We went to the volunteer orientation meeting for Gay Games Chicago last night. This is going to be an amazing experience, I think; they’re expecting 12,000 athletes, 80,000 spectators, and are planning for 6,000 volunteers (expecting that only 70% of those will actually show up to work). There’s going to be five athlete villages: University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Illinois-Chicago, Oak Park (for soccer) and Crystal Lake (for rowing). Takaza and I both mentioned out convention experience, though the Volunteer Coordinator seized on Dan’s accounting experience, mentioning that they need someone to head up cash management at each athlete village. He’s kind of ambivalent on that, plus it would probably mean we’d have to work separately, which would suck.

One of the interesting things is that with the huge number of people involved and the placed that volunteers will be going (Opening Ceremonies are at Soldier Field, Closing Ceremonies at Wrigley Field), they’re going to be extremely strict about credentials, and once you’ve been assigned a shift you can’t change it. The deadline for signing up to be a volunteer is June 1 (the games run July 15-22) – after that, you’re out of luck. If anyone in the Chicago area is interested, I urge you to get involved; this is going to be a lot of fun and pretty damn exciting, I think. We’ve signed up to help out at the black-tie-optional fundraiser Night of 100 Champions, which is being headlined by Greg Louganis, “plus others”, on April 22. Even if we’re just moving tables around, it’ll be pretty cool since it’s at the Cadillac Club at Soldier Field. We’ll see what other volunteer opportunities pop up between now and July (they said they had 120 events planned that they’ll need volunteers for).

OK, back to work, and to plan fun stuff to do this weekend. W00t!