The Whitecaps season is 8 days from kickoff at BC Place. On February 28, 2012, Whitecaps invited their volunteers to a "Volunteer Retreat" at the EA Sports company in Burnaby, BC. This was actually a vounteer orientation. EA Sports does not normally allow meetings of such to take place by the public in their own space, however, given that they are the Whitecaps sponsors, it made sense. This year the Whitecaps went on a strong recruitment of volunteers. It used to be 20-30 volunteers that could run the game day events when we were at Swangard and Empire Stadium. However, BC Place another animal. Its size was going to be some concern as there just simply weren't enough volunteers to cover it. They also wanted to give the way things were operated with more structure. To do all these things, more volunteers were recruited and more Team Leaders were created. This year we went from 20-30 volunteers in the past to an army of over 100 volunteers!
I've spent 6 yrs with the club already as an Usher and Club Ambassador. I also work with the CAT team for BC Lions games in BC Place. This gives me more experience with the BC Place staff and to give some structure as to how some departments should run to make it a smooth transition to the new stadium. This year I am the Team Leader for the Whitecaps Club Ambassadors. These are the people you will see when you first walk through the doors wearing the Whitecaps uniforms and handing you a program with a smile. They will also help you if you are lost or need to know where the bathrooms are.
At EA Sports we started off in the BIG PICTURE room. This is a huge meeting room with a projection screen. Bobby Lenarduzzi, the President of the WC gave a brief opening statement about how excited he is about the new year with the club and how wonderful it was to see so many returnees and new people join the club. He went on to add that he's impressed with the work that volunteers do and the feedback that he's been getting back from other clubs and the fans about the voulnteers. Once his time ended, the Event Staff started the orientation. The structure of the organization and volunteers were pointed out and the team leaders were introduced. More information was thrown at the new and old volunteers and then we broke for dinner in the "Think Tank". This is EA's cafeteria with pockets of seating areas, fooseball and arcade games. This is where the "magic" happens. Where all those creative juices get flowing, so to speak. Once we were mingled a bit and ate our dinner, we headed back into the Big Picture room for more information. We then headed back to the "Think Tank" into our respective teams and had a group meeting. This allowed each team to meet their Team Leads and get more information about their role in particular.
I'm lucky cause my team were mainly returnees I've worked with for many years along with a few newbies. I introduced myself to them and got my team in order. We are now waiting for the Dress Rehearsal on Wednesday night at BC Place so my team can get a tour of the venue and pick up their uniforms for the March 10th game vs Montreal Impact.
In all the night was fun and the EA Sports venue is amazing. Would love to work there someday. It was very kind of them to share their facility with us.
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