Post-mortem: IGDA Finland Volunteer Bonanza Cruise Spring 2022

Couple days after the Bonanza - I can safely say that we have survived the IGDA Finland Volunteers Bonanza Cruise 2022 with only some minor injuries! Other than our chairperson Professor Charles Xavier cosplay attempts, most people landed on their feet.

IGDA Finland volunteers took part in the biyearly Bonanza event in which we talked about things close to volunteers' hearts and volunteering in general. Cruise took part on the Baltic Sea with the Silja Europa cruise ship. We boarded the vessel on the evening of the 28th of May and headed straight for dinner. With a good buffet dinner done - volunteers joined with the IGDA Finland board members to a conference room for a quick hour of introductions and schedule presentation for the cruise.

On the cruise we had volunteers from most of the hubs and plenty of! With a total of 28 people joining, we managed to fill 8 cabins total. Some were more full than others but everyone enjoyed their time and hopefully nobody felt alone on the cruise.

After a night of relaxing at the nightclub, some of the volunteers visited the breakfast in the morning and headed out in Tallinn. Some volunteers got to taste Tallinn for the first time in their life so IGDA is also expanding their volunteers' life-experiences! Unfortunately the cobblestone roads of Old Town Tallinn became hostile to IGDA Finland's chairperson Häll and he ended up with a twisted ankle after the incident with the cobblestones.

With a quick taxi ride - we had the chairperson back on the ship once more. Just in time for the Sundays workshops! For the workshops we had the volunteers talk with themselves about best practices that their hubs are using for volunteering, event planning and event hosting. Good ideas were shared and they were even remixed into better ideas during the conversations.

The other workshop included some thinking about things volunteers could and want to do in the future and what kind of support they would need from IGDA Finland. That included a speaker listing for the hubs to have an idea of who to ask to speak at their own meetups or other events.

At the end of the workshops we had our very own Natasha Skult, the chairperson of the IGDA Global Board of Directors, go through our Emmi system for event management and website and how to post your hubs’ events there. Some volunteers got to see these for the first time and some this was a good repeat of the old learnings.

Overall the IGDA Finland Volunteers Bonanza Cruise 2022 was a huge success and many funs were had! Hopefully more volunteers can attend the Autumn Bonanza later this year.