About our Booth

Our booth is the heart of our tournament presence.

We try to make our booth hard to miss - from banners of volleyball action, to high quality samples hung for display or a slideshow running on a 130" projection screen, we try not to let people walk by our booth with out knowning what we are about.

Our booth started with no promotional materials, a black and white laser printer for thumbnail proofs, one computer and customers filling out paper order forms. It has grown to custom cabinetry holding 50 flat screen monitors from which customers can view any image, design any product and submit their order without ever having to touch a piece of paper. (We've tried to be very efficient in our growth - those 50 flat screens are powered by only five computers, with an additional three webservers and four laptops used for production behind the scenes).

Other than location and power, we try to make our booth as self sufficient as possible. We bring everything we need to operate at a tournament.

These are a few images from our booth at the 2005 Volleyball Festival in Reno, Nevada. At this point our booth had 30 viewers - we've since added 20 more and are ready to expand further, if needed.

Booth Positions Available

We are currently accepting applications for all booth staffing positions. We need self starters who are interested in working hard and meeting new people while earning good pay.

Standard Booth duties include:

• Sales - By and large, our product sells itself. We are not interested in the hard sale - we want the quality of our images and collages to sell customers the minute they see them. Sales positions involve helping understand what we offer (packages and options) helping people make image selections and designing products like collages.
• Cashier - Reviewing orders for completeness, including mild upselling, finalizing orders, taking payment and printing and filing invoices.
• Building General Public Awareness - Making sure people know we are there and what we do: handing out fliers, answering the many 'So what is this?' and 'How does this work?' questions asked, etc.
• Card, Battery & Schedule Running - At a busy tournament, photographers are tied up photographing from the start of the day to the end, with little time for coming back to the booth for charged batteries, picking up updated photography schedules or dropping off CF cards with game images on them. A common booth staff duty is to make the rounds, visit each photographer to pickup photographed games, drop off new schedules or charged batteries and perhaps run a bottle of water or snack out to a hungry or thirsty photographer.
• Scheduling Photography - Gathering information from people interested in purchasing a photography coverage (Team Name, Court, Play Schedule, etc.), arranging photographers' schedules so that they can photograph as many teams as possible.
• Image Downloading and Sorting - Throughout the day, as games are photographed, they need to be downloaded from the CF cards, properly tagged with information (team, court, time, etc.). Once downloaded, each image needs to be inspected for focus and overall quality. Rejects are removed. The game is then sent for processing onto our webservers.
• Categorizing images on content and merit, and pre-designing customer collages - This includes sorting images by who is in them (jersey number), ranking images based on content, say what kind of image they are (action, portrait, cheer, huddle, etc.) and then generating collages based on the information input. Our goal is that - by seeing already designed collages when they come to look at images for their team - customers will be inclined to purchase what they see, making it easier for staff to help them.

What about Pay?

While many are excited simply by the idea of traveling to a volleyball tournament to help, this is obviously a job and pay is an issue. We expect everyone to work hard, and we try to pay well for the time you give us.

Our income potential varies greatly depending on the tournament we are photographing - generally speaking, the larger the tournament (and the closer to the end of the season it is), the better are our chances of good income. Early in the season, our income is lower - tournaments are smaller and the season is just beginning (there is less push for pictures at towards the beginning of the season). So these tournaments serve as "seeding" tournaments in that they supply us with money we need after our slow Fall season and allow us to photograph the larger tournaments later in the season.

For small tournaments, we are offering base pay of $100/day with the possibility of bonuses if we hit certain pre-defined income targets (based on a minimum 10 hour day).

For large tournaments, we are offering base pay of $150/day with the possibility of bonuses if we hit certain pre-defined income targets (based on a minimum 10 hour day).

Even though the final day of a tournament is shorter than the preceding days, if you work until the tournament ends, it counts as a full day.

Schedule & Breaks

Our booth usually runs from 7:00 or 7:30am to about 9:00pm, so expect to work a 10-12 hour day.

A 1/2 hour lunch break will be provided as well as 3 15 minute breaks. Other than that - if you need to get some space, get away for a bit, just let someone know and take a walk.

That schedule applies to the first two days of a three day tournament. The final day is usually shorter - about 7:30am to 4:00 or 5:00pm, depending on flight arrangements.

Do you provide a uniform? Is there a dresscode?

Yes - to both.

We provide a very simple uniform - a t-shirt or sweatshirt which color coordinates with the rest of the staff and includes our company logo to identify you as a booth staff member. Uniform shirts should be returned at the end of an event. (We launder them prior to the next event.)

In addition to this simple uniform, we ask that staff members be well groomed and showered and that men be shaved (a moustache, beard or goatee is fine, but don't choose to start growing one while at the tournament).

We ask that staff dress conservatively - slacks or well kept jeans are fine. Shorts are OK as long as they aren't too short (mid thigh).

We also recommend that you wear very comfortable shoes - convention center flooring is often bare cement.

What if I'm a student? Or if I have another job?

No problem.

Our goal for any staff flying to a tournament is to have you arrive the day before the tournament starts and get you back home the same day it ends to keep the amount of time away from home down to a minimum and help reduce any missed class or day job time. All of the major tournaments we need help at are three day weekend tournaments either starting Friday and ending Sunday or Starting Saturday and ending Monday.

So have a look at our schedule, take a look at yours and find out the best trips overall. The more, the better. :) While training is pretty simple and straight forward, the less times we have to train new staff, the better. We're also considering a bonus system based around the number of tournaments attended throughout the season ...