I thought a thread on Wikimedia-l might be useful for folks to share feedback and their experiences, good or bad. I understand there is a survey which we should remember to complete, and there has been a lot of chat on Facebook, but I have a natural aversion to that space. :-)
My tuppence worth of feedback is that volunteering is fun, I encourage others to offer to help out with future Wikimanias.
I was on helpdesk at the start of the hackerthon, meaning that for around 5 hours I sat in the main foyer at a well signed desk wearing a red volunteer shirt and helping people find things (a great way to say hello to many old friends arriving at the event), answering all sorts of questions. This ranged from helping BBC journalists meet up with their team and work out where best to go to find the action (this turned into the Newsnight feature that evening), to helping older ladies find out about the Barbican fashion exhibition. At the same time I was logged in to the official help desk phone number through Skype, and keeping an eye on the official twitter, email and IRC channels to be able to respond to questions from attendees (my puny netbook was struggling). 5 hours was a long time, but by the end of lunchtime I had helped a lot of people, which is immensely rewarding.
Tip for the Mexico conference team - I was *very* impressed at how the conference staff changed processes on the fly (great Agile processes Ed), so based on me mentioning that people were finding it hard to find free drinking water, a massive supply of water bottles were ordered and appeared in the main hackerthon space that afternoon, and a casual mention that helpdesk folks had varied technical experience so many would find IRC etc. a struggle, resulted in a change to who was placed where, so there was always a "brain" handy on each helpdesk. I guess I was the default brain on the main helpdesk. :-)
All Saturday morning I was officially the "host" for the GLAM stream of presentations. It was a great excuse to met my friends on the GLAM network, and having someone with a GLAM background was appreciated, as this helped me negotiate slight changes to the schedule and put presenters at their ease, even when we were scrabbling about getting laptops to display properly on the main screen. The wifi had some problems late morning, so the IRC channel where volunteers were coordinating was dropping out, however the "control room" was responsive to the problem and my "team leader" was physically checking in with me to make sure I had everything I needed.
On Sunday I was on the other side of things, giving a presentation on the GLAMwiki Toolset, and the volunteer hosting my session was on the ball, spotting that my netbook was running out of battery during my presentation and sorting out the power supply before I had even noticed myself. What an impressive service!
I was invited to join in with a volunteers party at the end of Sunday, but after a late Saturday night with the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group on a gay pub crawl in Soho, I was totally exhausted from several long days and short nights, so getting home and crashing out on the sofa with my husband was a treat.
I like to personally thank Ed for pushing and staying incredibly positive for so long. Back in 2012 Ed was enthusiastically approaching the Wikimedia UK board when I was a trustee, and I was one of those giving him a hard grilling on plans and financial controls. I think the governance structure that resulted from those discussions, along with feedback from earlier proposals from the Wikimania bid review team helped to ensure everyone was confident and well prepared for the 2014 Wikimania. It worked, it was a brilliant experience, and when the final statistics get published, I expect it to be a case study of good value that we can all learn from.
Thanks, Fae