Fluidity Forum is an all-volunteer event. If you would like to take on a task, contact us. We’ll discuss the role, schedule, communication channels, and expectations.
Tasks
These are most of the tasks that need doing for Fluidity Forum 2026. The more roles we fill, the more evenly we can distribute the work—and the more time each organizer has to attend sessions and take part in the gathering.
The tasks are intentionally fine-grained. You may take on one task or a cluster of related tasks. When someone takes responsibility for a task, we add their name rather than remove the task; you may still offer to work with them.
Everything not taken will be done by Matt Arnold.
Transportation - Harry Gao
- Set up a form for attendees to provide flight and transportation information, and answer questions about it.
- Coordinate drivers and attendees when plans change.
- Drive attendees between Detroit Metro Airport and Fluidity Forum.
Lodging - Kara Bradley
- Make a form about sleeping preferences.
- Let attendees know who is sleeping where.
Programming - Alexis Wu
- Arrange sessions into a schedule.
- Give presenters a five-minute signal at 45 minutes and ask them to finish at 50 minutes.
- Ensure audiovisual equipment is on and off at the appropriate times.
- Ensure audiovisual equipment has SD cards with sufficient space.
Inventory - Brandon Watson
- Track where physical materials are and who is using them.
- Manage lost and found — Carrie Day.
- Set up and pack up air mattresses and privacy screens.
- Set up and pack out audiovisual equipment and stage dressing.
Food - Jane Pierce, Carrie Day
- Shop for groceries.
- Cook a meal. Fluidity Forum will pay for the requested ingredients, and someone will shop for them so they are on site when the cook arrives.
- Wash dishes and clean the kitchen each day before dinner is cooked.
- Serve meals; decide how, when, and where food is served; and label food for dietary restrictions.
- Check drink coolers and snack tables regularly and restock them as needed.
Information — Patrick Day
- Make and post signage.
- Get the program books printed and pick them up from the printer.
- Make registration bags with badges, programs, and other materials.
- Distribute registration materials to each attendee.
Software - Bruce Webber, Matt Arnold
- Develop and maintain Airtable applications for session descriptions, volunteer cooking and dishwashing signups, and similar event coordination.
Attendee response
Serve as a clear point of contact when an attendee needs help: locating a walk-in clinic or the first-aid kit, finding lost and found, talking through an emotional problem, or responding when someone may be experiencing a psychological event.
You do not have to solve every problem. You need to know the response process and have the other organizers’ phone numbers. Giving this responsibility to a named person prevents it from being diffusely assigned to every attendee.
Being a Fluidity Forum organizer
Authority and responsibility
You will have two things: authority and responsibility. We want them to remain attached. You do not get authority without responsibility, or responsibility without authority.
Your authority is over how you perform your role in a way that makes you proud of the outcome, and over how group decisions affect that work—not over how other organizers perform their roles. To the extent possible, we want to let each other do work in ways we can be proud of.
Check in with other organizers when your authority and responsibility overlap with theirs. If you are not yet good at addressing those conflicts, I can help you get better at it.
Commitments and shared resources
Always check in before committing the organization to something with a third party, especially before committing us to spend money.
When using shared equipment, check who else needs it, when they need it, the standards for maintaining it, and who is responsible for it.
Communication
You will have access to the Signal chat for Fluidity Forum organizers.
Organizer meetings are optional and combine in-person and video participation. We schedule them through Signal and Whenisgood.net. Calls are approximately monthly and become more frequent beginning in August.
You do not have to attend meetings, but during any month when you do not attend, we need to hear how your tasks are going or how group decisions may affect your work. If we do not hear from you, we will reach out. If we receive no response for a month, we are likely to replace you with someone responsive.
When group decisions affect your work, we will try to postpone those decisions until we hear from you. Meetings are a useful way to follow decisions and explain their effects on your role. We cannot indefinitely postpone decisions when an organizer is unavailable.
Decision-making
I may call a vote when the group considers that the best way to make a particular decision. Fluidity Forum has no board of directors or bylaws, so these votes have no official force.
Fluidity Forum is currently run as a sole-proprietor LLC named Scaladox Street, LLC, and I am the sole proprietor. The buck ultimately stops with me. That gives me a strong incentive to keep organizers happy: if someone quits, I will probably have to do their job.
My role includes breaking an impasse. If a disagreement cannot be resolved by the people involved, and voting is not the right method, I will hear the concerned parties and then make the decision.