Registration feedback!
Another year done, and 4,238 people registered. Whew! That was a lot, but it overall went rather smoothly, with no more than the usual chaos. But we're always looking for suggestions or recommendations to improve your experience at Registration. After all, we're the most popular spot at Anthrocon- everyone has to stop in once!
A few preemptive notes:
The hours for registration are likely to remain the same for next year. Pushing things earlier on Thursday did seem to work well, but we're nearing the limit of how early we can successfully open then.
Did anyone take advantage of ConOps's Late-night Pre-Registration on Thursday and Friday, from 11pm-2am? If so, did it go well?
Please, let us know!
--Chi
I'm rather shocked at the discrepency... I distinctly remember my friend's badge number being 5128. That's a discrepency of 890 at the least. Is that the quantity of staff members, and gophers that made enough volunteer hours in '09 to get a free reg? oo?
And when I got there... the reg line was smaller than the pre-reg line, because, well... shoot, everyone pre-regged but me. Front of the line, just for showing up. o.o;
I believe (chi correct me if I'm wrong) that there's also some on the low end reserved for staff. I pre-regged as staff way, way late and my badge number was 151. My girlfriend registered before me and got her reg sheet before I'd even registered and her number was in the mid-thousands I believe.
I don't know if it's a precise number or a range, but this has kinda been my suspicion.
There were some times that did occur, assuredly. By and large though. Pre-Reg is shorter and faster. We're glad On-Site was short, though.. we try to make Registration rapid for all attendees.
Here's the short version of badge numbers:
Staff and Guests have a certain block of low numbers, which we do not fill. In addition, refunded memberships are not replaced. That made for a gap of about 120 between badge numbers and actual attendance.
..then we had a system error. The quick version: In one small code instance, the year did not properly default to 2010, but did to 2009. It started issuing badges in the high 3000s because of this. To fix the problem and block potential duplicate numbers, we shifted numbers to the 4000s. That's why numbers ended up really high.
Badge numbers are _always_ higher than actual attendance, to note.
I have a registration question.
At one terrible moment during the con (on Sunday morning) I thought I had lost my badge, so I went to con ops to find out how much it would be to get a new one. I was surprised when I was quoted the cost would be 45.00 to get a replacement badge. I was really surprised that I would be required to pay the full fee once again, when the con was more than half way over. Of course I was VERY upset, mainly because I was staff this year and needed my badge to perform the rest of my duties.
In speaking with a friend of mine who works pre-registration I made the comment about what had happened and she indicated to me the replacement fee was 25.00 dollars and not 45.00 dollars. To me this was a much more reasonable cost, and I was more than happy to pay this fee. So I guess I need some clarification on how much a badge replacement fee really is. If it really turns out to be the full cost, I think we need to open that topic up for discussion, I feel that is to high a cost to pay for a missing badge.
(Btw my badge was under my bed
The cost to replace a lost badge is $25.00. However if you find the lost badge within 24 hours of getting the replacement and turn it back in to registration the replacement fee will be refunded.
Thanks Nicona
If this is correct and the cost is 25.00, than the staff at Con ops need to be informed of that cost. I was all ready to dish out another 45.00 dollars to get a new badge based on what I was told.
This is something that will definitely need to be communicated to Con Ops. I believe that you can only get replacement badges at registration (con-ops doesn't have the printers to print out new badges) so you would have been told the correct cost when you went to get your replacement badge at registration.
Hmm, it doesn't seem to be in our FAQ. I'll make sure it is for next year.
(I'm the guy who runs Con Ops)
Giza, you may want to check up on the volunteer faq and the volunteer page also. The information doesn't seem to quite match up with each other. Faq states that hours worked Wednesday, early Thursday, Late Sunday and Monday count double. Volunteer page states hours worked Tuesday, Wednesday and Monday count Double. Also from what I heard from some of the directors/assistant directors was that this year the time for those days was 1.5x time worked instead of 2x.
At some point during the con, Kage mentioned the discrepancy. Apparently they had a computer problem and decided it would be better to skip a load of numbers rather than take a chance on duplicating a badge number. This was the correct decision. With the Board of Directors, the Staff and the guests, there's always a difference between the badge numbers and the actual number of attendees. It's nothing to be concerned about.
Oooohhhh. Interesting. Thanks for explaining. Guess I can't really even guesstimate what we're up to after all. haha.
Because someone had gotten a badge starting with '52' there were rumors that the Con had over 5,200
attendees...
I got there mid-Thu afternoon (pre-registered) and walked past the long line of those who hadn't pre-registered. I got into the correct spot and my badge and bag, etc were obtained instantly. Beautiful.
Being pre-registered was great. There was literally no wait. We got to the con Thursday afternoon.
There was a little bit of a problem with my boyfriend's registration, where for some reason his first name on the sheet that the people at the registration table had was a mix of strange characters that somewhat resembled "hurpdurp". :<
However, it was resolved quickly and efficiently and the guy at the table was really nice about it. There are little accent marks in his first name and my guess is that maybe the system responsible for registering didn't process them right or something?
I don't know. It was no big deal though and it was actually pretty funny. ;D
Maybe as a suggestion try and figure out how to handle people who pre-register that may have unusual characters in their name and see if the system knows how to read them? I'm sure he isn't the first, haha.
Oh yes, THAT name. We.. noticed it at the con but there wasn't really anything we could do at that point but wait for him to show up and manage it then. Apparently in the conversion between our database to Excel to OpenOffice to printout, special characters were mangled.
We'll see if we can fix that for next year, indeed!
--Chi
I printed the pre-registered badges in my dining room. While they were printing I went through the entire database by hand and checked for any special characters like Norwegian borks and German umlauts and Russian hurpdurps that might have gotten munged. I thought I got them all, but once in a while things slip by me. It is possible that the registration in question was close to another member's whose badge name honestly was meant to read "~!!^()^!!~" or somesuch.
Well, considering how quickly and efficiently it was handled, I would say the five or six minutes of giggling we all got to enjoy while the guy at the desk tried to figure out why my boyfriend's name was listed as "hurpdurp" was well worth the temporary confusion.
Something I'd like to add on badge names.
We had some people who thought it would be amusing to register ridiculously long badge names (not saying who), and all this did was halt the registration line some, since we had to go in and manually edit the names.
Also, some names are just long to begin with and do not fit on the badge.
I don't think there's a way we can dynamically resize the text during registration.
So how many spaces, (characters and letters), should we limit our names to?
We do not used a fixed-width font, so it can vary.
15 characters usually fits; 20 characters usually does not.
Hmm, I wonder if there's a way we can make a "preview" of the badge with a name on it, to give people an idea on what it would look like, as to avoid eating up our rolls of print material.
If we know what the font is and the font size it can be described in inches or the width of a standard Avery label.
That would be tricky, since the application is a web app written in PHP, while the badge template itself is a Word Document that is driven via Javascript/JScript on a Windows machine. We would need some way to convert that document into HTML that the browser could understand. My understanding is that it is non-trivial to do that.
And no, using an HTML template isn't an option either, since printing from the browser produces its own issues, in terms of page headers/footers. (I researched that when I built the original onsite reg system in 2009)
I had to manually resize many of the pre-registered badges. Didn't mind doing it. Onsite, though, long badge names create havoc. I'd propose that we limit onsite badge names to 15 characters. If you want to have a longer name, a shorter line, and a cheaper membership, you can pre-register.
There's yet another reason to pre-register. 
*edit*
Actually, if anyone out there wants to tell us how closely their name fit in their badge and let us know how many characters that they used, that would give us an idea.
However, X takes more space and I takes little space. As said, we do not use a fixed-width font (like Courier or Monaco). So you might end up fitting like 35 some I's but only 15 X's.
Well, it is an interesting idea.
I would prefer the use of sans-serif fonts (Arial, Helvetica, et cetera) as opposed to serif fonts (Times, Courier and so on).
I'm not sure how good a fixed-width font would look. Maybe it's something to play with and see.
Oh please good lord no, the font we use right now is perfect. I was just thinking a couple days ago how much I like it.
No, fixed width fonts are nasty looking. They belong in UNIX terminals, not conbadges. 
I see Krin posted some interesting code that may be useful. But the other question is this: how many people are affected by long badge names? I only have so many hours in the day, unfortunately. If it's a problem that only affects 1% of our attendees, I'm content to let it be handled manually for the foreseeable future.
It's not the perfect...
But it has a certain 'brute force' elegance, for certain values of 'brute':
"Measuring Pixel Size of String in PHP" by Scott Daniel
/**
* This function uses the array below to calculate the pixel width of a string
* of characters. The widths of each character are based on a 12px Helvetica font.
* Kerning is not taken into account so RESULTS ARE APPROXIMATE.
*
* The purpose is to return a relative size to help in formatting. For example,
*
* strPixels('I like cake') == 54
* strPixels('I LIKE CAKE') == 67
*
* @param string $string characters to measure size
*
* @return integer size in pixels.
*/
public static $strPixelWidths = array(
' ' => 3, '!' => 3, '"' => 4, '#' => 7, '$' => 7, '%' => 11, '&' => 8,
''' => 2, '(' => 4, ')' => 4, '*' => 5, '+' => 7, ',' => 3, '-' => 4,
'.' => 3, '/' => 3, '0' => 7, '1' => 7, '2' => 7, '3' => 7, '4' => 7,
'5' => 7, '6' => 7, '7' => 7, '8' => 7, '9' => 7, ':' => 3, ';' => 3,
'<' => 7, '=' => 7, '>' => 7, '?' => 7, '@' => 12, 'A' => 7, 'B' => 8,
'C' => 9, 'D' => 9, 'E' => 8, 'F' => 7, 'G' => 9, 'H' => 9, 'I' => 3,
'J' => 6, 'K' => 8, 'L' => 7, 'M' => 9, 'N' => 9, 'O' => 9, 'P' => 8,
'Q' => 9, 'R' => 9, 'S' => 8, 'T' => 7, 'U' => 9, 'V' => 7, 'W' => 11,
'X' => 7, 'Y' => 7, 'Z' => 7, '[' => 3, '\' => 3, ']' => 3, '^' => 5,
'_' => 7, '`' => 4, 'a' => 7, 'b' => 7, 'c' => 6, 'd' => 7, 'e' => 7,
'f' => 3, 'g' => 7, 'h' => 7, 'i' => 3, 'j' => 3, 'k' => 6, 'l' => 3,
'm' => 11, 'n' => 7, 'o' => 7, 'p' => 7, 'q' => 7, 'r' => 4, 's' => 7,
't' => 3, 'u' => 7, 'v' => 5, 'w' => 9, 'x' => 5, 'y' => 5, 'z' => 5,
'{' => 4, '|' => 3, '}' => 4, '~' => 7);
public static function strPixels($string) {
$weight = 0;
if (!empty($string)) {
for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($string); $i++) {
$w = @self::$strPixelWidths[substr($string, $i, 1)];
if ($w) $weight += $w;
}
}
return $weight;
}I do see one bug in that code... it should use the default width of 'W' (the widest character width) when $w is not found.
The only real tweaking is to find the correct matches between the MS font and Web page font for the various values in the hash.
- krin
I arrived after midnight Thursday night / Friday morning and dropped by ConOps and asked about the late-night registration and the two people at the table outside the room didn't seem to know what I was talking about and told me registration was closed (this was maybe around 12:30 or so). Ended up getting my badge and stuff on Friday (since I was a pre-registered Supersponsor there was no one else in line so it took less than a minute).
I'm sorry if the info desk was not appraised of things! Late-Night Pre-Reg pickup did occur in ConOps from about 11pm-2am on Thursday and Friday, which seemed like an optimum schedule all told, and we are highly likely to repeat that next year. I'll make sure that the info desk is aware of it next year.
There were some people who were turned away temporarily Thursday night/Friday morning because we didn't yet have the pre-registration materials in con-ops. It takes a while to shut down DLCC registration, gather things up in a well-organized and transportable manner, and convey them to the hotel. Fortunately they were very understanding, came back a few hours later, and all was handled.
Sorry I couldn't be there this year to help out with Registration. I'll be glad to volunteer again in 2011, though!
Since some folks asked about the discrepancy in badge numbers, here's the answer from me, the guy who wrote it:
I screwed up.
To go into more detail, there was a bug in my code that manifested itself under rare conditions (about a half dozen times in total), which required me to bump up the allocated badge numbers for the 2010 set of badges.
If there are folks with a technical background here, I'll be happy to go into a lengthy technical explanation. But it's about 3 pages long. 
When the on site registration opened up Thursday there was easily over 100 people in line. Is there a reason why they could not submit their info before hand, then come back later to pay and receive their badge?
Plus maybe get a vendor 
HOTDOGS! PEPSI! CRACKERJACKS! PLUSHIES!
The line for the most part was to submit their information. Once they enter their info on the computers it only takes a few minutes to pay for and receive their badge. The other way around this line is to pre-reg.
Nicona has it right. While the On-Site line was often over a hundred people long on Thursday, the line of people whom had entered their information and were waiting to pay was, at most, 20.
Submit your info beforehand, then come later and pick up the badge?
But that service is offered, kind sir; it's called preregistration and it's available by mail and online up until the database masters have to temporarily freeze the database for travel. We highly recommend it.
The challenge with onsite registration is that it just takes a lot more to make it happen, and the galley slaves registration staff need the registrant available for most of it. Your best option is to preregister as soon as you know you're coming rather than waiting until you arrive. It's cheaper that way, too.
Yeah, but in my case I was planning to fully attend one day. Saturday =$25. So at the time it seemed like a way to save $25. Now that I know what I know. I would of gladly preregister and spend the other $20. Keeping me from camping in on site Registration line for a very very long time.
PS
Thank you! I know how to spell Registration without looking now.
Saturday registration will continue to be offered only On-Site and only on Saturday. Ditto Friday and Sunday registrations.
--Chi
a: I got there early-ish on thursday, and was lucky enough to get a spot on the reg line that was about 25 people in, so I didn't have that great a wait.
b: I noticed a lot of people who didn't put anything, or put bs random text as their badge name. On the one paw, it's their badge, but on the other, shouldn't there be some restrictions on what can be a badge name? I didn't see anyone who had 'Fuck You' as a badge name, but from what I did see, it would have been possible.
c: *takes out list of Anthrocon.com staff* Chiaroscuro...yes, I do believe I saw you there...check! Giza...briefly, but...check! Uncle Kage...check!
d: I volunteered!!! Got my 15 hours, so I'll be getting in free next year, won't I?
b: For the most part people can put whatever they want on their badge as long as conforms to AC standards, meaning that it cannot be suggestive or worse than a PG-13 rating. If someone were to put a name such as you suggested it would be caught be the reg staff and the name would be edited and badge re-printed to conform to the standards.
d: If you worked 15+ hours and turned in (or mailed in) your volunteer slip you will get a free attending registration next year.
I was told I'd have to mail it in while pre-reg was going on for next year in order to get it.
Last year when I was volunteering I actually turned it in at con ops toward the end of the con. I thought that they would accept them mailed in at any time but I could be wrong. Maybe Chiaro can clarify when they should be mailed.
B: Blank badge names are permitted. Some folks prefer that so that they can go out in suits with modest anonymity. As Nicona mentioned, any badge names which staff would feel inappropriate at a family-friendly convention would not be permitted.
C: I bet you did!
D: Yup!
Vicky Wyman and I arrived after midnight and picked up our badges at approximately 1:00 AM Friday morning. The procedure was fast and easy.
Yet another advantage of pre-registration... (free plug)