A Complete Guide for Music Festival Volunteer Team Leaders

This week, I was fortunate to be selected as the team leader of the beverage sales group at the Quanzhou Strawberry Music Festival.

The entire experience was very enjoyable, and it was also an unforgettable one.

As a programmer, I always feel the need to document what I’ve done, reflect on it, and summarize the experience so that I can do better next time. That’s how this article came to be.

This article will introduce and reflect on the workflow of a volunteer team leader, using my experience as the team leader of the beverage sales group (official drink sales group) as an example, following the key time points of the job.

Preparation Phase

Mental Preparation

Before becoming a team leader, you must be mentally prepared to miss the performances, and in fact, you might not be able to watch a single show.

As a team leader, you are responsible for the booth you are in charge of. If you haven’t made this mental preparation, it’s better to refuse the team leader position and be a team member instead. As a team member, you can watch performances freely during your break. If you want to be both a team leader and watch the performances, the conflict in priorities will definitely impact your ability to work effectively at the festival, causing unnecessary trouble for the smooth running of the event.

Volunteer Recruitment

After accepting the position of team leader, the first task is to recruit volunteers for your group.

The volunteer coordinator will provide each team leader with an initial list of volunteers. This list will be an Excel spreadsheet containing essential contact information, as well as names, gender, and other details.

As a team leader, you need to contact all your group members based on the names and contact information in the list, and ask whether they are available to participate in the entire duration of the music festival as volunteers.

Sending Mass Messages

The usual way to contact group members is through text messages. Here, you can send mass messages to reach a large number of volunteers at once.

Simply copy the phone numbers column from the spreadsheet, paste it into the phone number field of your messaging app, and all the numbers will be automatically populated.

Then, you can edit and send the message directly below.

Note: On an iPhone, phone numbers displayed in green indicate that iMessage is not enabled for that contact, while numbers displayed in blue indicate that iMessage is enabled. By sending messages to contacts with iMessage enabled, you can avoid SMS fees. Additionally, since iMessage does not go through a carrier, the risk of having your number blocked is reduced.

This brings up a very important point: phone number blocking. Due to anti-fraud measures, public security departments often block phone numbers that send multiple messages or make many calls within a short period. Unfortunately, there isn’t an effective way to completely avoid getting blocked. The best strategy is to send messages from multiple phone numbers to minimize the risk of sending a large volume of messages in a short time.

Additionally, before sending a large batch of messages, you can purchase a message bundle service from your phone carrier’s app to save on costs. For example, China Mobile offers two temporary message bundle plans, and these bundles can be stacked. This generally covers the need for sending a large number of messages (though in many cases, your phone number might get blocked before you finish sending all the messages).

Note: The above screenshot is from China Mobile’s app message bundle purchase page.

SMS Content

The team leader’s manual will provide a SMS template.

For example, in Quanzhou:

[2024 Heineken Quanzhou Strawberry Music Festival]

Congratulations on being selected as a volunteer for the 2024 Heineken Quanzhou Strawberry Music Festival! I am xxx, the leader of the xxxx group. From September 21st to 22nd, I will have the pleasure of working alongside all of you to complete our volunteer duties. You are now invited to join the xxxx group.

Our training session is scheduled for Friday, September 20th, at 3:00 PM, at Huian, Quanzhou Ocean City.

If you can confirm your full participation, please immediately add me on WeChat: xxxx. When adding, please include your name in the notes (Do not share the team leader’s contact information. If posting on social media, please blur out the phone number and WeChat ID).

If I do not receive your WeChat friend request by 10:00 AM on September 11th, it will be assumed that you are forfeiting your volunteer spot.

If you are unable to participate, please reply to this message to decline the spot.

Looking forward to joining you for this exciting autumn event~

It’s important to note that the SMS content should be modified according to the specific work content and timeline. Especially the part that says “If I don’t receive your WeChat friend request by 10:00 AM on September 11th, it will be assumed that you are forfeiting your volunteer spot.”

If there are many group members, this deadline should be set as early as possible. This allows for subsequent additional recruitment and avoids exceeding the number of volunteers due to some volunteers responding to messages or adding WeChat later.

Additionally, adding a sentence like “If you are unable to participate, please reply to this message to decline the spot” can provide an option for those who can’t participate to forfeit their spot. This way, if we receive forfeitures from volunteers, we can immediately contact other volunteers who haven’t been reached out to yet, maximizing the number of volunteers recruited in the first round.

Secondary Recruitment and Supplementary Enrollment

After the initial recruitment, there will inevitably be volunteers who drop out (i.e., do not participate in volunteer activities). This will also result in a shortage of volunteers for the group you are in charge of.

At this point, you should quickly contact the coordinator to obtain more information about the volunteers who have registered.

If time is on your side, you can continue to use the method of sending text messages for secondary recruitment or supplementary enrollment.

If the time is limited, you should contact the volunteers by phone. One reason is that calling is faster than sending text messages; the second reason is that, unlike text messages, if a volunteer does not respond to the call, you can directly contact the next volunteer candidate without worrying about exceeding the recruitment limit.

Tracking Recruited Volunteers

During the recruitment process, some team members will gradually add you on WeChat. At this point, you can keep track of them by adding a WeChat tag to each team member.

We can check the number of people under the tag in real-time to see how many volunteers have been recruited, and it also makes it easier to create volunteer group chats later.

Note: The above screenshot is from the WeChat tag management page.

Additionally, it’s important to make appropriate marks on the initial full list of volunteers provided by the coordinator, distinguishing between those who have been contacted and those who haven’t.

If you’ve made these marks, you can also use the spreadsheet’s filtering function to tally all recruited volunteers and those who haven’t been recruited yet.

Phone Number Blocking

Note: This is a screenshot of a phone number being blocked.

After a phone number has been blocked, it can be unblocked through a secondary authentication process provided by the carrier.

However, in this case, I was unable to successfully unblock the number, and I had to visit a service center to complete the unblocking process. It’s also worth noting that smaller service centers may not be able to perform the unblocking operation, and you may need to visit a larger service center. Additionally, the staff at these centers may not be aware of the exact limit for phone number blocking, which can be a bit “lawless” and “unpredictable.”

Volunteer Group Chat

After recruiting the required number of volunteers, it’s important to create group chats as soon as possible. Some volunteers may want to arrange accommodation or carpooling with their peers in the group chat, so having a group chat is very necessary. It’s also important to be active in the group chat to help group members get to know each other quickly.

When all groups have completed their recruitment and it’s no longer possible to recruit new volunteers, the coordinator will create a large group. At this point, we can use tags to quickly send group invitations to our own group members.

Volunteer Information Collection

Since the event requires collecting some information from volunteers. For example, clothing sizes, whether they eat halal food, etc. Below are the types of information that need to be collected during the Strawberry Music Festival.

Note: This is a screenshot of the information that needs to be collected.

At this point, it’s possible to collect information using Tencent Document’s collection form.

The reason for choosing Tencent Document is that, among the online document applications available in China, one of the best is Goldsoft Document, and the other is Tencent Document. Between the two, since WeChat is owned by Tencent, Tencent Document’s integration with WeChat is generally better than Goldsoft Document.

When collecting information, the current optimal solution is “collection form,” without a doubt.

Many people often use WeChat’s built-in relay or send an online document for volunteers to fill out when collecting WeChat member information. However, this is not friendly to both parties.

Using WeChat relay for subsequent statistics is not convenient. Simply passing WeChat relay with this one point.

If an online document is used for filling out, since all those with access to the document can see the information filled out by others. This may easily expose the identity information of group members. If some people misuse this information for other purposes, the consequences are unimaginable.

In addition to the problem of information exposure, each group member needs to scroll to the bottom of the document to fill it out. This is actually not very convenient. Not all group members use computers for operation, and a long document that smells and is sticky is inconvenient for group members to fill out on their phones. If the table has too many columns, it’s easy to encounter the need to scroll up and down to view the column headers to avoid filling in your own information into another column.

When a large number of members fill out the document, it’s easy to encounter the situation where multiple people occupy the same row for filling out, which requires some people to modify the information to the next row or a few rows below. This also increases the inconvenience of group members’ filling operations.

When filling out the document, if the column headers do not have appropriate annotations, for example, the clothing sizes have, it’s easy to encounter group members asking questions.

Another disadvantage of online documents is that other members can easily modify the information filled out by other members, and you can’t find out who tampered with the information of other members from the many filling histories.

However, if a collection form is used for collection, all these problems will no longer exist.

The information collected by the collection form can be easily exported as a table for subsequent processing.

Note: This is a screenshot of the collection form.

For collection forms, each group member will only see the information they filled out, and cannot see the information filled out by other group members.

For hardware load, there is only one collection form program that is much lighter than loading an entire table program.

Below is an example of a collection form:

Note: This is a screenshot of the ID collection form.

Note: This is a screenshot of the telephone number collection form.

When using a collection form, by adding validation to the filled data, it avoids the situation where group member information is filled out incorrectly. It’s convenient for the coordinator to collect the correct full list of volunteers’ data, avoiding subsequent operations causing more problems.

Contacting Coordinator Teacher to Confirm Matters

After all volunteer recruitment is completed and locked in (prohibiting confirmed volunteers from withdrawing), we can add the coordinator teachers provided by the coordinator and confirm the relevant work matters. For example, the number of group members, the number of booths, the assembly time, etc.

At this point, the related online preparation work is basically completed. We only need to wait for the coordinator teachers to notify us of some necessary matters later.

Pre-grouping

For large groups, it’s necessary to pre-group. The advantage of pre-grouping is that it can reduce the workload of the group leader during the music festival.

There are some prerequisites for grouping: the ratio of males to females in each small group should be reasonably matched. Many times it’s necessary for males to do some heavy work, so if there are too many or too few males in some groups, it’s not very convenient.

Additionally, since the number of on-site positions may not be able to be confirmed in advance, it’s necessary to have multiple grouping plans ready to switch to immediately after arriving on-site.

There is also a situation here, because there are likely to be acquaintances or friends who will be traveling together or sharing accommodation in the same group of volunteers, they may want to work together in the same group. At this point, it’s possible to pre-distribute a grouping intention collection form, allowing those with special needs to report. After reporting, grouping can be carried out.

When grouping together, it’s also necessary to ask if there are more than 3 people who want to work in the same group, then these people may have some artists they want to watch together. At this point, it’s necessary to explain to them in advance that if they are assigned to the same group, due to work reasons, they may not be able to watch the same artist together. If they still want to be in the same group and watch the same artist, they should coordinate with each other after grouping.

How to Group

Regarding grouping, if you do it yourself, it may be a bit troublesome. At this point, it’s possible to borrow the help of ChatGPT. Here, it’s best to use o1-preview (as of September 24, 2024, o1-preview is still the strongest reasoning model), to help us with the grouping work.

Input the following prompt:

I will give you a list of personnel and some requirements, please divide these people into X groups.
Requirements:

1. Maintain a similar number of people in each group (or differ by 1)
2. Maintain a similar number of males and females in each group
3. Group requirements:
   xxx and xxx in the same group;
   xxx and xxx in the same group;
   xxx and xxx in the same group;
   Personnel list:
   xxx (male)
   xxx (female)
   ........

After the large model provides the grouping list, it’s possible to open another window to verify the grouping list again. The purpose of opening another window is to avoid the interference of the large model’s cache on the results.

Or input the prompt

clear memory

to clear the current window’s memory.

Verification prompt:

Please help me verify if the personnel grouping list meets the following requirements:
Requirements:

1. Maintain a similar number of people in each group (or differ by 1)
2. Maintain a similar number of males and females in each group
3. Group requirements:
   xxx and xxx in the same group;
   xxx and xxx in the same group;
   xxx and xxx in the same group;
   Personnel list (provided by the previous question):
   xxx (male)
   xxx (female)
   ........

If everything goes well, the large model will verify all the requirements one by one.

After verification, it’s possible to manually verify all the requirements to ensure that the grouping is correct.

Of course, in this step, to avoid exposing personal information, it’s possible to use the serial number at the beginning of the Excel table to replace the names. Wait for the grouping reasoning to be completed before replacing, to avoid becoming the corpus of the large model.

Pre-selecting Sub-group Leaders

Before the training day, it’s possible to collect pre-registration information from group members who are interested in becoming sub-group leaders.

After collecting the information, if there are more people interested in becoming sub-group leaders than the number needed, it’s necessary to reasonably select based on their qualifications or those who are particularly enthusiastic.

If there are fewer people interested in becoming sub-group leaders than the number needed, it’s possible to give some “carrots” to attract them. For example, volunteer whitelist or a higher chance of being selected for the next volunteer batch. Of course, this carrot is real, and not a deception.

Before determining the number of sub-group leaders needed, do not confirm with sub-group leaders if they have been selected. Because if there are fewer sub-group leaders than the number notified, it’s necessary to reject some people. At this point, it will be a bit awkward.

In this Quanzhou Strawberry Music Festival, since the number of booths on-site is not fixed, it can only be determined after arriving on-site through a site inspection. If the group is pre-divided or sub-group leaders are assigned, but the number of groups needed is less than the actual number, then regrouping will be necessary. However, most of the time, the number of beer tents will not exceed four. For a relatively small music festival, we only need to prepare a plan for 2-3 groups. For a relatively large music festival, such as Super Strawberry, it may be necessary to prepare a plan for dividing into 4 groups. Of course, if you want to be lazy, first divide into 2-3 groups. After arriving on-site and confirming that 4 groups are needed, then divide the 2 groups into halves.

Other Matters

For some large volunteer groups, before the training day and traveling to the venue, it’s possible to “print one to two copies of the volunteer full list” for easy statistics of volunteer material distribution later.

Training Day

Except for arts and entertainment, which may arrive early due to some artists arriving early to prepare for reception, most groups will be trained on the day before the music festival.

On the training day, some group members may leave from various places, so it’s possible to remind group members to bring their ID cards for easy entry later. It’s also important to mention this in the group announcement to avoid group members who leave early not bringing their ID cards.

Sub-group Leader Training

Before group member training, there will be sub-group leader training. The duration of sub-group leader training is usually about an hour before group member training. The main content is to walk around the venue, let sub-group leaders get to know each other, and facilitate the progress of subsequent work.

Venue Inspection

After sub-group leader training, it’s necessary to quickly and thoroughly inspect the specific position you are responsible for on-site. For example, for the beverage sales group, check all the sales positions, select the appropriate number of sub-group leaders based on the number of positions, and be responsible for the specific work management of each position. The details of the grouping have been explained in detail above.

In addition, it’s necessary to make a general judgment of the positions, analyze whether there will be a position with a large number of people during certain time periods, and allocate more personnel to that position based on the judgment.

Volunteer Training

After all group members have gathered, we can simply organize group members to walk around the venue and introduce our work location to them. If the groups have been divided before, at this point, we need to point out which group will work at which specific position tomorrow.

During this process, the coordinator teachers will introduce all the things that need to be done on the day of the music festival in detail. For example, the cashier group will have a POS machine tutorial, the ticket checking group will have a ticket machine tutorial, and for the beverage group, it’s how to divide the work of pouring drinks.

Since the coordinator teachers will introduce everything in detail, we basically don’t need to do anything.

However, since the coordinator teachers introduce a lot of content, some first-time music festival group members may not be able to receive such a large amount of information. In this case, it’s possible to summarize some important content after the coordinator teachers’ introduction.

Beverage Group Training

For the beverage group, some important content includes:

• Prepare as many drinks as possible: Many group members are afraid of wasting drinks, so they will only prepare 10-20 drinks of each type. This is not enough for a music festival with tens of thousands of people. So it’s necessary to emphasize not being afraid of wasting drinks, and only by preparing more drinks in advance can our subsequent work be easier.

• Batch production: The production process of drinks should be batch production, not single cup production. If one person needs to complete the entire workflow, the efficiency will be too low.

• Avoid mixing Sprite with drinking water: If Sprite and drinking water are placed together, it takes a long time to distinguish between the two. If the wrong one is given to the customer, then we need to prepare another one.

• Front row sales group members should help back row group members when idle: Sometimes there will be idle time, but not know what to do. At this point, it’s necessary to guide them to help the back row group members with some drink packaging or carrying operations to the front row table.

• Preparation of Pro Cups: Since the straws of Pro Cups have been compressed for a long time, some customers may encounter the problem that the Pro Cups cannot suck out the drink normally. At this point, it’s necessary to arrange one group member to pull out the straw of the ProCup in advance to avoid sticking. It’s also possible to put the strap of the ProCup into the box at this time, which is convenient for subsequent sales.

• Pouring drinks into Pro Cups: When encountering customers who need to top up their drinks, it’s possible to directly pour the drink from the cup that has already been filled, instead of finding the drink yourself. This process can save a lot of time.

• Refuse special requests from customers during peak hours.

Good managers should be good at breaking down complex tasks into simple tasks and providing help and guidance during the process, rather than giving an order and waiting for the result.

Volunteer Material Distribution

The most important thing on the training day is the distribution of volunteer materials. Especially the distribution of volunteer ID cards and volunteer T-shirts. This is the certificate of entry for the next day. Before the clearance explosion, there will be security personnel checking the volunteer uniform and ID cards to determine whether they can enter the venue.

Regarding volunteer ID cards and T-shirts, they must be picked up by the person on the day. If it’s possible to notify in advance to bring ID cards, it’s possible to verify the identity of the group members through the ID cards and then distribute the materials.

There may be some situations where group members don’t come and steal volunteer ID cards and T-shirts. Although it’s really not clear why this needs to be done. The countermeasure is to verify the identity of the person before distributing the materials.

While distributing materials, it’s also possible to record it on the list to simply roll call the group members who have arrived on-site. To find out if there are some people who didn’t come to training and didn’t ask for leave in advance.

Music Festival Day 1

Booth Material Pick-up

After arriving at the venue in the morning, it’s necessary to quickly confirm with logistics whether it’s possible to pick up materials. If it can be confirmed that materials can be picked up, it’s possible to go and pick up some materials that group members may need before the beverages.

For example:

• Utility knife: Open beverages and material boxes
• Zip ties/duct tape: Used to hang KT boards. If there are no zip ties, duct tape can be used as a substitute
• Scissors (used to cut Pro wristbands)
• Tissues
• Wet wipes
• Band-Aids

and so on.

Hanging KT Boards

The above is the hanging of KT boards at the Wuhan Strawberry Music Festival.

Generally, there will be a price board (with the prices of all drinks), several pick-up boards and payment boards (since we need to cooperate with the cashier volunteers to complete the work, payment needs to be made before drinks can be taken), handband exchange (Pro wristbands have a free drink, and we need to use scissors to cut off a part of the wristband after the exchange), and some merchandise boards.

A pick-up board and a payment board need to be hung together, and there should be a gap between multiple ones to avoid crowd gathering. A booth will generally have 3-4 pick-up and payment boards. Additionally, there will be a handband exchange and strawberry cup (unlimited drinking) on both sides.

Clearance Explosion

Every morning at around 12 noon, there will be a full-scale clearance and explosion of the venue.

The purpose of clearance and explosion is twofold: to prevent strangers from entering the venue, and to clean up some dangerous items in the venue. Since a music festival is a place where a large number of people gather, if there are dangerous items, the consequences are unimaginable.

At this time, most of the people in the venue will be cleared out, and then they will be re-checked through the staff entrance and exit to confirm their identity before they can enter the venue.

Before clearance, it’s necessary to remind group members to bring their ID cards and volunteer ID cards for easy confirmation of identity by the volunteer staff at the staff entrance and exit. To avoid being blocked at the staff entrance and exit.

Post-clearance Lunch

There will be two meals provided each day of the music festival, and the exact meal times will be notified by logistics later.

When picking up meals, it’s necessary to pay attention to the number of halal meals needed by group members, and appropriately pick up a few more meals, as some group members may not have enough with one meal. Of course, it’s also necessary to avoid picking up too many to avoid waste.

Additionally, the time for picking up meals often coincides with the time for clearance and explosion. At this point, it’s possible to remind group members of their meal times, and if they’re not very hungry, they can eat after clearance and explosion to avoid eating in a hurry during clearance. Of course, if most group members are eating and only half is used, it’s also possible to ask the security uncles to help wait a little longer for everyone to finish eating before going out.

Prepare Beverages Before Entry

At least 30 minutes before the audience enters the venue, it’s necessary to start preparing beverages, and even earlier.

At this point, as a group leader, it’s possible to visit several booths in rotation to check the quantity of beverages prepared and whether there are any problems in the production process and flow, such as single cup production instead of batch production, insufficient beverage preparation, etc. When problems are encountered, it’s necessary to inform group members in a timely manner to avoid a large number of beverages being sold after group members enter the venue, causing a long queue of customers.

Booth Clean-up

Every night, it’s necessary to collect all the items at each booth and return them to logistics. For the beverage group, beverages will be collected by workers. We only need to return the materials taken from logistics in the morning. Additionally, there is an important item that needs to be returned, which is the router. It should be marked to avoid confusion when distributing it the next day.

Music Festival Day 2

Group Photo

In the morning of the second day, there will be a group photo of all volunteers and sub-group photos. It’s also possible to pre-collect some opinions from group members to select a suitable location for the group photo. If it’s going to rain on the second day, it’s also possible to take sub-group photos in advance on the first day if there is time.

Work

Except for the group photo in the morning, the workflow on the second day is basically the same as the first day.

So if the first day goes smoothly, there’s no need to remind too much on the second day. If there are problems with the work on the first day, it’s necessary to gather the group members before going to their respective booths to explain and improve some of the things that were done poorly.

At this point, the two days of the music festival are over!

Conclusion

Although I’ve been a sub-group leader for many volunteer groups, this is the first time I’ve been a group leader. So there will definitely be some incomplete parts in this article, but the content and process are basically correct.

At the same time, I hope I can be selected for more music festival volunteer opportunities in the future and continuously optimize the process. This article will also be continuously supplemented and optimized based on the work of different organizers and different volunteer groups in the future.

For some friends who haven’t experienced music festival volunteer activities, I really recommend going to experience music festival volunteering. Here, you can make friends with many interesting people and also see the people who pay for the music festival from another perspective.

Thank you for reading.