Okay, I've unpacked, slept, ate, cleared off the massive amounts of work from my desk at my real job, and am now ready to gather my thoughts on YearlyKos. I'm also ready to post my first diary on Daily Kos, and this is it so please be kind at the lack of links or other techniques that require a level of technical knowledge that I sorely lack. I will do my best. (The power of Momster is with me!)
As we were planning this convention, I was amused at the idea that I could be in the same room with a member of the committee and not know it. Until March 2006, I had never met any of the other organizers although I had been in contact with them via phone or email almost constantly since joining the committee in July. So when I got on the hotel elevator on Wednesday morning and saw a man wearing a "wingnut" T-Shirt, I knew it had to be a Kossack. When I met that same person later in the day and found out that it was Sterno who had developed the reg-o-matic and I had had numerous conversations with, I had to chuckle. This is an example of what made YearlyKos such a success, but I will go into that later. First, let me describe my introduction to the convention.
As we got closer to the convention, our original idea of packing the registration bags with freebies from the LV Convention and Tourism Bureau suddenly became unnecessary as we became overwhelmed with offers for free magazines, books, DVD's, etc. Although this was great, it added another requirement to my job, I had to track it all so everything we were expecting made it into the bags. So we told everyone to have their swag bag items delivered to the hotel by Tuesday morning so they would be ready for the volunteers scheduled for the packet stuffing on Wednesday afternoon. Best laid plans. On Wednesday as we waited for the hotel to deliver all the boxes marked "Registration Materials", I was still worried that we wouldn't have enough people to stuff all 1000 bags and I kept getting pulled away so I wasn't able to supervise the process. When I checked in the stuffing room, we had 1 item and 3 people. When I came back 45 minutes later there were 6 crates of boxes, 15 people and the stuffing had commenced. They didn't need someone to explain what needed to be done. They grasped the idea and like typical progressives, they took the ball and ran with it. The room was filled with a chaotic frenzy of activity as we waited for flyers that hadn't arrived and tried to determine what to do with the flyers we weren't expecting. It was not nearly as organized as I would have liked it to be but the volunteers didn't care. They spent hours stuffing all 1000 bags stopping only for registration desk training, then resumed stuffing bags until everything was stuffed and back behind the registration desk 6 hours later. No complaints from anyone.
Thursday morning the registration desk opened at 7:30am with a skeleton crew as I thought we would be getting the rush later in the afternoon. Of course I couldn't have been more wrong as there was a line around the lobby. We couldn't find a large portion of the badges because Sterno was still printing them as he had been doing all night long, (and I mean ALL night, he hadn't slept in 30 hours), we hadn't gotten our rhythm down so we were tripping over each other and we were all afraid the crowd would be getting restless soon. Finally I made an announcement thanking everyone for their patience only to be interrupted by a woman who yelled, "Are you kidding? We're just happy to be here." That's when I realized the impact this event would have on everyone. No one cared that they had to wait in line or we couldn't find their printed badge and asked them to hand write one. No one cared that our credit card machine wasn't working so we had to copy their credit card number on the on site registration sheet and run it through later. No one cared because that wasn't why they were there. This convention was successful because the participants wanted it to be. All those months we would post diaries asking for financial support based on the phrase "trust me it will be worth it" and people did trust us, now their trust was rewarded ten fold.
After that, the rest of the day became a blur of activity putting out fires and preventing unexpected crisis. The volunteers behind the registration desk became a well oiled machine and took the initiative to open the desk after it had been closed because they saw the need to keep it open. They didn't ask permission or take a poll or ask for consensus, in true progressive fashion they saw a problem and they stepped up to solve it. In exchange, they missed most of the events they traveled from all over the country to see, but they didn't care. They became so self-sufficient that they kicked me out from behind the desk. They were vital to the success of the convention and I hope I made them all aware of their importance. I would not have been able to fulfill all the other responsibilities I needed to take care of if it weren't for their efforts. As I said before, I am not technically gifted, I don't own a laptop or have IM capabilities on my cell phone...which is rarely on, and I have no idea how to do a lot of things that are second nature to most Kossacks, I've often wondered how I ended up in this group. But in the world of People Powered Politics, there is a place for me and others like me that have more people skills than tech skills. Even though YearlyKos 2006 is over, the work is not, I've already got volunteers for next year. So if you see one, make sure you hug a volunteer....and sign up for next year.