P1080120 Before bag stuffing starts

Bag stuffing is mandatory for all 2000 or so of SXSW volunteers. They gather in a humongous warehouse, where boxes of "goodies" (read: with a few exceptions, useless promotional junk) are lined up on long tables. A set of volunteers walk along the tables holding bags, while the other set drop stuff into the bags from boxes. Each person takes stuff from just one box. Since the quantities of each item are unequal, once a person runs out of items in his/her box, he/she usually joins the line of walkers with bags. As the evening progresses, and more boxes become empty, the lines of walkers grow to enormous length. When there are no more empty bags, the job is done. This year we did it in 2 hours.