Three Main Roles

There are basically three roles to be filled by organizers, which in theory could be done by one superhuman, but is more realistically split between two people.

First, the communicator. This include coordinating with the venue, talking back and forth with volunteers and participants and making sure the invites get sent out on time, in our case on meetup.

Second, the logistics magician, or the stage director role. This includes stuff like planning food (if not handled by the venue), making sure the physical object like extension cords and getting people signed in, getting caterers to the kitchen and making signs to the bathrooms; there will be volunteers for any task, but the stage director puts the volunteer there to do it..

Lastly is circus ringmistress, who welcomes everyone to the circus with an entertaining "what are we doing here" intro and sends people off to classes and be amazed by their own feats of strength. At the end this person inspires people to continue, with study groups and online resources, then points them to the after-party bar. (Our analogies sometimes break down.)

There's a technical requirement for the circus mistress because the presentations are maintained on Github and it's convenient if the circus master can clone and make pull requests as needed for their workshop. (Note, if you're a born circus-master but don't feel comfortable with git, we love git and always happily spread the good-git news.)

There are plenty of other things that could go into one person's bucket over the other. But most of the volunteers will be teachers, so unless you recruit dedicated non-teaching volunteers, prepare to lasso some volunteers and get them to help with signing people in or putting the bagels of for consumption.

Mostly, talk to your co-organizer about their strengths, weaknesses, and what they want to do. Figure out how to have to most fun.