Sku
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Posts posted by Sku
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On 10/7/2019 at 10:57 AM, stuie said:
I don't even understand how Festaff is a thing and there's no way I'd ever consider volunteering for a privately owned profit-making company owned by one guy, who keep a part of your deposit, even when you complete all of the shifts.
I'm surprised Glastonbury use them to be honest.
Oxfam on the other hand, is a wonderful charity and I know that my volunteer hours contribute to the work that they do throughout the year, around the world.
They do one job, and they do it well. They are responsible for looking after 135,000 wristbands, with a value of about £35 million. They have to monitor each volunteer much more closely than other organisations do to ensure wristband theft is not occurring. If wristbands go missing in bulk, it compromises the integrity and security of the entire event. Festaff have been doing it for years, and Glastonbury seem to trust them to do it.
I only volunteered with Festaff last year because I was unsuccessful in securing a place with Oxfam. I can totally understand why some people might be adverse to paying a £15 admin fee to a "company" rather than a "charity", but to me, it was just a way to get into Glastonbury, simple as that. They were fun to work with, and I enjoyed my shifts. Wristbanding people is fun because they are so excited to have arrived at Glastonbury!
On 10/7/2019 at 11:29 AM, stuartasmith85 said:I was just wondering if you'd seen this confirmed elsewhere? Currently, Festaff's page about Glastonbury 2020 still suggests you would have to sign up to a second festival as well (https://www.festaff.co.uk/news/glastonbury-applications-2020), but I can see that this may simply be last year's info page updated to refer to 2020 rather than 2019, and that things may change when it comes to the applications actually opening...
This is what I was told while working at Glastonbury last year. They told me because I worked 2 events this year, I don't need to work a sister event in 2020, as they were changing the system to remove the concept of sister events. However it does seem to be the case that the website doesn't actually say that at the moment. Either it's not been updated, they changed their mind, or I'm simply mistaken.
On 10/7/2019 at 11:53 AM, jfaragher said:Point 1 - you get to go to Glastonbury, in exchange for 24 hours of work, and £50. For lots of people, that's a fair deal (actually, it's objectively a reasonable deal - you'd need to earn about £10 an hour to earn the cash after tax for the same period to buy the ticket...). Also, loads of the organisations who bring volunteers aren't doing it for charity - Arcadia, Block9, various clean up crews etc etc.
Point 2 - Festaff are pretty good at what they do, basically.
The admin fee was only £15 when I worked for Festaff at Glastonbury this year.
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16 minutes ago, dotdash79 said:
If you go with Festaff you need to do another event with them, and you don't get your deposit back until after the second event.
They have confirmed that they are no longer doing that in 2020.
The new system is that you need to have worked 2 festivals the year before, to get priority access to volunteer spaces the next year. So for example, work 2 festivals in 2019, then get priority access in 2020 (without the need to work a sister event in 2020).
Then any remaining places for 2020 go out to anybody, without the need to work a sister event. However you might still want to work a second festival for priority access in 2021 anyway, but at least it's your own decision now rather than a forced thing.
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1 minute ago, Mr.Tease said:
Personally I hate queuing systems--I went for nba tickets in London, you got sent to the waiting room and just stay there doing nothing until it sells out- horrible experience! At least pressing refresh let's me feel less powerless!
Yeah I agree. Mashing F5 feels like you are doing something.
I guess the systems are actually kind of similar really, just one feels worse than the other.
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I always think there must be a fairer way, but actually when you read the for/against, all the alternative suggestions seem to have major flaws.
The lottery system of waiting on a holding page until your "number is called" (figuratively speaking) is about as fair as it gets. It obviously sucks if you can't even connect to that holding page, but that's all a part of the same lottery process I guess.
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17 minutes ago, Flysheet said:
Festaff site down, have sent them a Facebook DM
Last year they didn't open applications to March/April.
Not sure why the site is down at the minute though. But what I mean, is that there is no hurry!
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43 minutes ago, zico martin said:
Still kinda I'm shock after missing out this morning and love the idea of volunteering. But am I too old (48)? And if my wife volunteers as well would we basically not see each other all festival?
Plenty of people in that sort of age range with Festaff this year. Was really mixed.
I'm 31, and would say I was somewhere in the middle of the average age range. I thought it would tilt a lot younger, but was surprised.
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34 minutes ago, DJL said:
Whereabouts is the campsite now, I hear it has moved since I did it. In answer to the above we took a camper van into the Oxfam camp site a few years ago, was decent
The main Oxfam camp was about a 5 minute walk outside of Ped Gate B in 2019.
No idea what the deal with campervans is though.
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1 minute ago, Pauladuncan70 said:
Where else can you volunteer ? I have signed up to be notified by oxfam but would be interested in other options too. Also my husband has an autoimmune illness so he would struggle to stand for 8 hours or do anything that was very physical - can we mention this and it be considered in volunteering groups ? Or do you think they will just not want him /us? ? Would be a shame as they would be missing out on a hardworking 50 something man and women - but I don't want to get my hopes up. And one more question (and this is for a friend - do they allow campervans in the Oxfam volunteers film ?)
Check the other thread:
Looks like it was posted twice in error
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Just now, Winslow Leach said:
Yeah I've been looking at Festaff but sounds like you're more likely to get in with them if you've done it before. Had you volunteered with them before or did you sign up out of the blue?
Out of the blue. This year at least, they opened applications for those who had worked with them before on 1st of March.
Then they opened a second round of applications on the 1st of April which was open to everyone. I applied, and my application was approved the very next day.
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How is the 261 day long range GFS looking?
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I volunteered with Festaff this year and it was great. 95% of shifts are wristbanding on the gates.
I worked 3 fun shifts banding people on Gate A:
Wednesday: 4pm to Midnight
Thursday: 8am to 4pm
Saturday: 8am to 4pmThe 8 hour rest between the Wednesday and Thursday shifts was a bit brutal, but my own fault, as it's what I chose in order to get 2 shifts out the way ASAP.
Shifts are first come first served, pick yourself. But everyone has to do at least one "late", and everybody has to work Wednesday and Thursday, as it's when the gates are busiest. It means you only have to do one remaining shift over the main festival days.
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Managed to get through using incognito chrome on a Desktop. If that means anything.
Tickets secured! Buzzing.
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4 minutes ago, Padgey said:
Got 5, was given 6 registrations but one ended up being incorrect which the website said so i proceeded with the 5 correct ones. There was no locking of the registrations because one was incorrect. Got the tickets on my phone and didn't refresh it, the page just came up while i was refreshing the laptop.
Sucks for that person. Important to check you give each other the right registration!
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I couldn't even reach the holding page for the first 10 minutes! Only one in our group managed to reach the reg number page, but not until after Wednesday had already been announced as sold out.
Put all the numbers in, only to find Thursday had all gone by that point too.
Bring on Sunday ?
(And I have a guaranteed volunteer spot as a final back up at least, but that doesn't help my friends ?)
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Got to the 20 second refresh holding page only once.... every other refresh has failed to even load
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Brighton
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I'll be going ?
Already made travel arrangements to get to Bristol and back. Might have been a bit keen without even an official announcement yet though!
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I'll be there. Surprise haha
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10 hours ago, vintagelaureate said:
Chapter 12: New Beginnings
How did the finale go this year?
This video is the best I've found:
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On 8/7/2019 at 8:28 AM, pilton digger said:
If they do, shit happens, and in the words of the great philosopher "enjoy life and don't be a c*nt".
See you in the fields later.
My thoughts exactly. It's far from ideal, but a couple hours with the main stages closed during the worst of it is hardly the end of the world (if it even comes to that). Other than the storm passing through, the rest of the weather looks mostly OK. Everything before Friday morning, and after Saturday 3pm-ish looks fine.
I also remember the year when the Town Centre stage got a bit torn up by the wind, but they soon had the show back on.
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Starting to look like WIND rather than rain could be the bigger issue this weekend.
Boardmasters just cancelled due to high winds. Nothing like that kind of wind predicted for Boomtown though. But still some fairly prolonged patches of 30-40mph strength during Friday and Saturday. At the very least enough to cause the sound technicians a headache at the main stages.
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On 6/7/2019 at 8:57 AM, Tommy101 said:
Can someone make a new 'It's Happening' ME gif with Nicolas Boom's face please?
Thought I'd wait until it was actually "happening" before I posted this... but I didn't forget
IT'S HAPPENING! All packed and ready
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Just now, incident said:
Silly question, but is it definitely going to be someone who was announced? Could've been a planned secret / last minute thing that fell through.
If it is someone who's been announced, then it seems a bit off to be doing the guessing game, they really should say it straight out or say nothing until they can.
I guess it wasn't really intended to be a guessing game. He's just replied to a few people to let them know that the act they speculated about are still on the bill. It's not an official Boomtown twitter account.
Official announcement coming after 6:30pm apparently.
Site changes for 2020
in Chat
Posted
I don't think that much needs to change in Silver Hayes to improve it.
The Gully Blues stage looks great, and the fact it's slightly enclosed at the back helps create some atmosphere away from the thoroughfare. Why can't the other venues there jazz their appearance up a bit too?
Would be good to see some SE corner style stage design in Silver Hayes (on a more low key scale of course), to improve what visually is rather a bland area. Late at night once the SH stages are closed, a nice bit of lighting/projection mapping on those stages/sets would really help bring some much needed colour to that end of the festival.
There is nothing that much wrong with Silver Hayes, it just hasn't really moved with the times. The rest of the festival has kept upping the game aesthetics wise, leaving it looking tired and forgotten. It's not difficult to spruce up these kind of small to mid sized venues with a bit of creative set building.