What do you do when you want to attend conference but you don’t have enough budget to pay for it? Try volunteering!
That was exactly what I did to attend Power of Play on the 25th. I have tried volunteering with IGDA in the past, so when I heard about this conference and how it would have VR talks, I contacted the organizer and asked if they need help. I was scheduled to work for 2 days, and I started to wonder if I would even have time to see any talk. I went in anyway and decide to figure the schedule out during the event.
So I came one day before the event to help out with some registration preparations. There were a bunch of other volunteers, and some of them turned out to be VR developers as well. It was actually pretty nice, since I get to network with other people while working together.
On the day of the event, they put me to work on registration again. The volunteer organizer realized that she put me on a lot of hours, and adjusted the schedule so I could attend VR and game talks I was interested in. Not only that, we also got free lunch and snacks. Oh, and a T-shirt too.
Overall it was a really pleasant experience. I definitely recommend volunteering as an option to attend conferences. You get to see a lot of behind the scene things, and network as well.
