There is a particular kind of memory that only volunteers carry. It is not the memory of a podium, or of a ribbon broken at the finish line, or of a scoreboard frozen in gold. It is something quieter and more durable than any of those — the memory of standing at a gate in the early morning, of learning the name of a bus driver who would become a friend by the third day, of watching an athlete from a small country compete before a crowd that knew nothing of where she came from and cheering anyway. The volunteer’s memory is made of texture, not triumph. And yet, for every Olympics that has ever been staged, it is the volunteers who hold the softest and most human version of what the Games actually were.

Brisbane 2032 will be no different in this respect. It takes a huge team effort to host the world’s biggest sporting event, and volunteers are described by the Brisbane 2032 Organising Committee as the heart and soul of the Olympic and Paralympic spirit. Volunteers will be essential to delivering the Olympic and Paralympic Games Brisbane 2032 — including events support, spectator guides, operations, medical, transport and more. These are not incidental roles. They are the connective tissue of the entire enterprise.

But here is the question that most planning documents do not ask, and that the history of previous Games suggests they rarely answer well: what happens to those volunteers after the closing ceremony? What remains of their contribution when the venues are handed back, the accreditation lanyards are packed away, and the city returns to its ordinary rhythms? The question of legacy for the volunteer workforce is not simply sentimental. It is civic. It is about whether a city’s commitment to the people who served it lasts longer than the event itself.

This article holds one possible answer — not the only one, but a meaningful one. A permanent digital address, tied to the Games, tied to Brisbane, and retained for life. It costs almost nothing to give. It means something permanent to receive.

WHAT PREVIOUS GAMES TAUGHT US ABOUT VOLUNTEER MEMORY.

The history of Olympic volunteering is a history of goodwill not quite matched by institutional follow-through. The people who give weeks of their lives to the Games tend to do so for entirely intrinsic reasons — a love of sport, a desire to be part of something larger than daily life, a sense of civic pride that no recruitment campaign could manufacture. They give generously. The question of what is given back to them has been answered differently, and often inadequately, across every host city.

The volunteers recruited to help deliver the Olympic Games Barcelona 1992 contributed to building a volunteering culture in and around the city. The organisation of the Olympic Games mobilised people in different spheres of Catalan society. Special incentives were created to encourage recruits, including grants to study French in France and English in the United Kingdom. Out of 103,000 applications, 34,000 volunteers were recruited by the Organising Committee. All received training which gave them skills for a lifetime. After the Games, the Association of Olympic Volunteers was created. This Association still provides support for most of the sporting events that take place in the city.

That is one of the more complete stories in Olympic volunteer legacy — a genuine institutional continuation, an organisation with a name, Voluntaris 2000, still present in most races and major events organised across the metropolitan area thirty years later. Barcelona understood, at least partially, that the energy mobilised by the Games did not need to dissipate the moment the flame was extinguished.

Sydney 2000 produced something similar in spirit, if not always in structure. The Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games recruited a “Games Force” of more than 40,000 volunteers, and research conducted a decade on from the Games found that Sydney 2000 had been particularly successful at igniting a volunteer culture in Australia, with the experience either initiating or rekindling a passion for volunteering among the majority of the “Games Force”. Surveys found that many went on to work at subsequent sporting events, such as the Melbourne and Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, and for charitable causes. The Spirit of Sydney group played a major role in preserving this culture, acting as a network to maintain friendships fostered at the Games through regular reunions.

The London 2012 experience was less uniform. Academic research published in the journal Voluntas found that while some form of volunteering legacy had been planned since the bidding stage, specific legacy plans were only developed late in the planning stage, with one volunteer resource centre respondent commenting that “there never seemed to be clear thoughts on what the legacy was for volunteering.” Key stakeholder insights suggest that event organising committees have often failed to engage with the volunteering infrastructure in host cities, which has been a missed opportunity.

The structural problem is not difficult to diagnose. The temporary nature of organising committees restricts their capacity to deliver legacies. It is also not the responsibility of those committees to deliver event legacies. The two key alternatives suggested for managing volunteer legacies have been government and a separate, independent organisation set up specifically to manage volunteer legacy, working in tandem with the organising committee. And across multiple Games, the conclusion is consistent: for both London and Sydney, the earlier the volunteer legacy was factored into the planning process, the more benefits could be realised.

Brisbane 2032 has the advantage of knowing all of this in advance.

THE ELEVATE 2042 FRAMEWORK — AND WHAT IT DOES NOT SPECIFY.

The Brisbane 2032 Organising Committee released its Legacy Strategy — branded Elevate 2042 — in November 2023. Elevate 2042 represents a shared 20-year vision for a lasting Games legacy and a brighter future for all. It is based on community input and focuses on sport, health and inclusion; connecting people and places; a better future for the environment and economy. Notably, the International Paralympic Committee’s President observed that “we have never seen an organising committee develop a 20-year legacy plan before.”

Elevate 2042 has the bold mission of making Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and the Oceania region better, sooner, together through sport, with opportunities accelerated by the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032. The vision is that by 2042, Queensland will be a more inclusive, sustainable and connected society. The Games present an opportunity to make change by advancing the economy, improving the environment, enhancing connectivity and building more inclusive communities through sport.

This is admirable in scope. The volunteer programs will build skills, encourage diversity, improve opportunities for all, and be a force for good across the community — an important part of the Olympic legacy. These are the right intentions. But intentions are not infrastructure. The question that the framework leaves largely open — as every previous framework has — is what the individual volunteer takes home. Not a certificate. Not a uniform to pack away in a box. Something that continues to function in the world long after the Games do not.

The Infrastructure Association of Queensland’s 2025 stakeholder roundtable on Games legacy called on planners to position Brisbane as a digital, inclusive and sustainable global city. That phrase — digital, inclusive, sustainable — is the key. Digital legacy infrastructure is the one form of legacy that scales without cost, that does not require land or maintenance or governance bureaucracy to sustain. A physical venue requires staff and upkeep for decades. A digital address requires neither.

WHAT THREE WEEKS ACTUALLY MEANS.

The typical Olympic Games volunteer commitment is measured in weeks, not months. Training, orientation, and active service together often amount to two to four weeks of an individual’s life. When the Olympic Games end and the flame is extinguished, the unique experience shared by volunteers leaves many wishing it could last forever. The Olympic Volunteers Community offers volunteers the chance to stay connected, celebrate the legacy they helped build through exclusive events and inspiring content, and explore future opportunities to volunteer at upcoming Olympic events.

In return, volunteers obtain benefits that can last a lifetime. They make professional contacts and new friends, are given exclusive training, and receive a uniform and a participation certificate. It is a fantastic opportunity for their own personal development and to be involved in a once-in-a-lifetime global celebration.

This is the language the Olympic movement uses honestly and warmly. But a participation certificate, however beautifully produced, does not live in the world. It does not have a URL. It does not show up when someone searches for a person’s name. It cannot be shared, updated, or linked to anything. It sits in a drawer or on a shelf and, eventually, it stops meaning anything to anyone but the person who holds it.

Three weeks of service to Brisbane 2032 — guiding athletes between venues, helping spectators navigate a new city, managing accreditation in the early morning heat, interpreting for an official from a country most Australians could not place on a map — represents a genuine, unambiguous contribution to one of the most watched events in human history. The Olympic and Paralympic Games will draw on the contributions of the entire community in exciting and innovative ways. The people who show up before dawn, who memorise venue maps and emergency protocols, who wear their uniforms with pride and absorb the anxiety of a thousand small logistics questions — those people deserved recognition that does not fade.

Whoever has been to the Games, whether as an athlete, official, media representative or spectator, never forgets the smiles and dedication of the volunteers. The question is whether those volunteers remember themselves — whether they have something in the world that says, durably and specifically: I was there. I was part of this. This is mine.

THE PERMANENCE THAT A DIGITAL ADDRESS PROVIDES.

A permanent onchain address anchored to the Brisbane 2032 namespace does something that a certificate, a uniform, or even a digital badge cannot. It creates an identity node — a point in the internet’s naming layer that carries a specific civic meaning, that does not expire, that does not require a subscription, and that belongs to the person who holds it for as long as they choose to hold it.

Consider what a name like marieservice.brisbane2032 or kellyhensley.brisbane2032 means in twenty years. It is not merely a record of participation. It is a place — a permanent address in the civic geography of the Games — from which a person can speak, publish, be found, and be recognised. Unlike a government-issued credential, it does not belong to any agency. Unlike a social media profile, it does not depend on the commercial viability of a platform. Unlike a certificate, it functions in the present tense. It says something about who a person is, not only who they were.

The Brisbane 2032 official volunteer program, as described by the Organising Committee, will be built around recruiting volunteers across a wide range of roles in the lead-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games Brisbane 2032. Those roles will span everything from athlete services to spectator guidance, from transport logistics to medical support. Each role will be performed by a real person, making a specific choice to give time to something larger than their ordinary life. That specificity — the particular person, in the particular role, in the particular city — is exactly what a permanent address can hold.

The namespace .brisbane2032 is not a souvenir. It is an infrastructure layer. When a volunteer registers a name within it, they are not purchasing a memento. They are claiming a permanent position within Brisbane’s civic digital geography — a position that says, without further argument, that they were part of this. It is, in the most literal sense, an address that outlasts the event.

THE LESSON FROM SYDNEY THAT BRISBANE SHOULD CARRY FORWARD.

The volunteers of Sydney 2000 built something remarkable that the infrastructure around them struggled to capture. Some of the Pioneer Volunteers still meet every four months — an unseen legacy of the Games which brought together a community spirit not seen before. For at least one Sydney 2000 volunteer, the Games sparked a lifelong commitment to her sport, canoeing, and to volunteering at global events, including Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024. These are not outliers. They are representative of a kind of civic transformation that the Games reliably produce in the people who serve them most closely.

What Sydney lacked — and what Brisbane has the opportunity to build deliberately — is a permanent layer of digital infrastructure that keeps those connections alive and legible. The Spirit of Sydney group that formed after the 2000 Games is a warm and human institution. But it is also an informal one, dependent on the energy of its members, invisible to anyone who does not already know it exists. A digital address layer is different in kind. It is findable. It is searchable. It is permanent. It does not require a reunion calendar to remain active.

The profile of volunteering was raised as a result of the publicity generated during both Olympic Games. In Sydney, Games volunteering broadened the scope of volunteering in people’s minds, encouraging them to participate in episodic and event volunteering. The question Brisbane faces is whether that broadening of mind can be institutionalised in digital form — whether the person who volunteered for three weeks in July 2032 can still, in 2042, point to something specific and say: this is where I stood, this is what I did, and this is still mine.

"The Games will deliver the biggest event in south-east Queensland's history and a moment in time to be remembered, but our legacy will evolve for generations to come."

That was Andrew Liveris AO, President of the Brisbane 2032 Organising Committee, speaking at the release of Elevate 2042. It is a statement about time — about the difference between a moment and a generation. Physical infrastructure embodies that principle in steel and concrete. Digital infrastructure can embody it in addresses and namespaces, distributed across thousands of individuals who each carry a piece of the Games with them wherever they go online.

WHO ELSE KEEPS THEIR ADDRESS.

The volunteer is not the only person for whom this logic applies, though the volunteer is perhaps the most overlooked. Athletes who compete in Brisbane 2032 carry a particular kind of permanent association with the Games — their results, their performances, their stories are recorded in every sporting archive that has ever been maintained. The cultural program participants, the officials, the media, the community event organisers in surrounding regions — all of these people have forms of institutional recognition that the volunteer does not automatically share.

The volunteer was there. That fact is recorded in a database held by the Organising Committee, and almost nowhere else that matters to the outside world. After the committee is wound up — as all organising committees are, after the closing ceremony and the audits and the final reports — that database does not continue to function in any meaningful public way. It becomes an archive, then a record, then nothing at all. The volunteer becomes someone who was once there.

A permanent digital address changes this entirely. It is not held by the committee. It is not administered by any Games body that will be dissolved in 2033 or 2034. It belongs to the person who registered it, and it continues to exist because the infrastructure it runs on was designed to persist. This is the quality that separates a digital namespace from an event credential. The credential is issued by an institution. The address is owned by a person.

Brisbane 2032 has committed to building a deeper connection with First Nations peoples through meaningful listening and authentic engagement, recognising the collective responsibility to ensure equality, recognition and advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across all aspects of society and everyday life, including sport. This commitment makes it all the more important that the digital legacy layer is broad enough to include everyone who contributed — including the volunteers from First Nations communities, from regional Queensland, from the international cohort that also has the opportunity to participate, with the majority of volunteers coming from the host territory. A namespace that can hold a name from Townsville or Thursday Island or Toowoomba alongside one from inner Brisbane is already doing something civic that most legacy programs never manage.

THE ADDRESS THAT STAYS.

There is something worth sitting with in the title of this essay. The volunteer gave three weeks. Three weeks is not a small thing — it is a significant redistribution of time, energy, and attention toward a collective civic good. But three weeks is also finite. It ends. The uniform is returned or retained as a keepsake. The accreditation is deactivated. The shuttle bus routes that were memorised become irrelevant. The particular corner of the venue precinct where the volunteer stood each morning becomes, for the next person who stands there, simply a corner.

But the address — that does not end. Not unless the person chooses to let it go. jana2032.brisbane2032 or marcus.brisbane2032 can still be active in 2045, still pointing somewhere, still carrying the specific fact of that person’s participation in something that the world watched together for sixteen days in the winter of 2032. The address is not dependent on the Games continuing. It is not dependent on any organising body remaining solvent. It is not dependent on anyone else remembering. It is the volunteer’s own.

The Games are bigger than the athletes who stand on the podium or the nations that top the medal tally, and the impact will be felt long after the closing ceremony. That sentence is true, and most of the people who make it true are the ones who never appear on the medal table. They are the ones who showed up before the stadium filled, who solved problems that no one noticed were being solved, who made the whole event feel, to the people moving through it, like something that simply worked. The question of whether their contribution is permanently legible in the world is not incidental to the legacy Brisbane builds. It is, in its quiet way, central to it.

Giving that person a permanent address — a place in the digital geography of the Games and the city that hosted them — is not a promotional gesture. It is a civic one. It recognises that three weeks of service creates a lasting relationship between a person and a place, and that a lasting relationship deserves a lasting address. Brisbane 2032 has the chance to build a legacy that the individual volunteer carries forward into every subsequent decade of their life, not just the institutions that document the Games from above. That is the kind of legacy that does not appear in any infrastructure report, and does not require a stadium. It requires only a name, a namespace, and the decision to make it permanent.