So some of you might’ve heard that I’m volunteering for the 2010 Winter Olympics here in Vancouver. For all you people living near or below the equator, the Winter Olympics is big in countries where there’s snow (mainly the North). There was actually a debate about this among fellow volunteers on which of the olympics is more popular – being that most of my colleagues are Canadian, winter wins out – I sided with summer olympics though as I don’t remember ever watching the winter olympics growing up in the Philippines.
I have gotten a lot of questions about why I’m volunteering and what it takes to be a volunteer . . . regarding the 1st question, I’ve always wanted to be a part of the olympics and since competing as an athlete is definitely out, I guess I’ll take whatever role I can fill . . . the call for volunteers actually started 3 years ago and I signed up right away. After a year and a half, I was phoned and interviewed – that was the first contact – afterwards, I got a callback and was asked to appear for an in-person screening and interview. This particular process took half a day as I recall, I was asked to submit identification for various security clearances . . . The third part involved a whole day of orientation and lectures – the people taking part in this process would make up TEAM 2010. After picking up my accreditation and uniform, I showed up for a final day of orientation 2 days before my 1st shift and our schedules were finalized.
My first shift was on a Wednesday and it started very early in the morning – 730AM. It dawned on me really fast that while my actual role was technology help desk – there were paid contractors responsible for each and every hardware on site and we were asked not to touch any of them. We would shadow these “contractors” when there’s a support ticket and provide back-up. We were also given trivial tasks such as mapping printers/desktops located all around the Main Media Centre which is actually a vast 2 bldg. complex comprising of Canada Place and the new Vancouver Convention Ctr.
It’s interesting to see such a huge undertaking being managed mainly by one organization, the Vancouver Olympic Committee. I would be posting more about my Olympic experience here on my blog – as a rule though, there are certain restrictions on what I can and cannot post, so I guess most of it will have to wait til after the Olympics.