Volunteer Information
So you want to be a gopher?
A gopher’s job is to help out wherever they are needed. When somebody needs something held for a minute you’ll be there! When there’s a box to be moved, you’ll be there! You become everybody’s savior as you make all their tasks that much simpler! While many see the gopher as the lowest position in a convention those in the know can tell you a well oiled convention is a well gophered convention.
Join up with Ohayocon’s gophers now and become the oil that keeps the mecha of justice that is Ohayocon running smooth and providing joy to all the anime fan girls and boys!
Seriously though, if you’ve never volunteered or staffed at a convention gophering is the way to start out. Once you get a peek at the inside you can decide where you want to go from there.
If you are 18 or over you may want to consider going straight for the gold and joining staff. Please PM the head of the department you wish to work under for more information. For those of you who won’t be 18 in time for the convention gophering is your chance to get involved and earn your way through the weekend.
That brings me to our next point. No good deed goes un-rewarded!
That’s right! There is some material incentive to becoming a gopher. The reward system is based on the number of hours you’ve worked, and putting in as many as you can is well worth it.
4 hours, you get a gopher badge and T-shirt.
8 hours, you get admission to the exclusive gopher crash space.
18 hours, free admission to next year’s Ohayocon! (make sure to confirm this with me!)
24 hours, you get your registration fee reimbursed!
You must collect your reimbursement by Sunday if you want it. You will get your registration fee back in the same way you paid for it.
Once I get it I’ll send you a confirmation e-mail and you’re in!
Please note that if you are under the age of 18 I WILL need a signed parental consent form before you can begin gophering. The parental consent form is the second page of the application. As long as I have it in my hand you can start gophering immediately.
There have been several changes made this year. The first is that the free admission to next year’s convention reward has been bumped to 18 hours instead of the 16 it’s been in previous years. Also, gophers will now be subject to two classic laws of nature.
The first one is natural selection. In nature a weak gopher is bound to end up meeting an early demise. So too will our gophers be weeded out. Not for weakness, but laziness. We can’t have lazy gophers who don’t want to work taking up precious on-call positions after all. As such, if a gopher operations staff member has to ask twice for volunteers when a request comes in all on-call gophers (with the exception of the gopher(s) who end up taking the job) will be weeded out of the gopher volunteer program. If you are weeded out after putting in enough time for a reward then the reward will still stand. The exception being access to the gopher crash space, sleepy gophers need beds. I know it seems harsh but it’ll make sense when I introduce the second law of nature gophers will now be subject to.
The second law is that of population density. If you have too many gophers in the same environment food and various other opportunities become scarce and the group as a whole will suffer. We certainly can’t have that, as such we’ll be limiting the overall number of gophers we accept this year as well as a limit of 10 on-call gophers at any one time (with some exceptions). The number of people actively gophering is not limited, only the number of people waiting for requests from other departments. If you come back from a request and 10 people are already on call you may remain on call if you so choose, in this way the number of on-call gophers may exceed 10. If you sign out when there are at least 10 other gophers on call then you can’t sign back in until someone either leaves or goes to fill a request. The other exception would be during times when we are asked by another department to have extra gophers on call to meet an expected demand.
If you have any questions please feel free to send them to kraytsoto@gmail.com