Station

A place or a job that has to be covered continuously while the event is live. The difference between a station and a task is that a task gets finished and a station gets left uncovered. Check-in table, floor and wayfinding, sponsor booths, stage and AV support, mic runner, podcast support, content capture, setup and pack down are the usual ones at community scale. Stations are the unit volunteer staffing is planned in, because listing them first is what turns “we need help” into a number you can recruit against. Multiply the station list by the blocks of the day each one has to be covered for and you have a shift plan.

Source: Working practice, documented most concretely by organizers reading their own lists out loud. A Whova volunteer panel names check-in team, breakout facilitators, mic runners, sponsor liaisons, setup, registration, speaker room, room assignments, tech support, morning and afternoon runners and cleanup as their standing posts. Dewan Ahmed’s DevOpsDays Halifax write-up describes identifying the roles needed (registration desk, photography and videography, A/V support, social media, setup and teardown, general help, workshop support) before opening recruitment, which is the same move.

First used in: 2.7 · The volunteer engine.