Pennsylvania Technology Summit
I volunteered to help for preparation of the Pennsylvania Technology Summit at Temple University’s Student Center on March 6, 2025. The summit was about spreading awareness about assistive technology as well as how it should be efficiently utilized in today’s society so it can be more accessible for those with disabilities. This opportunity was shared by Alanna C. Raffel through email. Before the summit, volunteers were emailed what tasks we were supposed to do before guests, vendors and speakers would start coming in. For me, I was originally supposed to help the vendors set up, but I ended up helping out with the registration process with a few other students since I arrived pretty early.
Before people came in, we unpacked all participants’ name tags and set them in alphabetical order by last name. There were a lot of people in attendance, so all the name tags were in bags. However, this soon posed as a bit of a challenge when people started coming to check in for registration. At first, the registration process ran smoothly since there wasn’t as many people at first but as soon as more people came in, the pressure of immediately getting someone’s name tag as they are checked off the list increased. Since there was an event that was held a day prior to this summit, some of the previous participants’ name tags were in the bags since it was believed they would be coming to the summit too. But most of those people never came so when a person’s name tag was missing even though they were registered, we had to eventually resort to writing their names down on blank name cards and attach them on a lanyard that was from a yesterday’s participant’s. Not to mention, some of the bags were filled with name tags like “M” so it took some time to find someone’s name in a hefty bag. There were also some letters that were mixed in with other bags like those who have last names beginning with “Y” would be mixed with last names who started with “Z.” At first, I didn’t realize this until later on in the registration process. Though, as soon as I noticed, I notified the other volunteers.
Even though the registration process was hectic and fast-paced, I ultimately enjoyed it as it helped me learn how to quickly adapt in situations that may not work out as you intended it to as well as help me find solutions in order to overcome a problem like people’s name tags being missing even though they were registered. It also helped me strengthen my teamwork skills as other students and I divided what letters we would do so we could make the registration process faster and more efficient.