An information coordinator is a useful person, and after two years of working with a partner or alone, this weekend was a nice reminder of that.
The classroom camping trip was Saturday night, and since I haven't been working full time this summer, I volunteered to organize it. What I did:
- Printed out last year's camping duty list, announced that I was posting it two weeks ago.
- Collected the duty list and sent out email for the last few needed duties.
- Advised the shopping volunteer what to buy
- Sent out a public email answering the questions individuals had asked
- Kept track of which spots were free and directed arrivals (sounds like work, but wasn't really, more like socializing)
- Triggered volunteers when to begin lighting the grill, and the campfire
- Approved people's suggestions (people wanted to know if a suggestion would interfere with other plans so wanted some kind of coordination check, not really approval)
This didn't seem like work to me but it met with widespread gratitude. An organized point of information exchange is really what I was, timekeeper, and a maker of trivial decisions. Software projects call these people project managers, but they exist in all kinds of domains, sometimes with different names, sometimes with specialized expertise. Sometimes the project manager is just an organized person holding the clock, the task list, and the notebook.
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