Help us out!
Visitors of the festival often mistake us for being a professional organisation! They praise us for how smooth everything runs, how cool the video program is and our ample Events program besides watching anime.
But looks can be deceiving!
While we are indeed very proud of our festival and of our achievements, we have to remind our visitors that we are a volunteer organisation and our festival depends on the volunteers that help us out. Without them we'd still be running the show in a back room with less than a hundred visitors. It's because we get help from fans like you that we were able to grow to our current size, with 1800~2000 people expected to visit in 2011!
You can recognise our volunteers while they're running around the festival grounds by a special t-shirt and a badge marked 'Gopher' or 'Steward'. That badge means that the person wearing it is proud of our hobby and that he or she is willing to contribute to making the festival a smashing success!
Just try and imagine what all the volunteers are doing in the background, making sure that you can enjoy yourself. To give you an idea, here is a summary of the various groups of volunteers. Perhaps you recognise yourself in some of them, and if you do, don't hesitate to sign up as a gopher.
The AV crew
Duties
- They run our video rooms, playing the films and series you all enjoy so much.
- They perform periodic checks for sleepers.
- They also perform periodic checks for food consumption.
Requirements
- Affinity with AV equipment.
- Each AV gopher needs to pull one night shift of approximately 4 hours.
The desk crew
Duties
- They welcome you at the registration desk when you sign in.
- They provide our visitors with information and answer all questions you may have.
Requirements
- Flexibility and dedication.
- Good people skills.
The events crew
Duties
- They supervise all of the events that run during the weekend.
- Where needed, they will help out in any of the workshops.
- They also perform periodic checks for food consumption.
Requirements
- Flexibility and dedication.
- Moderate problem solving skills.
The game room crew
Duties
- They supervise all the game consoles and video games in our game room.
- They perform periodic checks for food consumption.
- They make sure that everybody gets their turn playing games.
Requirements
- Affinity with consoles and AV equipment.
- Tolerance for the busy sounds (and smells) of the game room.
The Stewards (security support)
Duties
- They perform basic crowd control at busy parts of the festival.
- They perform periodic safety checks.
- They check your age at the door of adult-only events and video showings.
Requirements
- Enough free time to take the exclusive workshop on security in advance.
- Good people skills.
- A good grasp of the Dutch language (and possibly English as well).
The cloak room shift
Duties
- They take your coats and luggage at the cloak room.
- They guard over your belongings and do their utmost best to make sure nothing gets lost.
Requirements
- Because the cloak room has always been a bit a of a problematic area every volunteer (except the Staff and Stewards) is required to perform at least one of these shifts.
- The ability to take care of other people's belongings in an organised manner.
As you can see, without the volunteers there wouldn't BE a festival! And we can always use more volunteers. In 2005 we had about fourty people helping us out, which is about one out of every thirty visitors. In 2010 we even had around eighty people volunteering! Looking at it that way, it doesn't sound like very much does it?
So if you would be willing to help us out, please select 'Volunteering' from the menu. We really won't ask much of you and in return for your favour you will receive a few perks above the normal visitors.