Have I told you lately that I love you?

At the volunteer briefing a few weeks ago Rosemary introduced me to the group with the following statement: Never in the history of the festival has someone come back for a second year as Volunteer Coordinator; clearly Jane is either masochistic or crazy.

Maybe she is right, coordinating a large group of people can be tricky at times, but coming back for a second year means one can build on past performances, preempt problems, run a smoother and more thought-out program.

For example, this year I’ve learned to play it cool. Last year, I greeted each and every volunteer who came on shift with ‘Hi, I’m Jane, I love you.’ Clearly I’d been nervous that the roster of many faceless names wouldn’t materialise into real live people and I was beyond rapt when it did.

This year I keep my love quiet. It’s not that the love isn’t there, it’s just that I’m trying to avoid that thing where people back away from me with a frightened look on their face. But seriously, with the first weekend of the festival under our belt and the schools program nearly over, I’m feeling a lot of love.

Friday through to Tuesday saw hoards of smiling people come knocking at the door of the volunteer cabin, ready to be decked out in a t-shirt and beret and tackle whatever task was thrown their way. These people are seriously amazing. Friendly, funny, organised, patient, flexible. We’re incredibly lucky to have them.

So maybe if you’re at the festival this weekend and a lovely person in a red beret scans your ticket or directs you to the festival club you should tell them that you love them. That way, if I happen to slip up and declare my love I wont seem so weird.

Jane
Volunteer Coordinator

Volunteers Ahoy

Well, it’s been an action packed week. First thing Monday morning I accidentally deleted our entire database of volunteers. In my defence, the ‘delete this user’ and ‘delete all users’ buttons are VERY close together. I can’t express the relief I felt when I announced to Helenka what I’d done and she laughed instead of throwing something at me. I’d already trawled through my mind to work out how many of those three hundred names, addresses and phone numbers I could recall (none) but luckily the system had been backed up the night before so a phone call to our IT guy had the list recovered in half an hour. My only punishment was to do the coffee run and by then I was totally ready for a coffee anyway.

Monday night was our volunteer briefing at BMW Edge. That type of thing always feels a bit like a birthday party with the obligatory few hours of fear that no one will turn up. To my relief we had a great crowd, around 130 people, and I’ve been meeting with other small groups of volunteers all week. So many fabulous people! I can tell it’s going to be an amazing team.

Now I’m working on scheduling everyone to their preferred roles and it’s the time of year where the words ‘I don’t envy you at all’ are constantly being thrown at me. This means many hours working my way through the program, assessing where I need to place people and trying to marry that with where people want to be placed. Of course I’m forever wandering off on tangents, reading up on different writers and events. The events at the Toff and Festival Club look fabulous and I’m excited about Craft Hatch. All of these crossovers between words, music, art and craft totally have my heart.

\In response to Nina in her blog below, No Nina, it’s not just you, Tom Rob Smith is hot. If you would like me to write him a love letter on your behalf maybe you should check out my new website Clothing For Correspondence. And you could give me that red cape you are wearing today in return.

Jane
Volunteer Coordinator