FOSS4G'13

Hi Matt,

In Denver you signed up for specific workshops as part of the registration process (you paid for them individually). Not sure if it is too late to switch to this approach?

Next week will be very busy for registrations. I think we need to announce how the workshop sign up will work and also when the full programme will be available before the beginning of the week, and also consider a short extension to the early bird.
I know a few people who are only interested in a single aspect of the conference (e.g. a database/linux admin who wants a day pass to attend one/two PostGIS workshops - he probably won't book unless his workshop choice is guaranteed)

Not sure how to solve the problem though - regonline would charge per workshop for the booking (and it would take time for them to set up), With eventbrite we would not know that they had paid the day rate and the workshop charge.

Any ideas? How many people have paid for workshops so far? Should we suspend booking until we can book people into specific workshops?? The Denver approach makes the most sense even if we do incur higher admin charges.

[Claire added to recipients since she probably knows most about the current reg system]

Here's the situation as I see it:

* We have a registration and payment system that has no facility for booking individual workshops at the time of registration.

* We have people who have already paid for workshops who haven't been able to book any specific ones.

To get an idea of the scope of the problem, the total attendance for all workshops is 512 (nice round number!), so potentially that many bookings to manage.

 Possible solution #1

 Addition of workshops as bookable items to the existing registration procedure, and retro-booking of already-paid users by emailing and asking preferences. Do some basic checks to make sure users don't book two workshops at the same time, but if they do then that's ultimately their responsibility (and we make that clear). We need clear deadlines on when people can change their workshop selection.

 Problems: no idea if possible or how sophisticated it could be to handle the various amounts of workshops booked. But with up to 512 you don't want to be doing this manually. What can the reg system do? Claire?

 Possible solution #2

 Create one event per workshop on http://bookwhen.com/ - there's a free account, they don't seem to mind paid events with an external payment option, and events can be password protected. So when someone books workshops they get an email with the password - or maybe the password appears on the booking acknowledgement page) and are asked to book only however many sessions they've paid for (with the all-day ones counting more, I suppose). Bulk email out to the people who have already paid.

 Eventbrite may be an alternative, I don't know enough about it. Does it support passworded events, or obscure URLS to hide stuff from the general public?

 Problems with that:

   People might not book the right number of sessions, and I don't see any way of controlling that. Solution: regular consistency checks and corrections via emailing the users ("you've booked three, you paid for two, you have two days to tell us which one you want to drop or we pick one randomly").  Consistency check requires a database of signed-up user emails with workshop allowance and a dump of the bookings with matching email addresses from the booking site.

Possible Solution #3

 Custom booking system where registered users login and book up to their allocation of workshops. I dont think such a system exists if you want to enforce the constraints of stopping people booking for two workshops at the same time, and so on.

 Problems with that:

 Requires integration with the conference reg process, requires a chunk of coding depending on how clever it needs to be, requires a server to run on although could be hosted off 2013.foss4g.org or elsewhere...

Apols for stomping into a workshops team discussion but this is going to affect everyone, also I have plenty of hack time if needed to work on this.

Hi Barry,

I think you've framed the three most viable options. My feeling is that Solution #1 (selection as part of registration) would be ideal if it can satisfy our requirements. Hopefully Claire can confirm if what's possible. Otherwise my feeling is that it needs to be a custom booking system to provide the flexibility.

I also think that if delegates have signed up for a day of workshops then we need to allow them to select a day's worth of workshops (8 hours?). As we extended the workshop schedule from one day to two I'd be in favour of allowing delegates to make choose a total of 8 hours over the 2 days.

If we are going for the custom solution then as I see it the requirements are:

• User signs in with email address and password issued by us
• User can see the workshop schedule and whether each workshop has available spaces (but probably not the number of free spaces)
  
• User selects from the available workshops until they have up to 8 hours selected
• Ideally we do not allow users to select overlapping workshops
• User submits selection and they are add to each workshop and a confirmation email is sent
• If a selected workshop is no longer available due to another user reserving a place while the user was making their selection inform the user and ask them to re-select

@Steven If we feel we need something in place prior to the Early Bird closing then I think we need to extend the Early Bird, are you happy with this?

I might have this solution implemented by the end of the day...

If you need to extend go ahead

I dont know how well regonline would cope with booking the individual workshops.  It definitely will not flag up if people have selected overlapping workshops.

I think it would be easier to use another site and send a link out in a confirmation email.

The workshops could be set up in survey monkey - the url can be made obscure enough that no one can find it unless sent the link.  But survey monkey will still not alert them if they have booked two at the same time.

@Barry any joy with hacking yesterday? If we are going for a custom solution do you have a view as to how long we should extend the Early Bird to get it tested, live and give people time to sign up?

Cheers,

Matt.

I've done most of the work on a booking system that can cope with the complexity. Basically each workshop has a cost and each workshopper has a number of credits. People will get a username and password (somehow) and can then book workshops. Clashes, overspends, and overbooking should be prevented.

Users can also unbook (ie change their minds) and book something else (subject to the constraints).

There's a bit more coding to do on the front-end and then I have to think how to deploy it. I'm not sure how complex I can make the user account system (in terms of things like password changing and recovery) because those things are a faff.

End of the week I might have something that might just hold together.

Could really have done with four months notice on this :)

Barry

Wow, thanks Barry. Much more than expected and not bad for a day :-) If you want any help with anything (coding or testing) then I should be able to find some time on evenings this week.

My feeling is that the user account side can be pretty basic as we can easily deal with lost passwords etc. as it's essentially a single use service.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping too. It integrates with the conference management system but I don't think we'll give anyone (like presenters) access to that anyway. it might provide account admin functions though for free...

I'm thinking of deploying on the current web server, but if anyone has another server handy I'll take it.

Matt,

 what I need from you ASAP is confirmation of the costing scheme.

 we have three different length workshops - quarter day (2h), half day (4h) and full day. I've initially put them in as costing 1, 2, and 4 credits.

  Someone booking one workshop day gets 4 credits (to spend across both days), someone booking two workshop days gets 8 credits.

 If that's the case then the web pages (and maybe the reg system text) needs changing:

http://2013.foss4g.org/additional-options/

- talks about 'day passes'.

there's no plan to offer half-day passes?

 This all needs sorting now... (doesnt everything?) because I'm not going to have much systems time next week.

I feel that the system you've described sounds sensible, not sure how we
got to day passes in the first place.

Half day passes would I guess make sense but at £75 a day I'm not sure it's
worth adding the option at this point.

I'll start another thread regarding extending the Early Bird as we probably
need to announce that at the latest tomorrow.

Matt.

It doesn't matter if the system I've described sounds sensible, we can't use it. We've already sold day passes. We have to go with that.

What I need to know is:

 * Have we sold *specific* day passes (17th or 18th)?
 * Have we just sold 1 or 2 day passes to people without specifying a day?

Which is it?

If we've sold specific day passes then my system needs to let people book as many non-clashing workshops as they want on that day.

If we've sold non-day specific day passes then my system can allow the booking of up to 8 hours of non-clashing workshops over the two days (or 16 hour for someone who bought two day passes).

I've just stepped through the registration to check and we have been selling specific days (see attached screenshot)

However my feeling is that we should change it and allow the additional flexibility of selecting a days worth of workshops regardless of which day. The registration options would then be 8 hours or 16 hours of workshops over two days.

I'm sure that those delegates that have already signed up would not object; travel plans permitting they would get to choose from the full list of workshops and would no doubt be able to book their places first as we would email them instructions once the booking system is live.

If anyone thinks I'm talking rubbish, workshop team or not then feel free to correct me.

Matt.

Matt,
I think that 'units' is a sensible way to go with this. I can't see anyone finding this preferable to booking specific days.
The important thing is to give those who have booked clear instructions as to the change and the fact that they are not being disadvantaged in any way (in fact the complete reverse) and to give them ample time to make their decision.

Can the text on the registration system be updated to reflect the change? Suggest something like two similar items:

[ ] Eight hours of Workshops
   Date: 17th-18th September
   Price: £60
[ ] Eight more hours of Workshops
   Date: 17th-18th September
   Price: £60

I hope this would be clear enough that if someone only selects 'Eight more hours' we only give them eight hours. The ideal option would be a dropdown or radio boxes with exclusive choices: No Workshops/Eight Hours(one day)/Sixteen hours(two days)

If either of those can be done then we can reference that in our documentation. If the text cant be changed then we have to bluster round the fact that the registration doesn't say what you are actually getting anymore.

Hi, I'm back and you all seem to have been busy.

The idea of booking 8 hours of workshops for £60 rather than a specific day seems a good one to me. Anyone who has already booked for a single day can stick to that day or spread their workshops over the two days if they prefer. It will need some good communications to explain and the regonline needs to be altered to reflect what we are now selling.

Is Claire on holiday or is she back?

Barry should get a gold medal for pulling all of this together.

Well done everyone for seizing the initiative on this

Claire has updated the regonline to show 8 hour and 16 hour workshop offers but someone needs to update the page on our website http://2013.foss4g.org/additional-options/

I've updated http://2013.foss4g.org/additional-options/ to reflect the 8/16 hour options and I've added a note about the additional workshops during the main conference.

Just to keep you up to date, the booking system is pretty much done, I just need to deploy it and then do a bit of testing and hope it doesnt run too slowly..

Its not an 11pm job anyway because of the increased potential for screwups. Tomorrow...