It was even worse than I expected. Instead of volunteering for 15 hours, I worked 6-10 hours per day for four days with very little time to actually participate in the conference.

Half the volunteers were not interested in working unless an organizer was watching them and had no qualms about leaving things a wreck for the person who was to relieve them.

The tasks themselves were also overwhelming. When I showed up, I was told to take a pick up truck to load items (like large shelving units) from one place and bring them to another. I drive a very small car (not a pick up!) and was not familiar with the area. I am also not very strong and I was paired with a 70 year old man and a very tiny 20 year old to load and unload a pick up truck in 95 degree weather for 6 hours straight.

Thankfully, the 20 year old drove the truck.

I thought about leaving that night. In hindsight, I probably should have. I worked fewer hours that day than any other day.

I actually PAID for this. There were so many other things that went horribly wrong (scheduled to finish a task at 10 PM but start my next one at 5:30 AM the next day).

I did meet some very nice people I'll never see again and what I did get to see of the conference was interesting, but I think it's going to take me a while to get over this experience. I really failed at setting good boundaries --I would see someone else who was busting their ***** at the event struggling and couldn't not help -- although I only did that with the people who would/did do the same for me.

I took a lot of notes and will be giving very detailed feedback to the organizers.