I have just come home from volunteering at NDC London. It was a great experience and I learned a lot. I met some great people and had a lot of fun. I can’t wait to go back next year.
You may have heard of NDC London before. It is a conference for software developers. It is held in London every year and attracts people from all over the world. The conference covers a wide range of topics, with a strong focus on .NET. I have heard about the conference for years and always wanted to go, but with ticket prices in the thousands, it was out of reach for me.
Late last year, I saw a contact on social media mention that volunteering at NDC was a good way to go to the conference for free. I had heard that this was an option before, but hadn’t acted upon it. So I sent a quick email to the conference organizers. I didn’t expect I would get on the team, but they emailed back and said I was on the team, and asked what was my t-shirt size. I was so excited!
The event is held at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre , which is a great venue, right next to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. The conference is spread over a whole week, with 2 days of workshops and 3 days of talks. Volunteers are only needed for the 3 days of talks, however, there was an intro meeting the day before.
As a volunteer, you don’t get paid, so I needed to arrange my own transport to London and accommodation. It being London, I knew the tube network was a quick and easy way to get around, so I could search for a reasonably priced hotel that was near the venue.
The intro meeting was on Tuesday evening, at 5.30 pm. I arrived a bit early and unfortunately, I wasn’t very clear about why I was there so I was told to wait and the meetup would go upstairs soon. The London .NET user group was having a session at 5 pm with Mads Torgersen (the C# language designer), but luckily I double-checked and got to wait with the right people. However, this was not a bad thing, as I got to see some of the .NET team walk past, like Steve Sanderson and of course Mads Torgersen who was going to the meetup.
Once the intro meeting started, we unboxed the hoodies that every attendee was given. These ranged in size from XS to XXXL, we also learned how the registration process worked. Scan a QR code, print off the ticket, stick it to the lanyard, and issue it to the attendee. I also found out that there was a decent Yorkshire contingent, some I had met from York and Leeds user groups. We had a tour of the venue, the conference was on floors 3, 4, and 5. The top floor had a great view of Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. We were also issued our own T-shirt and hoodies, which were purple and said NDC Crew on them along with our lanyard passes.
It was an early morning, we needed to be at the venue for 7 am, ready to welcome 900+ people to the conference when the doors opened at 8 am. I helped man the hoodies, handing out XXL to any attendees who wanted them. There was a steady stream of people registering, however, I didn’t feel overwhelmed. By the time we had finished at registration, the keynote with Scott Hanselman was about halfway through, so I went to get a coffee and some breakfast and had a look at the schedule for the day. I was assigned to help out with the afternoon sessions so I was free to attend any sessions I liked in the morning.
For my afternoon duties, I needed to report back when the speaker had arrived and count up the number of green/amber/red cards for the session. At NDC feedback for the different speakers is submitted by the attendees by putting cards of different colours in a box. Green for good, amber for ok, red for bad. Throughout the different talks I attended there was always a good proportion of green cards, indicating the high quality of the speakers at NDC.
Wearing a purple NDC Crew hoodie, gave me a certain amount of confidence, I walked among many of the sponsors and chatted to a few. Elastic Search had a stall, and I mentioned my recent experience at work with them. At some conferences, I can feel a bit out of place, but at NDC being a volunteer, I had an automatic group of friends to chat to, the other volunteers, and this also helped me speak with one or two of the speakers. I enjoyed saying hello to Richard Campbell, who I had listened to on the .Net Rocks and RunAs Radio podcasts for years. I told him he had sent me a mug, and he mentioned it was a collector’s item now.
At the end of the first day, I was invited to the speaker dinner, which was a great experience. I got to chat with some of the other volunteers. I had a great time and it was free food and drink so I can’t complain.
While I was volunteering, I was often hanging out with the other volunteers. We had a great time, and I made some new friends. We had a lot of fun, and I learned a lot, which I hope to blog about soon. I can’t wait to go back next year.
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