There have been a lot of inquiries from people in the last few weeks offering their services to the AusGamers Network. We all really appreciate hearing from people that want to help out; it helps restore our faith in gamers after kicking another cheating peon from a gaming server or deleting threads of horrible abuse from forums.

The AusGamers Network is run entirely by volunteers. Noone is paid for their services. This is one of the reasons why I think we have such a leet setup - the people involved are people that do it because they love gaming. These will always be the best people to get involved in the online scene.

AusGamers is always looking for more volunteers to help out on sites. One of the problem with volunteers is that they frequently have to put hobbies on hold to take care of Real Life stuff - we've always understood this when running QGL LANs and can appreciate it online as well. As a result, there's frequently gaps in sites that we're trying to manage and things that would be great to get filled by other keen people.

What are the advantages of working on AusGamers sites? You're part of a team of one of the best gaming networks in the world. You have the chance to work with cutting edge technologies and help cover the events that shape the gaming world. You get to put your input into the future of gaming in Australia.

One of the most important things that is becoming increasingly important is the practical work experience that you can get contributing to an organisation such as AusGamers. We did a survey a few years back, and we found out that most of the audience of gamers were either:

a) tertiary students studying IT
b) secondary students aiming to study IT
c) people working in IT related industries

One of the things that employers in the IT field look at more than anything else is experience. Working on AusGamers gives you the opportunity to be involved in a rapidly growing sector of the IT world - web development and content provision - and gives you the technical capability for you to learn and practice with new skills. Our hosting environment currently hosts over 900 sites, many of which have provided aspiring web developers the chance to work on a live production server using powerful development and deployment tools.

AusGamers runs several community-focus sites that could always do with new, refreshing content. Things like reviews of new maps, interviews with community members, feature articles covering new versions, covering interesting aspects of games - covering anything that people might be interested in reading and discussing.

What sort of people do AusGamers want to take part in the AusGamers managed sites? People that are doing it for the game. People that have a flair for writing - and that enjoy it. People than can contribute constructively to forum discussions and can avoid overreacting to inflammatory posts. People that can demonstrate a mature, responsible attitude to gaming but at the same time keeping a sense of humour. People than can work as a part of a team, and share ideas and offer critiques and support to other team members.

People that can demonstrate a good working knowledge of web server technologies and web development technologies are always appreciated. In case you don't know, the AusGamers Network runs entirely off a combination of PHP and mySQL. People with graphics skills are also in high demand - graphic artists are few and far between these days, and what better way to work on your portfolio than by developing website interfaces that are going to be used in big gaming sites!

One other important attribute is people that know what they want to do to help. As a volunteer organisation, we don't want to be telling you what to do. We want people that can step up and say right at the front what they want to work on. This way, we can ensure that people are doing things that they enjoy.

If you're interested in helping out, we'd love to hear from you. Head over to our volunteer application page and apply!