does anyone do event planning on here?

i'm being put in charge of registration/ticketing for an event (about 450 people) seated dinner (with assign table numbers) and was trying to trouble shoot the best way to ticket guests for a smooth check in.

what i was thinking about doing is having tickets printed up and mailed out with bar codes on them, associating the numbers with who i'm sending the tickets to. before the event, assigning the table number to the individual so that when the tickets are scanned at the event (when the person checks in) they can be told what table number they are assigned to.

anybody know of a system that might do this?

OR any suggestions on how better to do this? thanks

(i will say i want to try to avoid just having a table with individuals checking people in, since there will most likely be a backlog and also don't want to just have name cards with table numbers on them as i think it could get confusing!)

6/2/2011 9:18:49 PM

I used to do event planning.

While a scanner system would be cool, unless you already own a scanner it's probably going to be more trouble than it's worth.

Although, one option might be to put QR codes on the tickets, and have people with smartphones doing check-in that have a QR reader app downloaded. I would test this extensively before you decide to do it, just to make sure everything is being read the way you want and to hopefully encounter hiccups before the event. This would be a free option, and free is always great when event planning

Other than this, I really think your best option is going to be multiple people doing manual check-in. Break it down alphabetically. Have one person doing A-E, one doing F-J, etc. Decide on how many letters and individual is responsible for by trying to have them balanced (say each station is responsible for about 75 guests). Have signs clearly marking each station and a helper bee at the entrance to keep the line moving. I have set this up for events that had 1000+ people and as long as everyone working the event is on the same page you should not experience a long backlog.

6/2/2011 9:25:07 PM

yea we've done it that way in the past - and unfortunately it wasn't organized well and was a bit of a mess (luckily i was not in charge those times)

I guess I was thinking of a cool way to make it a bit different from the hoity toity crap that it could become.. make it a bit neat i guess?

I might be biting off more than i can chew though if i try to go all tech on their asses though

6/2/2011 9:31:13 PM

Yeah the big problem I've found when you bring technology into the picture is that technology can shit the bed I say play around with some QR Code creators. There are free ones online. If the system works well it could definitely help speed up the check-in process. It's just something you want to make sure you have time to mess around with before you commit to that system. And I would still keep a backup manual log in case you do run into tickets that won't scan.

6/2/2011 9:35:36 PM

yea the event isn't til december 1st and i'm getting the go ahead to do whatever i think will work. just can't fuck it up

6/2/2011 9:40:31 PM

Talk to DivaBaby19. I believe she does a lot of event planning for the Jimmy V every year.

6/2/2011 11:02:43 PM

I'm not sure if this helps your problem but this is what I do (pretty much everything you didnt want):

I use ticketleap (http://www.ticketleap.com) to sell my event's tickets (PM me for the event link if you want to see it) Each ticket has the QR barcode, but I'm not sure how you can make it work for your seating since the code is generated when they buy the ticket.

For our event I am having a table next to check in with guest names and table cards for seating. Each table card has guest name and the table number on front and on the back short descriptions of our silent auction items.

[Edited on June 8, 2011 at 1:32 PM. Reason : ]

6/8/2011 1:29:49 PM