Volunteer With Fluidity Forum

Do you get fun and satisfaction from contributing to things you’re intrinsically motivated to do, when it directly provides meaningfulness to you and those who are doing it with you? Please contact us to volunteer with this all-volunteer not-for-profit event! If you contact us, we’ll discuss more details, like our communications channels, communication patterns, schedule, and expectations.

Jump to “What does it mean to be a Fluidity Forum organizer?”, below

Tasks

Here are most of the tasks that need doing for Fluidity Forum 2024. The more of these roles we fill, the more we spread the work around so that we all have plenty of time to attend sessions and have fascinating conversations.

If you wish to take on a cluster of related tasks, that would make sense. They’re broken out more fine-grained because you might be in a position to do one, but not all, of the tasks in the related cluster.

Rather than removing tasks from this page as they are taken, we are adding their names. Please feel free to suggest yourself for those tasks as well, if you’d like to make it a team effort.

Everything not taken will be done by Matt Arnold.

Transportation

Set up a form for attendees to give us their flights and transportation info; be responsible for answering questions about what is on it

Communicate between driver and attendees about late breaking info and coordination

Drive people to and from Metro Detroit Airport and Fluidity Forum

Lodging

Make form about sleeping preferences

Let people know who is sleeping where

Programming

Arrange sessions into a schedule

Give presenters the 5 minute signal at 45 minutes & ask them to end their talk at 50 minutes

Ensure Audiovisual is on and off at appropriate times

Ensure Audiovisual has SD cards with sufficient space

Inventory

Tracking where physical stuff is and who is using it

Lost and Found

Set up and pack up air mattresses and privacy screens

Set up and pack out AV and stage dressing

Food

Grocery shopping

Cooking (we’ll use the kitchen this year & serve in the AirBnB dining room_

Washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen daily before dinner is cooked

Serving meals, arranging how, when, where meals are served, figure out how to label various things to indicate which dietary restrictions they comply with

Regularly check drink coolers & snack tables and restock them as needed

Information

Make and post the signage

Get the program books printed. Pick them up at the printer

Make and fill registration bags with badge, program, etc

Distribute badges, program, etc to each attendee

Attendee Response

Sort of like what a Ranger does at Burning Man. If an attendee needs help with something, they talk to the Attendee Response Navigator (better name to be determined later). “Where are the walk-in clinics around here?” “Where’s our first-aid kit?” “I’m having an emotional problem and need someone to talk to.” “My fellow attendee looks like they might be having some kind of psychological event.” “Where is lost and found?” Etc. You don’t have to solve the problem. You just need to be a point of contact to Fluidity Forum and have the phone numbers of the other organizers. We don’t want all attendees to feel a universal responsibility for everything that happens to each other, because then it’s diffused among all attendees, so no one knows if they’re stepping on each others’ toes by stepping in. You are the person who knows the response process.

What does it mean to be a Fluidity Forum organizer?

You will have two things: authority and responsibility. We want them to be attached. You don’t get authority without responsibility, or vice-versa. What you get authority over, is how you do your role in such a way that you’re proud of the outcome, and over how the group’s decisions affect that, not over how other people do their roles. To whatever degree we can, we want to let each other do their work the way they would be proud of.

The times when you need to check in with other organizers on your decisions are mostly when your authority and responsibility overlap with someone else. If you’re not yet good at addressing such conflicts, I can help you get better at it.

Always check in before committing the organization to something with a third party. Especially, before committing us to spend money.

Check in on who gets to share the group equipment that you’re using, if any; when they need it; standards for taking care of and maintaining it; and who’s responsible.

You’ll have access to the Signal chat for Fluidity Forum organizers.

There are non-mandatory meetings, which are a hybrid of in-person and video. We schedule them in our Signal chat, and by using a site called Whenisgood.net. Calls are approximately monthly, but will ramp up starting in August. You don’t have to attend them, but in any month that you don’t, we need to hear from you in some form to let us know how your tasks are going, or how the group’s decisions might affect the work you will do during the event weekend. If we don’t hear from you, we’ll reach out. If we don’t hear back for a month, we are likely to replace you with someone responsive.

When group decisions have an effect on your work, we’ll try to postpone making those decisions without you until we hear from you on it. However, the meetings are a good way to keep up to date with group decisions so that you can tell us if they affect your work in some way. We have to move forward with decisions if you go for some time without responding.

All this is to formalize the idea that if you don’t show up in our communications channels one way or another, the group will not paralyze our decisions waiting for you to be available, and we will probably replace you in your role eventually if we can’t get through to you.

I might call a vote on some things, if it looks like the group thinks that’s the best way to make a specific decision. There is no board of directors at this time, so there are no bylaws, and votes have no official force. Fluidity Forum is still small and straightforward enough to be run as a sole-proprietor LLC (named Scaladox Street, LLC). I’m the sole proprietor. The buck ultimately stops with me. That means I want to keep you happy, because if you quit, I’ll probably have to do your job. My role is to do things like break an impasse. If there’s a disagreement that can’t be resolved between you, where voting is not the right way to decide, I will hear out the concerned parties, and then I alone will decide.