What can we learn from all the "what can we learn from" blogs on the Olympics volunteers..?

What can we learn from all the "what can we learn from" blogs on the Olympics volunteers..?

Remember there were 240,000 applicant, 40% of whom had never volunteered before. 

If nothing changes, will return to non volunteering in a few weeks. Here's a few links of interesting commentary:

1. Can the Olympic experience help change the face of volunteering? http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/2012/jul/19/olympics-change-face-volunteering
2. A blog from phil coogan from nesta about where we take this: http://www.nesta.org.uk/blogs/public_services_lab_blog/Standing%20out%20from%20the%20crowd
3. Guardian professionalblog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/17/london-2012-games-makers-800-roles
4. A forum for people looking for accommodation that showed these new volunteer organising themselves (like a local version of airb&b or couchsurfing..?) http://www.gm2012accommodation.org.uk/default.aspx?g=forum 
5. A few 'sector leaders' opinions http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/2012/aug/07/best-bits-olympic-legacy-volunteering
6. Gamesmakers on facebook (1,700 of them organising on the most simple of social networking sites, which is maybe what works when you have a strict time bound purpose..) http://www.facebook.com/2012VolunteerGamesmaker 
7. The End of Volunteering article (which touches on many of these themes..) http://wearewhatwedo.org/the-end-of-volunteering 
8. This from the Telegraph on the weekend of getting involved in local sports clubs.. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9473635/London-2012-100000-volunteers-sign-up-to-Keep-The-Flame-Alive.html

Soooooooooooooooo what's next..? What's stopping something happening with this energy, this passion for change..? 

My top two suggestions would be would be 

1. a sense of urgency, 
2. a genuinely people focussed approach. 

Lets give the people what they want, which the Olympics has shown is not what in its entirety we have right now. People care about things, but don't associate 'volunteering opportunities' as a way of doing something about it. And as someone pointed out: at exactly the same time as 70,000 were working for free, the MPs were off on paid holiday..

Will gamesmakers come back home and be the change..?

The most interesting thing to come out is wewillgather, but more on that later..
(tweet the #WeWillGather hashtag, a postcode and the word ‘help’..)