Volunteer opportunities

At ILDA, volunteer help is always gratefully appreciated. We have three main areas: ongoing opportunities such as committees, special projects, and "create your own" in case you want to work on a project that interests you.

For more about the benefits of volunteering, click here.

Ongoing volunteer opportunities

• Become a member of an ILDA Committee. These include the Awards Committee (critiera, entries, judging and presentation), the Technical Committee (standards), and the Safety Committee (government meetings, primarily on laser/aviation safety. Simply contact the committee chair if you want to help out. A list of committees and contacts is here.

• Consider running for the ILDA Board. Usually, you'll want to have done some volunteer work on committees, before being nominated. This way, other people inside ILDA will be familar with you, and with what you can bring to ILDA. To run, simply nominate yourself or have someone nominate you when elections roll around each year.

• Annual Conference. Each year, ILDA needs people to help with registration, show production, and other conference-related tasks. It doesn't take long, and is a great way to meet and work with others. Contact the Executive Director.

• ILDA Awards require a lot of different talents: coordinating entries, working with judges, producing printed materials such as the Entry Rules and the Awards Booklet. The Awards Committee can always use help, and it is always interesting seeing the many different entries. Contact the Awards Committee chair.

• The Laserist magazine. This print publication goes to laserists and those who might hire laser show companies. If you are interested in helping to work on it, contact the Executive Director.

Special projects

• New committees: Membership, Conference/TradeShow. Two of the most important ILDA functions are recruiting and retaining members, and holding the annual Conference. We are looking for people to join new committees, that would assist in these areas. To find out more or to sign up, please contact the Executive Director.

• "Getting into the industry" information. ILDA occasionally gets inquiries from people new to laser shows. They want to know more about the industry. It would be great to have a web page with answers to this frequently asked question. If you'd like to work on this, contact the Executive Director.

• ILDA website. We are looking for someone with web experience in more complex interactive areas such as forums, polls, e-commerce, etc. If you are willing to help set up and occasionally manage features like these, please contact the Executive Director.
       Thanks to John Birchman for tremendous help in setting up the ILDA Forums!

• ILDA logos. We don't have a "master" ILDA logo in EPS (vector) format. Also, it would be nice to collect laser versions of the ILDA logo and have those available in ILDA and other formats.  Contact the Executive Director.
       Thanks to Guido Jaeger for volunteering to do this -- his effort led to getting the EPS (vector) versions done!

• Putting ILDA Award winners on the Internet. It would be great to have some ILDA Award winning videos (or excerpts) at the ILDA website. If you can help, contact the Executive Director.

• ILDA and Laser Industry History. Laser shows have been presented since the mid-1960s, but there is no single source to find out about the history. Various bits and pieces are in different publications and websites. Bringing this together to a single website would be very useful. Ideally, an ILDA Committee would be set up to coordinate the work of one or more people on this project. Contact the Executive Director.

• Industry Pioneer Awards. Related to the above, there has been discussion about ILDA presenting awards to those people who helped develop laser display technology and businesses. (People such as Lowell Cross, Carson Jeffries, Elsa Garmire, Carl Frederik Reuterswärd, Rockne Krebs, Lloyd Cross, Brian O'Brian, Lawrence Goodridge, John Wolff, Paul Earls, Eric Eisack, Bart Johnson, Horst Baumann and Ron Pellegrino.) Research would be needed to determine the most deserving candidates and to recommend whether and how to present the awards. Contact the Executive Director.

• Laser pages at Wikipedia. Some of the existing articles on Wikipedia about laser displays and safety could use work. Others could be added in areas such as galvo scanners, PCAOMs and other display industry technology. Translations of laser-related articles would be useful, for non-English editions of Wikipedia. If you are interested, simply go to Wikipedia and start editing or creating pages. If you are not comfortable with this, contact the Executive Director, who can add your material.

Create your own volunteer opportunity

If you have a special project you'd like to see done, doing it as an officially sponsored ILDA project would be ideal. Contact the Executive Director to see about getting Board approval for a committee or other way of turning your idea into reality.