Volunteering at Social Media Week - Part 1 (Feb 2 & Feb 4, 2011)

There are multiple reasons why I volunteered for Social Media Week London (@smwldn). I will let you decide if my reasons are justified:

1. I am a social media enthusiast.

2. I am constantly looking out for events and opportunities to participate and network with like-minded people, subject matter experts and possibly recruiters too.

3. I am in between jobs. It is only after completing my 3 months internship that I resumed my job hunt, so I had some time to spare besides going for interviews.

4. Social Media Week was just around the corner and was recruiting volunteers!

5. Social Media Week is a worldwide event and some event management experience would look amazing on my CV.

So my volunteering serves a five-fold purpose. I got super-excited and applied.
Surprisingly for a volunteer position, there was a three-stage screening process - online application and CV, telephone and face-to-face interview. I have no complains whatsoever, I got the position of a volunteer at Social Media Week (SMW) London!! I am chuffed.

Chinwag is the organisation managing the London events and I was interviewed at Chinwag office. Although the volunteering task was to manage on-site Chinwag events during SMW, I volunteered to help Chinwag with off-site prepping for events for 2 days. I met amazing people at Chinwag and a fellow volunteer Sarada. We had fun preparing and printing event signs, checking banners, getting and packing stationery, organising and checklist-ing things needed for the events and keeping everything ready-to-go.

The prepping was so much fun, can't wait to attend and volunteer at the actual events!
Are you attending SMW? Can't wait to meet you all! More updates on my experience in Social Media Week next week :) Until then, ciao.