It might make more sense to split this into two issues. However, checkin often involves picking up your badge.

It would be great to help streamline this process.

Common pain points for the checkin process are finding the right badge for the right person, and recording that they attended.

One way to streamline marking folks as attended would be to provide a barcode that corresponds to their signup, which is actually an encoded link that, when followed by a checkin admin, goes directly to a "Do you really want to check in [user-name]?" screen?.

Since smartphones are abundant and most major smartphones support barcode scanning, folks wouldn't have to worry about barcode scanning equipment.

Comments

ezra-g’s picture

ezra-g CreditAttribution: ezra-g commented

This page could optionally also link to a PDF or other printout of the badge, if they are not preprinted.

ezra-g’s picture

ezra-g CreditAttribution: ezra-g commented

Potentially relevant:
http://drupal.org/project/PDF-IDcard

ChrisBryant’s picture

ChrisBryant CreditAttribution: ChrisBryant commented

+1. This would be a great addition to COD and using mobile phones/barcodes seems like a great way to go about it.

ezra-g’s picture

ezra-g CreditAttribution: ezra-g commented

Another idea for badges (possibly for another issue) is to automatically put people's contact information on the badge as a QR code in vcard format, so you could scan someone's badge and add them as a contact in your address book.

ezra-g’s picture

ezra-g CreditAttribution: ezra-g commented

greggles wrote some great documentation about badge printing at http://drupal.org/node/1199914.

joshcfischer’s picture

joshcfischer CreditAttribution: joshcfischer commented

I think this is a great idea. Plus, if user's had their tags scanned as they walk into a session/seminar, the event coordinators will learn about what seminars were getting the most response, who went to those events, etc.

There are many values that event coordinators would find in this.

Also, ezra-g, great idea to quickly share contact info just with QR tags, but the technology isn't that great yet. iPhone3 will only accept vCard info via email (you can't download it from a site, or simply scan a QR). Did this research for a client. As technology improves, this would be a great addition.

greggmarshall’s picture

greggmarshall
Location Aurora/Denver, Colorado
CreditAttribution: greggmarshall commented

Two data points:

DrupalCon Chicago did the QR code on the badge and it upset some people so there was a security patch available (round dot to paste over the QR code).

I've done conferences and at one we used RFID readers (faster than QR decoding) and our experience is that it tended to create queues at the door to get in/out and many people just walked around the line and didn't get scanned.

YMMV

(P.S. I like the option, just know what to expect)

coltrane’s picture

coltrane
he/him
CreditAttribution: coltrane commented

DrupalCon Chicago did the QR code on the badge and it upset some people so there was a security patch available (round dot to paste over the QR code).

The upset was specifically about the amount and particular data that was included in the QR code, to be clear.

greggmarshall’s picture

greggmarshall
Location Aurora/Denver, Colorado
CreditAttribution: greggmarshall commented

@coltrane, agreed, but based on #4 and #6 comments, contact information was specifically mentioned.

Generally people want to control who gets their contact information and encoding too much might allow anyone with a decent camera and software to scan anyone walking down an aisle or hallway (note to self: new business opportunity?).

On older bar code badges, given the limitations of how much can be encoded, the bar code was usually a "license plate" ID that the exhibitor could scan, then later use to retrieve the actual contact data from show management. Asking for too many contact look ups generally raises a red flag with the organizers.

I just wanted to point out what is encoded is something to think about when setting up the QR code.

mrconnerton’s picture

mrconnerton CreditAttribution: mrconnerton commented
Version: 6.x-1.x-dev » 7.x-2.x-dev
Issue summary: View changes

Linuxfest has implemented a version of checking that we can bring into core cod. DrupalCon is looking into using a similar process for future registrations / checkins.