Some notes on badges from PyCon US 2008
We went with high quality printing on heavy card stock from a local
printer. Thanks to local user group connections this worked out quite
well.
We printed on both sides, and allowed people to customize their badges
online even after registering, up until the data was sent to the
printer (2 days before the conference).
There was a 'preview' image generator on the website, but this was not
used for printing the badges. The preview was needed as some very long
names needed to be split onto multiple lines. We allowed for 3 lines
of free form text on the front. The first line being the 'name' which
was bold and 2pts larger than the other two lines. The font and size
did match what was used for printing.
The printer received a giant PDF with the badges. One of the chipy
members wrote a jython tool which took a csv file and generated the
PDF file. This could be reused for your needs I believe (and is not
part of Pycon-Tech). I will try to track this down.
We allowed people to put anything on the front of the badges. The
persons 'real' name was printed at the top of the back side of the
badge, family name first (unicode characters fully supported). There
were also icons on the front of the badge identifying sponsors,
speakers, keynote speakers, session-chairs, and vendors. On the back
we included tutorials, food options, t-shirt size, and payment status
for those who had not yet paid at the time of printing (we had payment
processor problems...). One note is that we needed the icons on the
back as well.
We separated the badges into two printings, (those who registered for
thursday tutorials, and those who did not). They were sorted by last
name and split into piles by letter. The badges were face down, and it
was easy to find the name at the top of the badge with the last name
first, and in bold. Rolodex insert cards ($3 US at staples) were used
for identifying the name separations. This was nice, as they included
common breakdowns for last names; 'S' and 'ST' were different
sections. Using the cards as a guide we were able to get mostly even
sized piles, and search through them quickly. This became more
important as time went on and we merged small piles into larger ones.
We had the piles laid out on a very long table, (something like 20
piles in the beginning) and up to 5 people behind the table. People
would come up, say their name and if they were taking a tutorial and
get their badge. To keep things running smooth we asked people not
taking a tutorial to come back later during a tutorial session. Then
the tutorial and non-tutorial piles were merged for friday (as some
people paid for, but did not make the tutorial day. There were less
than 10...) The people behind the desk did the search. We found this
worked faster as it is easier for someone familiar with the piles to
find names; their brains already tuned to the task. If the badge was
unpaid, they were sent to me for resolution. Otherwise they were sent
to a different table with badge holders and lanyards. The holders and
lanyards were of very high quality. The lanyard attach at the corners,
and thus badges did not flip, even when you wanted them too. People
would then go to a third area to get their swag bag with t-shirts.
They would flip around their badge to show the size (but they could
opt for a different size). The badges didn't like to flip which caused
some issue, requiring people to hold them up flipped while waiting.
The issue being that people looked a bit silly doing this en-mass and
there was some fumbling as they were handed the big swag bag if they
were holding something in their other hand. You would not think this
to be a big deal, but when you are holding a laptop in one hand, a
badge in the other, it is 8am, you are jet lagged, you are in the
middle of a bee hive and you are handed yet another large item; your
body does not always respond as you would wish. This was rarely an
actual issue, but it did provide some comic relief. Enough so that it
was commented on, and I am commenting on it now.
For onsite registration we had a laser printer which printed on avery
badges. the badge stock had the color portions pre-printed on them,
and only the black lettering on the front was printed. The system
required an internet connection, and as such did not work. I had
argued against this, and next year we will just have a machine which
allows for the printing using local software (OpenOffice w/Avery
template loaded) and not a website. Payment will use phone CCard
processing (cell phone) an a receipt book. Then sync things online at
a later time. A printed sheet of all registrants will be used for
person lookup (slower than online, but does not require a working
network or computer). At least that is how I feel it should work.
Whatever you do, do not use PayFlowLink for online registration. Do
not use the system I wrote, as 60% of the code is for dealing with
problems with PayFlowLink, and the other 40% is not that good. Also do
not rely on an internet connection.
Note on photo on the badge: I love the idea, but good luck getting
people to give you photo's. If you do not make it a requirement, then
some people will go for it, but most will not. This will also cause
issues with printing. There are resolution/DPI along with CMYK/Pantone
issues to deal with. All web images are RGB, and all professional
printing is CMYK. From experience, unless you have a graphic designer
going back and cleaning up all your images for the badges they will
look like garbage, and in many cases headshots will not be
distinguishable as a human. You will need to deal with scale and DPI.
JPG, PNG, and GIF all allow for encoding the DPI in the actual image
but rarely use this, defaulting to 1dot per pixel. If you ever print a
web page with images turned on you will see what I am talking about.
Unless the designer specifically took print into consideration, the
images will be so small that you can't see them, going with 1pixel per
dot, and letting the printer deal with it. Thus a 360x360 image is 1/2
inch square on a default photo printer setting, and often smaller on
professional setups. Scaling and aliasing then become problems as
well. No one has proper vector graphic head shots.
Of course if you decide that professional printing is not worth it and
you are just going to print on stock avery cards in an inkjet printer
in RGB mode, then things get much simpler. You just need to hand fix
each badge for the long names and the headshot (which is what was done
for all previous US PyCon's; replace headshot with BG image and
icons). This does make double sided printing more difficult.
I did not hear anyone complain about the badges this year. This was
the first year I heard complements about them, and the badge/swag
pickup!
We handled 1000+ people with no long lines or queues, and no one was
late to anything (another first).
Hope this helps.
-Doug
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Dinu Gherman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Lennart Regebro:
>
>
> > That's an interesting idea. But instead of 3+3 circles, could you have
> > them just in a row?
>
> Yes, I could. It's a matter of design.
>
>
> > And I don't think there is any value of having "Vilnuis, 7-12 July" on
> > the badge, it just adds clutter.
>
> Notice the small font size used for this text? The value of this is
> surely neglectable during the conference, but might increase quite
> soon after the event, just in case you keep these things around for
> a few years as some people do. I certainly do.
>
>
> > And unless it is planned to actually
> > have guards verifying that you have access and use them as proper
> > tickets or ID, then the photo is kinda pointless... I mean, the face
> > is available, on me. :)
>
> I can see multiple reasons in favour of having a photo on a badge.
> Here are some:
>
> - People can actually make use of their laptop cameras.
> - They can be used for some kind of website overview widgetry effect.
> - They help identify the badge during conference registration.
> - They help find the badge's owner when they get lost.
> - The physical face might change during the conference, so it's good
> having a reference. ;-)
>
>
> > Sticky labels will not work. Also, when you pin things to your
> > clothes, you need to re-pin things if you take on or off a sweater
> > etc. I guess that's why many conferences nowadays have badges around
> > the neck. If I remember correctly, last years badges were pins, right?
> > I seem to have thrown away my EuroPython badge from last year, so I
> > can't verify.
>
> Can you elaborate on why sticky labels might not work? I agree, they
> might not look great after three days, but I guess this can be solved
> using the proper material. I'm not insisting on them, though (since
> it will be hard to find double-sided ones). I also noticed that badges
> turning around one's belly don't serve their purpose well.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dinu
>
>
>
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