This has been my third year volunteering at SitC and second as a Team Leader in the Meet and Greet area, and what can I say? Every year I fall more and more in love with the event.
For those of you who live under a rock or something, Summer in the City is the UKs largest YouTube convention and it has panels, merch stalls, three small stages (new this year), the main stage and the meet and greet area.
Thursday is just a day for us volunteers to get together and fill about 7,000 goody bags, and I’m not even exagerating a little, we did a total of 7,000 of them. But its a nice environment because the whole volunteer family gets together and we get to know some of the newbies and see friends whom we haven’t seen in a year.
Friday morning came around, and was a very relaxed day as there are no meet and greets on Friday so we had anxiety and panic training and then a chance to wonder around the merch stalls and see everything that was happening in the expo hall. We ran in to Gary C when he was relaxing with a facemask and some kind of glove things so we joined him for a cheeky facemask. Then we did the instagram booth which had a swing and massive colourful baloons behind it, did a boomerang and another few photos before we went and helped out with the SitC merch and rolled some tshirts. I ran in to some more of the YouTubers whom were in my four lanes of Meet & Greets over the weekend so I introduced myself just so I would actually know their faces and they would know mine when the time came around.
Saturday we got to the ExCel bright and early, had briefing all of us together and then we who were supervising M&Gs went over and briefed all the volunteers and did some role-playing which is always fun, it gets the newbies more relaxed and comfortable around us all which is lovely. 12pm stress hit as we had thirteen M&Gs starting at the same time, thirteen. It was good though, once we got back in to the flow we managed to sort it out and everything ran perfectly. I had some amazing people on my lanes like Miles McKenna, Mark Ferris, Lucy Moon and Kingsley whom were all lovely! There were some who ran over time (*cough* Niki and Sammy *cough*) because the YouTubers love talking to their viewers which is the sweetest thing. As in previous years I became the “official Albon body guard” so after all my M&Gs were done I helped Niki and Sammy at their merch M&G and then got them to the afterparty safely. It’s always nice seeing them, and as Niki said, if I don’t take care of them over the weekend no one will haha!
Sunday, bittersweet Sunday. It’s the last day of SitC. M&Gs ran smoothly over the day although if I have to hear the words “fast track” again I might actually jump off the roof. I had wonderful people like Pete Bucknall, Brizzy, MeetTheVloggers and The Gabbie Show on Sunday and they were all absolute stars! I actually had time to take a break and go see my lovely friend Georgie whom I only seem to manage to see for about 30min once a year during SitC because we’re both so busy.. But nevertheless, it’s always lovely to see her! Surprisingly we finished with enough time to go to briefing, get changed and enjoy some of the rides and main stage performances before the night was over. Sunday night is always messy for us SitC volunteers as we all rally at the pub and have a few drinks, get emotional telling each other how much we love each other, what an amazing job we’ve all done and things like that that obviously go very well with the downing drinks, haha! The afterparty was very nice, got to catch up with some of the YouTubers and thank them for being so amazing as well as keeping up the praise with the volunteers. I ended up being the responsible one drinking water from about midnight and putting people in cabs home so that everyone got home safe and leaving last with Georgie and Lee. But it was a fantastic night and I wouldn’t change it.
Thank you creators, organisers, contractors, mcm, kilimanjaro, all the previously mentioned people, and of course, thank you to my SitC family for yet another amazing weekend. See you all in August 2018 (if not before!)
Ttickets for SitC 2018 have already gone on sale. See here for further information: http://shop.sitc-event.co.uk/
