Host Edmonton 2014

 

Host Edmonton is about Eat. Drink. Think. I'm not here to promote it or anything, but I got to volunteer at the event and it was a fun experience. Their website looks really professional and you would never think that this was their first year doing this. Here's the site: http://hostedmonton.com/.

 

It was a 4 day event from Thurs-Sun, but the core of it was on Friday and Saturday. I volunteered the whole day Saturday (yesterday). Honestly, we volunteers were unsure of what we were supposed to be doing, and just followed the core team's instructions and doing whatever they wanted us to. It may have been a bit chaotic behind the scenes, but overall I think it was pretty well done, considering that this was their first year (they hope to go on for three more years).

Also, it must have been a really big budget production. They had so much excess customized pens and notebooks and they got quite a few big shot names in the culinary world to come up and speak. However, the turnout wasn't as big as expected. Maybe they should have advertised it more because I certainly hadn't heard of it until it was posted on a volunteer page at my university.

Regardless, it was a fun day and I met a lot of new people and had fun coming out of my shell. I was greeting people coming off the escalators in the morning, then doing odd errands and staying at the registration booth for the remainder of the late afternoon-evening.

And I must say that the core team really took care of us volunteers. They fed us with good food, let us attend the talks, and gave us free drinks. And yes there were alcoholic drinks too, which we could try. A really fun day, and if they have this again next year, I wouldn't mind helping out again.