NDC London 2019

A few weeks ago I attended NDC London. This time I attended as part of the NDC crew. In exchange for a free ticket to the event, you agree to help out for 50% of the time you are there.

The evening before the conference, I joined the other volunteer crew members at the venue to help get set up for registration. This involved unpacking the NDC hoodies (each attendee receives one) from their boxes and getting the registration desk set up with the conference lanyards and badges. The following morning, we had to be there bright and early to welcome the attendees, check them in, and issue their conference badges.

For the rest of the conference, half of each day is spent working, and half is yours to do as you please. I was assigned to one of the conference rooms for each afternoon. This involved ensuring that the speaker turned up to the room before their talk, dealing with any problems that may happen during the talk, and giving the speaker their NDC speaker gift after their talk. A downside of being assigned to a specific room is that you don’t get to choose the talks you see, but having volunteered before back in 2014, I knew I would still see some good talks.