[mch2021-terrain] Bootstrapping Team:Terrain

[Ruud Koolen]

Dear $someone,

I hear you have expressed interest in being involved with the organization of 
the Terrain cluster of MCH2021.

The Terrain cluster is a group of somewhat-related jobs and responsibilities 
on the MCH2021 organizational chart [1]. It is the largest cluster by the 
number of jobs in it, and it may be the least coherent of the set. Going by 
the list, it contains the roles of Buildup, Deco, Layout, Lighting, Parking, 
Procurement, Routing, Sanitation, Scaffolds, Teardown, and Wayfinding.

Do you know what all of these roles mean, exactly? Me neither. Some of these 
items are well-delineated responsibilities that have existed in more or less 
the same form at previous events; others are a collection of odd jobs that 
have historically fallen through the cracks, while not belonging anywhere in 
particular. Jobs like Sanitation, which have in the past been handled by 
someone somewhere while not really being part of any team. They are listed on 
the chart now, because we want to avoid a situation where these things are 
nobody's responsibility.

Of the roles in the Terrain cluster, Deco and Lighting have already turned 
into healthy independent teams. Team:Deco, as always, is going to ensure that 
MCH is going to be more interesting to look at than a green field with white 
tents on it. Team:Lighting is going to work with Team:Deco to make sure that 
the number of multicolored lights on the field is sufficiently ridiculous, 
while also taking care that you can actually see where you are going at night 
without walking into a ditch on your way to the toilet.

I want to turn everything else on the list into a unified team, creatively 
named Team:Terrain.

The responsibilities of Team:Terrain as I see it would include everything in 
the Terrain cluster that is not part of Team:Deco or Team:Lighting. These 
responsibilities fit together nicely into a few tasks that are more or less 
independent, but still benefit from close collaboration, and are suitable to 
having one person be involved with more than one of the tasks. Concretely, I 
see the following four responsibilities as making up Team:Terrain:

* Organizing the buildings and terrain protections to be deployed on the 
field. This includes all the tents that form the backbone of the event; 
toilets and shower facilities, and the plumbing required to keep them 
working; portacabins and headquarters, if any; road plates, to protect the 
fragile grass from heavy vehicles; fences, gates, and bridges; towers and 
scaffolding constructions; and whatever other heavy metal we may end up 
needing. Power infrastructure is not included (we have Team:Power for that). 
This is a job that will be done in close collaboration with the folks at 
Projectleiding, who have been busy doing a fair amount of the prep work in 
recent months, and who wil have opinions on how and where we are going to 
spend large amounts of money. In the field, this will largely involve keeping 
a close eye on the suppliers coming to deploy these things, and making sure 
they don't mess up too badly.

* Organizing a parking field. There needs to be a place for people to park 
their cars, traffic coordination both at the parking field and in the 
surrounding area, ticket scanning at the entrance, and security to keep the 
cars safe. This is a job that has at multiple past events been improvised at 
the last minute by some truly heroic people; this time, I'd prefer things to 
move a bit more predictably.

* Figuring out the geographical layout of the terrain. We will need to find a 
place for all the different things on the field that need some space, be they 
stages, bars, villages, or whatever, while keeping track of things like 
traffic flows, terrain restrictions, permit requirements, and whatever other 
constraints may apply. Half the MCH2021 orga will have strong opinions on 
what should go where, and balancing all those different wishes against each 
other will be our job. Also included is maintaining the detailed map of the 
terrain, which supports everyone working on the event.

* Managing the buildup and teardown activities. We will need to maintain an 
overview of all the work that needs to happen on the field to turn a grassy 
field into a hacker event, and then back into a field again when the event is 
over. We need to plan out all this work, keep track of dependencies and 
deadlines, and work out how many pairs of hands we are going to need to get 
it all done. In the field, we will need to lead our dedicated volunteers, 
make sure that everything is going smoothly, keep track of progress so that 
nothing is forgotten, and intervene when things inevitably go wrong. We will 
also need to take care of safety surrounding heavy machinery.

Some of these tasks could be subteams, or they could not; if people are 
interested in working on multiple of these jobs, that is very fine by me 
well. What these tasks definitely do need is for people to sign up for them, 
because it's certainly too much for me to do on my own.

So if you're interested in one or more of these jobs, let me know. There's a 
mailing list [2], and I will be consolidating some wiki pages in a few days.

Join Team:Terrain! We have cookies, and heavy metal, and what more do you need 
really?

-- Ruud Koolen


[1] https://wiki.ifcat.org/Teams#Organization_chart_.28clusters.2C_roles.29
[2] https://lists.mch2021.org/mailman/listinfo/terrain