I have volunteered and been accepted to work at the AIGA conference in Boston this September. It was a short application with only a short statement about why you wanted to volunteer. I was happy but surprised at how quickly they accepted me. I had quite the laundry list or reasons they should let me volunteer and I know I am very well qualified to help run just about any event. Yet for the largest international design conference I was expecting for more of a rush and competition for the volunteer spot.
I really knocked the application out of the park though with my 150-word application. I have planed and run large events for TCNJ and know all about moving equipment around. This includes being an expert wire coiler, which the roadies are extremely picky about. I am also just graduating and as much as I would like to have a wonderful web design job in Boston, if I don’t this will be the place to meet people. I really want to be an acting member in the graphic design community and find as many ways as possible I can contribute more. Now I am limited to volunteered labor but I hope to graduate to organizing, planning, and perhaps even presenting at these events. Lofty plans I know but I’m going with the NNWM’s idea that if you tell enough people about the big ideas you have you will feel obligated to back them up. I look forward to your ridicule to help move me forward in my future goals.
In the end I really just look forward to finding a solid design community to be apart of. Today there are a core of blogs that really rule the community and I hope to find my own smaller tight knit community of blogs on a smaller scale. Livejournal really has a good feel for bringing smaller communities together and blogging really does seem to be more fun if there is a close knit community to interact with. As much as the large name bloggers hate to admit it with out people to interact with there is little point to keeping anything online besides a good del.icio.us account.