More than 11,000 entrepreneurs, investors, developers, and journalists gathered at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans April 26 to 28 for the Collision conference produced by Irish tech entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave and his Web Summit team. As the event has grown since its 2014 debut in Las Vegas, when it had about 1,000 attendees, so has a key piece of its production strategy: a structured volunteer program that provides a large part of the event staff. About 330 people applied to volunteer at the 2015 conference in Las Vegas; this year the number of applicants jumped to nearly 1,000. Organizers selected 220 of them to work at the event in exchange for complimentary access to the entire conference program in their free time.
“Volunteers do play an important role in ensuring that the event runs smoothly,” said volunteer manager Brigid McKeown. “And we believe that the Collision Volunteer Programme is a great opportunity to gain work experience, be part of our networking environment, and to simply experience a major tech and start-up event.”
Volunteers applied online and agreed to complete three shifts of five to six hours each between April 25 and 28, working on teams such as registration, social media, speaker liaison, and start-ups. “We have people from all walks of life … from retirees to entrepreneurs looking to start their own business to college students. [It’s] people who want to get access to an event they would not be able to afford and others who do it for the sake of helping out,” McKeown said. In addition to getting to network and hear presentations from speakers such as Brett Favre, Tiki Barber, and the founders of companies such as Charity:Water, WeWork, Slack, and Eventbrite, some volunteers have joined the Web Summit staff and now travel the world working at its events.
McKeown said they initiated the volunteer program at Web Summit in 2014. In addition to Collision, they use volunteers at Surge in India, Rise in Hong Kong, and MoneyConf in Madrid.
