Next week, thousands of us will be pouring into Minneapolis for a jubilant cacophony of hugging, learning, laughing, crying, speaking, listening, organizing, strategizing, schmoozing, and (yes) boozing. And that's just while standing line at the registration desk.
You'll see me there, the chubby grandmother with orangey hair, helping all those other volunteers get your namebadges and registration materials, give you directions, soothe your frustrations (and probably make a few new ones). We're also all over the place at Netroots Nation, getting folks to the right sessions, passing out information you might need as you enter a keynote-speaker room, picking up lost things and handing out found things, shamelessly hawking t-shirts and shilling for the amazing vendors in our exhibition hall. We're the ones you can come to, bleary-eyed before your first cup of coffee, to explain that you lost your namebadge the night before in a particularly vicious pub challenge, only parts of which you can remember, and we won't make your head hurt worse by giving you one of those really, really loud stern looks that you'd get at other conventions.
Here are a few things I've learned in my five years as a Netroots Nation volunteer:
- I've never had so much fun in my entire life.
- Netroots people are amazing. Just flippin' amazing. Three of 'em in a room together can generate enough power to light up a small country. If you ask them what they do as bloggers, they'll be all humble and just kind of kick the toe of their Mary Janes on the carpet, but at some point during any conversation, you're going to realize you're in the presence of someone who has done more in a week with their talents and energy than a hundred thousand Tea Party "activists" who spent months honing their sign-writing talents so they can build skills for their community by showing up somewhere to wave non-union-made flags and scream "Drill, baby, drill!"
- You get t-shirts. For free. I'm not lying about this. You're going to think I'm kidding, but I'm not. It's part of the Great Orange Satan ideology of Netroots Nation that anyone--ANYONE, regardless of class status or the number of M&Ms they can stuff into their mouth--can get a t-shirt merely for volunteering. It's crazy, I know. Paul Krugman can build the chart that shows how this holds together as an economic pinion of the convention, but he'd have to win another Nobel Prize for that, and that would be hogging the limelight, and he's just not that type of guy. Maybe it's because they buy the free t-shirts in volume. I'm not smart enough to explain it. I just embrace the cotton-blend, union-manufactured magic.
- Hang with me here on this one, OK? So I'm from the Great Plains originally. (You'd NEVER notice that from my accent. I've spent years struggling to take the Minne-SOA-dah-jaaa-fer-sher-dere-den out of my voice, and been wildly successful at it. Buy a bridge dere den, anyone?) You know, the home of Little House on the Prairie and the millions of people who homesteaded wheated wildernesses with nothing more than a horse, a tin of beans, and (let's be honest) a good bit of genocide. But even people as resourceful as that cannot create a farm with just a single plank of lumber and a few seeds. It takes a lot of various talents and materials to put together a homestead house. And neighbors. It takes neighbors to come over and thresh the wheat together, weed the soybeans, put up a barn, and feed all the other neighbors it takes to bring in the crops in the fall.
Netroots Nation isn't a place, it's a movable homestead that needs its neighbors to raise the panel tables, weed out the gate crashers, winnow the kernels of knowledge from the chaff, and salvage whatever crops can be gleaned from unbelievably overwrought metaphors.
In other words, we don't just come to Netroots Nation: we build Netroots Nation. From the moment the pallets of printed materials come in and the office equipment needs to be set up and the banners need to be hung and the signs need to be proofread and the swag bags need swagging ... We build all that. Together. As volunteers. Because there are something like six paid staff members (I'm not kidding) at the Netroots Nation organization. Can you freakin' believe that?
- We're all a gushing fanboy to someone else attending the same convention we're attending. I've seen grown men weep as they walk away from the book stall in the exhibition hall with a signed tome by George Lakoff. I've watched outspoken women who own their own media firms tremble as they approach Marcy Wheeler to tell her how much they admire her work. Everyone has a noodle-legged, lemur-eyed groupie inside them. Embrace that inner devotee, and you can maybe avoid embarrassing yourself at Netroots Nation if you remember that the person you want to worship for real with ritual libations and burnt offerings also has blogger-crush on someone else. Maybe you.
- Activists are super-nice and love to be of assistance. If you need anything, just ask. Someone's going to either have an answer or get you one.
- Sometimes activists don't seem to be super-nice. It's probably because they misplaced their iPhone or can't remember that information about the chi-square they used in their test for statistical significance for the quantitative analysis of rightwing blog comments that is the very core and centerpiece of their panel discussion that starts in 17 minutes, and they wore navy pants with brown socks because the lights in their hotel room were not working well this morning. And the kindest thing you can do for yourself and the other person in this situation is to pretend that it's the chi-square and brown-socks thing.
- Even if you get to the wrong panel session because you had to run back to your hotel to get your namebadge, only to realize you had it with you all along and then you just automatically and mistakenly went to the same panel room where all your panels were held yesterday, you're still going to learn something amazing. Just take a seat and take it all in. It's kismet, and we both know it.
- Just a few minutes of volunteering -- literally just a few minutes -- can make all the difference in the world. If you need a sit-down and can collate some forms or alphabetize stuff that starts with letters, you will be amazed at how grateful folks will be if you ask to pitch in. Those few minutes will free up someone else who has to rush a microphone to a grouchy former administration official or set people to work solving up a catastrophic swag-bag handle tangle.
- The Netroots Nation staff are the hardest-working, kindest, most thoughtful, smartest, wiliest, most patient, least butt-pee-ish, and most problem-solvy-with-least-hassly people I have ever, ever, ever known or heard about in the known and unknown universes. They are not gods. But they could be if they played their cards right. Which they wouldn't, because they're also really, really humble. Like mortals and whatnot.
- Anyone can volunteer. I'm serious. Anyone. For Goddess's sake, they let me do it. So what are you waiting for? Zap off a little email via this super-duper easy form and they'll set you up. It'll help if you write some gushing fanboy thing about volunteering in the subject line.
- Volunteering at Netroots Nation is rewarding on many levels. And you really do get a t-shirt. I know, I know, it's hard to believe. But at Netroots Nation, it's not enough for you to have the most awesome volunteering experience of your life -- you also get a memento imbued with volunteer pixie dust that will allow you to take that experience with you into the world of mere mortals.
Volunteering at Netroots Nation. It'll put a little extra beat in your heart and a little spring in your step. It'll make Minneapolis sing. At some point, it'll save the day for someone. It'll do things to metaphors you have never seen, heard, or wished for before.
What better reason to volunteer now and spare yourself more laboriously crafted and hyperbolic figures of speech? Save yourself and save the world. Have the time of your life.