Dreamhack: Orientation

Thursday, April 27, 2023

• Option to contribute to bump in, from 9am until orientation on the day (6pm)

• Lots of communication in the volunteers discord channel

• "Bump in" (setting up of the event), unlike TGX, had no attendees coming to pick up their passes, as it was all through ticketek, via mobile phone on the day. I arrived around 6pm and stayed back after orientation to help set up parts of the event until 9pm.

• Range of ages amongst volunteers (18-40+). Different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities too. Like TGX, it was certainly more male dominated. However, there were more women volunteering in this event. Many didn't have an interest in video games or esports, and more so a passion for volunteering at events.

• Helped with setting up tables, flags and archways

• Orientation was at 6pm, asked to arrive earlier as we had to be collected from outside Margaret Court Arena

-> Staff/Organizers gave us a rundown of the event, expected attendee

numbers, etc

-> Sense of a team

-> Team leads: all men, over the age of 25 and all have previous volunteering

experience

-> No more than 10 women volunteering that I could tell of during the

orientation (excluding staff)

-> Tour of the convention, the areas, etc

-> Highly introverted group. Some volunteers were loud, but most were quiet.

-> Staff asked volunteers to shower and use

deodorant .. lol

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

I had arrived at Melbourne Olympic Park around 6pm, on an electric scooter I had rented from flinders street. Yes, I was running late. This is when I found out that you can't drop off rentable scooters in the Olympic park, which turned into me riding it to the other side of Richmond station, and running all the way back. When I initially arrived at the venue, I had recognized some of the volunteers from the games expo. When I arrived to orientation after staff had met me outside after returning the scooter, I was nicknamed scooter girl.

This was my second time volunteering at a gaming event, the first one being the Games Expo the month prior. There were many familiar faces amongst volunteers and staff, and also many unfamiliar ones too. The group was a lot bigger, and I even found out that there were two people in my university course volunteering in the event too.

I stood up for a while, and then realized that the orientation was going to be a lot longer than the one at TGX. I sat at the back of the room with a girl I recognized from TGX, amongst other volunteers. One thing that I couldn't help but notice was the culture that was extremely noticeable within the room, but less than it was at TGX. Understandably, as Dreamhack is considered more professional, with influencers, and esport competitions being carried out for the whole weekend.

After we were given a round down of the logistics, Vollie HQ, etc. We were then given our t-shirts for the event. One aspect of this that I noticed was that the shirts said, 'Crew' instead of 'Volunteer'. This was the same for the lanyards we were given on the first day of our shift.