Sacramento Jazz Jubilee 2008 - pt 1

(Photos taken from Jazz Jubilee web site.)

Once again we are taking part in the celebration of music that takes over Sacramento for the 4 day Memorial Day holiday every year. Once again we will one of the 3,000 volunteers who volunteer 16 hours of our time in order to ensure that the Jubilee can remain as cost effective as possible. In return, we can, for free, attend the Jubilee sessions that are outside our work times - approximately 30 hours available to us.

One of the major differences this year is that, because Bobby Loveridge has been having back problems and will be preparing for or recovering from back surgery this weekend, we will be the team leaders for Shift 2 and they won't even have to change the name of the team. We've volunteered enough times that we think we know how everything needs to be done. However, the site leaders and assistant leaders are not familiar to us so we don't know how much of a learning curve they will be experiencing and how much frustration and confusion will be passed along to us during their learning curve.

We began Friday at noon by setting up the signs in the room and outside directing traffic through the hotel lobby and toward the ballroom. And by being the team that opens the venue, it means we'll be off for Monday to either sleep in or by going to all the performances we want. We're seriously thinking of giving Ed and Tiff our badges and shirts and letting them make the most of the Monday concerts.
Up until Wednesday afternoon, only one person had called asking about the volunteer buttons and t-shirts. I was beginning to wonder if we even had a team. Then Wednesday afternoon I got calls from all members of the team who still needed to pick up their stuff and an hour later, I had passed out all but one packet to our team members.