Volunteering at the Critical Decentralisation Cluster
*➡️ tldr We need help to operate the CDC! Please volunteer here
Last year's CCC was beautiful chaos. At the CDC Habitat, dllud and parasew from RIAT spun a hurricane together: coordinating 46 talks, a workshop track, 15 assemblies cat herded, thousands of people finding their way through the habitat each day, more watching on streams. With a handful of helpers, they made it work, but it was heavy on everyone. Constant pinballing from one need to the next.
When everybody showed up to help with teardown, we felt the love! This year, we'd like to distribute that support across all four days. Many hands will make for light work.
I'm hoping we can give the guys more of an orchestra conductor's position. Guiding the music. Coordinating instead of reacting. Having time to eat!
How you can help
- 👷🏾 Habitat Build/Teardown Our conductors will have just driven a van from Vienna with the habitat kit. Instead of them chasing people around after a long trip, we'll try a queue of volunteers ready for tasks. An MQ but for helping hands! Show up, get directed, complete task, repeat. A lot of the tasks are little puzzles. A fun way to make friends.
During CCC, there are a few shifts we need covered each day:
🧑🏽💻 Info Desk Review the day's schedule, read about the assemblies, know where they are. And then, hang out at the desk and let people approach you. The few questions that come up often turn into nice little conversations. I met some really interesting people at the Infodesk last year.
📽️ Stage Technician Keep the stage and streaming running, help speakers plug in laptops, make sure audio works before talks start. We'll show you through the setup. It's really just monitoring and occasional troubleshooting. Some AV experience useful.
💝 CDCB (Critically Decentralized Care Bear) Circulate and make sure everyone's okay. Offer water and fruit, those little reminders for self-care we all forget in the neon light. Be available to help the organisers find things or people when they have to focus elsewhere. It's a nice way to get to know different habitat contributors and assemblies.
🎤 Emcee On-Call List The Salazar brothers do a great job emceeing, but last year Diego got sick and had to push himself. Having a few on-call backups will be a nice relief if needed.
Example Schedule (TBC)
Day 1: Dec 26 (Setup)
- Build Up: 6+ people (12:00-18:00)
Days 2–4: Dec 27–29 (Stage & Content Ops)
- Info Desk: 4 shifts (10:00–13:30, 13:00–16:30, 16:00–19:00, 18:30-22:00)
- Carebear: 4 shifts (10:00–13:30, 13:00–16:30, 16:00–19:00, 18:30-22:00)
- Stage Tech: 2 shifts (13:30–17:00, 16:30–20:00)
Day 5: Dec 30 (Teardown)
- Teardown: 10+ people (16:00–19:00)
➡️Jump in⬅️
We're self-organising. Head over to the infopage From there, join our Signal group and sign yourself up to shifts.