I recently ran a large conference. The largest I’ve ever been a part of organizing. There were just over 900 people in attendance. Because this conference was so large, we were afforded some flexibility with our funds to be able to properly support the conference. Of course, for me this meant getting fun toys! And fun toys meant technology! Not only did we have a conference app, but we were able to get on-site badge printing. Let me tell you, check-in has never been smoother.

We utilized a company called Boomset for the software and Choose2Rent for the hardware. The interface of Boomset is incredibly easy to use. Building a name tag required a simple drag and drop with text resizing. You can mass upload session information that showed a participant their pre-conference schedule as well as their ticket type, which allowed them entry into various events that required additional fees. The participant mass upload was just as easy and completely editable once the upload was completed.

On-site the hardware included, 1 router, 6 iPads, and 3 printers, plus a technician, who certainly earned his keep! The setup was simple and we were up and running within 40 minutes.

We utilized Boomset to customize the Welcome screen for participants. From the time the participant pushed start until the time the badge printed 10 seconds may have passed and that’s being generous. After the badge printed, the most common reaction was, “Is that it?” followed by, “That was so easy!” We even got a tweet that read, “@NCDLI2019 self-service registration desks - how come no one has thought of that before! I love it. #nolineups #ncdli2019”.

And what happened when a participant wanted to change the name of their company? Or their name was misspelled? They simply talked with one of our staff standing by, who logged into the Boomset app, made the change, and pushed reprint on the badge. There was even a setting that could allow participants to change this before printing!

The use of this technology has revolutionized the way I think about running registration for events. There was a significant reduction in the number of staff needed on-site for the purposes of registration. This allowed us to pay attention to other things that required assistance. You know, things like, the internet isn’t working, the presenter is having issues with the microphone, the room is too hot/too cold. Typical event manager issues to solve. :-)

The technology of course came with a price tag. However, I would make an argument that the approximately $4 you’re spending per name badge to have the technology is drastically reducing the staff time it takes to print name tags and stuff them into holders prior to your event. Not to mention that you don’t get a chance to reprint them, produce clean looking name tags for walk-in registrations, or eliminate the registration lines.

We hope to purchase some of the hardware to use at our events permanently. Again, to free up our staff to do other things, reduce staffing on-site, and make registration easy for participants. It was a win-win for us.