This morning I awoke at about 7am and left the house about 8am. A stop at Starbucks and I was down at the Tutorial location by 8:15.
First major problem. Signage. A sign was left in the tutorial room over night and it was not there in the morning. I contacted the sponsor, found out the printer, and called them. They said it could be here Thursday morning by noon. From New Hamsphire to Ottawa. Cost: Roughly $150. We’ll cover that cost. It was my fault. The sign really didn’t need to be in the tutorial room, according to the sponsorship specifications. But I figured I would any way. Good intention. Unfortunate result.
After the session started at about 9:05 I left the volunteers to run the show and I headed over to the SITE buildling to pick up the registration computer and the printer. While there, I sorted things into registration piles and conference day piles. That would make the afternoon pickup easier.
The morning was mostly badge and invoice preparation for the registrations that had come in since the last batch was run.
After lunch, I packed up the computer in to return it to SITE where I’d pick up the registration material for packing. Mistake. I forgot to print the master attendeee list before packing everything up. Gah! Reassumble computer, print, pack up again.
Down to SITE. Pick up tote bags, inserts, etc. Back to the Tutorials for assembly.
Hmm, we’re missing some Google books. Where are they? Back to SITE. Not here. Oh yeah, at home. Drive home. Retrieve. Back to Tutorials.
Bag prep is well under way. The team does this well.
Halfway through bag stuffing we notice that one sponsor has given us two different inserts in one box. We didn’t notice. So we now have 150 bags or so with one of two inserts for this sponsor. We set those bags aside for later dealing.
By 3pm, our assigned time for arrival at the pub, we have 45 minutes more work. I call the pub. No worries, the FIFA crowd has assembled to take over the pub to cheer Manchester.
We complete our bags and five people carry one box each to the pub. I drive the car there so I have the extra gear in case it’s needed. We are roughly an hour late.
We manage to find space amongst the soccer fans and open our registration pickup.
I had out goodies to various people in the pub, including staff and customers. Just because I can. The staff at the Royal Oak are great. We always give them pens and left-over swag. They tell us pens are in hot demand. A server never has enough pens. :)
By 4:40pm it’s busy as. All the tutorial crowd has arrived and we discover we are missing many badges. Investigating the print-merge files, I notice a couple of extra NEXT RECORD statements. Bugger. Dru goes through the master list reconciling it with the bags and badges. I use that to extra the data needed and create a new merge file and print to PDF. This PDF will be printed in the morning.
Roughly 50 people didn’t get their badges, but they did get their tote bags.
At 7:40pm, the pub is now quiet. Most people have headed to the Yahoo! venue. That’s where I’ll go as soon as we pack up the car. :)
