Poland, Warsaw, Recruiting volunteers and creating an OTP Community

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Why am I writing this now?

In my presentaiton at the workshop I realized I brushed over a very important aspect of organizing workshop. Finding people to join the project and attend.

A year ago, when I joined the TEDxWarsaw team I decided to take an active approach to recruiting volunteers, but my efforts didn’t start there.

PLStands0.jpg

Before TEDxWarsaw - OTP Stands

Facebook group and welcome message

OTP Leaflets

Joining a TEDx team

On the team :)

Right after joining the TEDxWarsaw team I created an Action Plan, which would list final goals and actions needed to achieve them with approximate dates. I got my friend to join me in organizing things - second opinion is really important, and it's great for motivation if you promise to do something.

Excerpt from the action plan:

WORK TO BE DONE (to prioritize)
1. OTP leaflet translation & design
2. TEDxWarsaw website localization
3. TED.com website localization
4. TEDxWarsaw talks - transcription (gather links to tasks)
5. TEDxWarsaw talks - translation (gather links to tasks)
6. TEDxWarsaw OTP tab, subpage & key information
7. Send out a weekly otp newsletter with highlighted tasks available (Mailchimp)
8. Translation of OTPedia articles
9. Promote the TED talks we translate into Polish. There are FB TED fan groups in Poland but NOT IN POLISH? Start one & find an admin for it. 
If there is one, then ask for posting permissions & delegate to someone good with social media.

Thoughts:

1. Should translation and transcription meetings be separate? 
(1 translation meeting a month and 1 transcription meeting a month?) Reason: PPL who transcribe may not know English
2. Maybe start an OTP/TEDxWarsaw internet page instead of a newsletter?
3. Consider using Basecamp for the subteam

Future, future, future:

- Take pictures, write a story about it - perhaps it will inspire other TEDx team to start local OTP subteams :)

In hindsight I see that a lot of these items were not necessary, but I can also tick most of them as done :)

Facebook advertising

The first step was to create a FB ad explaining what OTP was. Back then there were no OTP videos on YT, so I felt it will be the easiest for the people to send me an email, to which then I'd reply with instructions on how to sign up. However I overlooked the fact that I forgot to mention it's a volunteer project, so I got lots of CVs. Next time I made sure to make it clear.

Google Hangout trainings and trainings in Cafes

All in all about 50 people replied, and I still get some e-mails about it today. Out of these, about half followed the registration steps and then about 15 attended the introductory meetings in Green Cofee in Warsaw or via Google Hangouts.

Workshop with translation students

TEDxWarsaw 2014 badge

TEDxWarsaw Transcibeathons

OTP audience activities

Sharing responsibilities

Socializing in Warsaw

Planning for the future

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