As a key volunteer in the Meetup event, your role as an event Usher is critical to ensure the event kicks off on time, and everyone is welcomed into the meeting room and seated comfortably.
It’s important that the room fills from the front with no empty seats, and the room has the right number of seats for the attendees without the room ever appearing empty, or too crowded.
Here are a couple of key tips to make the role of Usher more successful:
Other:
Once the event starts and most of the attendees have been seated, transitioning from an Usher into a Mic Runner is possible.
If you need to be absent from your role for any reason, please ask another Volunteer/PDN Crew for assistance and coverage until you return to your role.
And most importantly, thank you for the integral role you play for our Meetup events!
It’s important that the room fills from the front with no empty seats, and the room has the right number of seats for the attendees without the room ever appearing empty, or too crowded.
Here are a couple of key tips to make the role of Usher more successful:
- Please attend the pre-event briefing at 1:00 pm to meet the PDN Crew and run through any parts of the day and your role. If you are a first-time volunteer/or an existing volunteer but first-time in this role, please attend a separate briefing at 12:45 pm.
- Please wear the orange PDN Crew lanyard (handed out on the day) to identify you as a team member.
- Be in your position at least 20 minutes before the event starts.
- Feel free to mingle and keep an eye on the flow of the people entering.
- If you feel it’s getting too congested in any area from the check-in desk to the event room, please escort people through to use other spaces.
- Attendees are welcome to enter the event room if they wish and can take a seat or stand at any time.
- Approximately 10 minutes before the event starts, circulate through the crowd and encourage everyone to move on into the room and take a seat.
- Fill chairs from the front of the room first and ensure there are no empty chairs in each row.
- Help manage the seated people and where necessary politely ask people to move along and take up gaps, to free up other seats as needed.
- For people attending by themselves, help them find a space and seat them comfortably.
- Manage the seating based on the attendance - typically we have seating set for 50% of the number of guests who have RSVP’d. Additional chairs will be stacked at the back of the room.
- Once you see that most of the seats are full, you should then set up another full row/s of seats. Keep in mind we do not want to see a lot of empty seats in the room – so please set up only what is really needed.
- Ensure everyone attending the event is in the room and seated before 1:55 pm when we go live online, and the physical Meetup begins. When you see the PDN video play on the screen this is your cue to urge everyone to sit and prepare for the start of the event.
- Be aware of anyone entering during the Meetup and help with additional seating if needed throughout the full event.
Other:
Once the event starts and most of the attendees have been seated, transitioning from an Usher into a Mic Runner is possible.
If you need to be absent from your role for any reason, please ask another Volunteer/PDN Crew for assistance and coverage until you return to your role.
And most importantly, thank you for the integral role you play for our Meetup events!
