had a good way of phrasing it last weekend: "Previously the bottleneck was the amount of volunteers. This time the bottleneck was the logistics of assigning the jobs to the right people. (which is no to blame anyone. This simply wasn't a problem to consider before)"

Wrote down my thoughts as well (this is just feedback, to make next year's even better):

Some things I noticed that might be useful to put in the post-mortum:

Cloak room

• It was unclear to us at the end of day 1
  • What the exact the time was that people could still drop things off at the cloakroom (the paper sign and the volunteer task ended at different times). I assume this was on purpose to provide some buffer. But there was some confusion around this.
  • It was unclear to us when people who wanted to pick up items for their booth could start / were allowed to pick up their things. Some of the booth owners seemed to say they were only allowed to pick up between certain hours. Some asked us but we didn't know.

Video

• I understand that normally someone scheduled for video would know how a professional camera / audio mixer work. But because a lot of those tasks didn't have anyone assigned and I was sort of pushed into doing a video task without being fully prepared (I knew there was the 20 page manual but hadn't actually read it). My main thing is: the manual assumes you know how audio mixers and professional camera's work... which I didn't. I knew there was a button to set the white balance and such but exposure and such I had no idea about. Usually you don't need to touch those too much. But if you're in H building and sometimes the speaker stands in front of the projector screen, it would be nice to know how to adjust the settings for situations like that. So maybe now that all camera's were the same this year, including basic camera operating instructions and mixer instructions would be nice
• It would be nice if there was either temp labels on the mixers or some central location where you retrieve which audio channels on the mixers (mainly for Janson and La Fontaine) were being used for which mics.

General (volunteer related)

• As I already stated in https://github.com/FOSDEM/volunteers/issues/78 There currently is nothing to let a volunteer know there is nobody after them to relieve them of their duties. I had to find this out myself when I checked the schedule an hour before.
• I understand that staff is often busy, but it did feel like this chat channel (#volunteers:fosdem.org) wasn't as actively monitored as it maybe should have been.
• Establishing clear communication guidelines/recommendations might be good. While I did see in the video channel that messages would often be replied to with 'ack' to acknowledge something. Which is good and shouldn't go away. Seeing as this is not an IRC chat (and I don't think it's bridged to one?) I think it might be good if the modern chat features of Matrix like emoji reactions. I recently heard a company using 👀 to confirm they've read something and then ✅ to confirm stuff as reactions on messages. The problem with an 'ack' is that sometimes it might arrive right after a different message came in and now it's confusing who the 'ack' is for. So if someone says something, you can 👀 the message to confirm you're looking into the specific problem/task, which sometimes might take a couple minutes and it's unclear if anyone is actually doing anything about the message you posted.
• I already mentioned to Wouter about having a badge template available so if people want to print their own name badges, they can. But I think maybe for volunteers it might be extra useful to have such badges. So maybe having them be pre-printed and available on-site might be nice. (Just simple ones with the name in a large font size)
• It should be something that volunteers know, but if you happen to forget / not read it: mention on sunday morning early on in this chat that you should grab a fresh shirt from infodesk K in the morning
• Bring much more of that white painters tape to the event
• I had forgotten about the free meal voucher until someone reminded me sat evening. So maybe worth mentioning that in chat as well as a reminder for people. I wasn't the only one that forgot about it.
• Maybe briefly mention to people putting the paper on the glass cabinets that it's best to put the top of the paper sheets actually on top of the glass cabinet and not on the front. (easier for the tape to carry the weight of the paper)

General

• Someone mentioned that having hotel/hostel lists on the website might be useful. As they said: they shouldn't be 'recommendations'. Just... a list... that way, def for a hostel, can gather in the same kinds of hotels maybe.

Some things I noticed that might be useful to put in the post-mortum:

Cloak room

• It was unclear to us at the end of day 1

  • What the exact the time was that people could still drop things off at the cloakroom (the paper sign and the volunteer task ended at different times). I assume this was on purpose to provide some buffer. But there was some confusion around this.
  • It was unclear to us when people who wanted to pick up items for their booth could start / were allowed to pick up their things. Some of the booth owners seemed to say they were only allowed to pick up between certain hours. Some asked us but we didn't know.

Video

• I understand that normally someone scheduled for video would know how a professional camera / audio mixer work. But because a lot of those tasks didn't have anyone assigned and I was sort of pushed into doing a video task without being fully prepared (I knew there was the 20 page manual but hadn't actually read it). My main thing is: the manual assumes you know how audio mixers and professional camera's work... which I didn't. I knew there was a button to set the white balance and such but exposure and such I had no idea about. Usually you don't need to touch those too much. But if you're in H building and sometimes the speaker stands in front of the projector screen, it would be nice to know how to adjust the settings for situations like that. So maybe now that all camera's were the same this year, including basic camera operating instructions and mixer instructions would be nice
• It would be nice if there was either temp labels on the mixers or some central location where you retrieve which audio channels on the mixers (mainly for Janson and La Fontaine) were being used for which mics.

General (volunteer related)

• As I already stated in https://github.com/FOSDEM/volunteers/issues/78 There currently is nothing to let a volunteer know there is nobody after them to relieve them of their duties. I had to find this out myself when I checked the schedule an hour before. (And in general I made some issues that outline some problems / potential improvements to the volunteer website: https://github.com/FOSDEM/volunteers/issues/created_by/@me )
• I understand that staff is often busy, but it did feel like this chat channel (#volunteers:fosdem.org) wasn't as actively monitored as it maybe should have been.
• Establishing clear communication guidelines/recommendations might be good. While I did see in the video channel that messages would often be replied to with 'ack' to acknowledge something. Which is good and shouldn't go away. Seeing as this is not an IRC chat (and I don't think it's bridged to one?) I think it might be good if the modern chat features of Matrix like emoji reactions. I recently heard a company using 👀 to confirm they've read something and then ✅ to confirm stuff as reactions on messages. The problem with an 'ack' is that sometimes it might arrive right after a different message came in and now it's confusing who the 'ack' is for. So if someone says something, you can 👀 the message to confirm you're looking into the specific problem/task, which sometimes might take a couple minutes and it's unclear if anyone is actually doing anything about the message you posted.
• I already mentioned to Wouter about having a badge template available so if people want to print their own name badges, they can. But I think maybe for volunteers it might be extra useful to have such badges. So maybe having them be pre-printed and available on-site might be nice. (Just simple ones with the name in a large font size)
• It should be something that volunteers know, but if you happen to forget / not read it: mention on sunday morning early on in this chat that you should grab a fresh shirt from infodesk K in the morning
• Bring much more of that white painters tape to the event
• I had forgotten about the free meal voucher until someone reminded me sat evening. So maybe worth mentioning that in chat as well as a reminder for people. I wasn't the only one that forgot about it.
• Maybe briefly mention to people putting the paper on the glass cabinets that it's best to put the top of the paper sheets actually on top of the glass cabinet and not on the front. (easier for the tape to carry the weight of the paper)

General

• Someone mentioned that having hotel/hostel lists on the website might be useful. As they said: they shouldn't be 'recommendations'. Just... a list... that way, def for a hostel, can gather in the same kinds of hotels maybe.

In reply to @testman42:matrix.org
There is an "Accomodation" section of FOSDEM website which lists hostels and couch-aurfing communities.

In reply to @testman42:matrix.org
Allow me some constructive feedback:
There were some moments, when the volunteers were in an idle state, either waiting to be given work or waiting for confirmation that some task is in fact supposed to be done.
My suggestion for staff:
during this year, go play some Real Time Strategy video games.
For start just single player, and later cooperate against AI opponents.
As an excersise for micro-management and macro-management muscles.

Hi testman , not sure to which part you are referring to, so hear to explain both:

#1 volunteering pool - this really is just a pool for waiting. Sometimes a lot of extra tasks come in, sometimes we need someone to fill a gap, sometimes however everything is running smoothly, so there is nothing to do but wait

#2 cleanup 2024 - indeed this time around we had a lot of volunteers compared to the past few edition who came to cleanup. So much so, that it did mean we were very efficient and some did experience some idle time. While normally its "the more the merrier" some tasks dont go quicker with more people. Also sometimes we are restricted to a particular timeline (eg closing talk in Janson, video team taking their hardware)

In reply to @testman42:matrix.org
Allow me some constructive feedback:
There were some moments, when the volunteers were in an idle state, either waiting to be given work or waiting for confirmation that some task is in fact supposed to be done.
My suggestion for staff:
during this year, go play some Real Time Strategy video games.
For start just single player, and later cooperate against AI opponents.
As an excersise for micro-management and macro-management muscles.

Hi testman , not sure to which part you are referring to, so hear to explain both:

#1 volunteering pool - this really is just a pool for waiting. Sometimes a lot of extra tasks come in, sometimes we need someone to fill a gap, sometimes however everything is running smoothly, so there is nothing to do but wait

#2 cleanup 2024 - indeed this time around we had a lot of volunteers compared to the past few edition who came to cleanup. So much so, that it did mean we were very efficient and some did experience some idle time. While normally its "the more the merrier" some tasks dont go quicker with more people. Also sometimes we are restricted to a particular timeline (eg closing talk in Janson, video team taking their hardware), or certain tasks can only be completed by specialist staff or volunteers (eg network / video)

Also one other thing: with the volunteering website, there is no way to see where a talk is.
So for example the heralding tasks, it would be nice if it also said (K1.105) in the title of the task for example.

• Makes it easier to know which heralding tasks are where
• In general just helps with having your personal schedule be more usable

It makes sense, but still might be useful for people heralding for the first time. Mention somewhere how the timing works.
So for ex how for a 50 minute slot like in that screenshot, you should put up the 10 minute sign at 9:30. The 5 minute sign at 9:35. And then have 10 minutes of q&a.
It seems obv, but it might be good for some people to mention that somewhere