Volunteering Showcase

Final event in the hideous run of six today which is the volunteering showcase. This is an awards ceremony that brings together all of the volunteering projects from over the year and invites guests who have been involved in the scheme to make some speeches commending the wonderful work done by the universities volunteering schemes as well as the raising and giving (RAG) committee.

Again, this was another event that went on for much longer than I was ever expecting. Not only that but officially we had no stage manager for the event and so the technical manager of the union had to step in instead. He is a very busy man and couldn't stay for very long but on the plus side, he knew exactly what needed doing. Fate made it such that this showcase was situated right at the top of the student's union on the fourth floor, perfect when all of the equipment is on the bottom floor. Thankfully there is a lift but it is only really designed for people and so doesn't like being filled with heavy and large equipment. Some things were a very tight squeeze - in particular the 61" plasma screen but with some careful manoeuvring we managed to squeeze it in.

I was in charge of the AV which basically consisted of wiring up three plasma screens to two laptops - one for a PowerPoint presentation and the other for a couple of short DVD clips. My job for the actual event was then to click through the presentation at the right places, something one of the organisers thought I would have been incapable of. During the run through, I managed pretty well and so I was allowed to click through during the event. I did make a slight blunder on the very first slide when I didn't click onto the second slide at the right time thanks to the poor annotation on the script and lack of presentation handout sheet so that I could have seen what the next slide was which would have helped enormously. A quick tap on the leg and some gesturing from the woman sitting the other side of the screen concealing us from the audience quickly resolved the problem and the rest of the night went without any glitches.

Two slightly embarrassing moments came both during and after the event. During the event, one of the speakers came on stage and was amazed that there were two people hiding behind the blue screen and kindly pointed this out. The second moment came with advanced warning when the organiser insisted that we were congratulated at the end of the ceremony and we were forced to step onto the stage and take a bow for our "hard work". Given what we had just heard about the amazing achievements of the other students in the room this made me feel very guilty as not only was this fairly simple stuff but we were being paid to do it!