[Inpycon] On using QR codes for sponsor-participant contact exchange.

[Bibhas Ch Debnath]

We had this suggestion and discussion the last time after the event. We
decided to not use any software for contact exchange. The problems we faced
last year in contact exchange was due to the technology involved. It's much
much easier and smooth if the participants just go to the stall and write
their contacts. The hardwares showed faults, network was faulty at some
point, that made the volunteers run around and spend too much time
debugging things. It sounds easy when you write like that, but during the
event, the smallest glitch will require at least 3-4 volunteers run around
all the sponsor tables to debug and fix it. My feelings from last year was
that it's not worth it.


----
Thanks,
Bibhas Debnath
http://bibhas.in


On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 9:27 AM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003 at gmail.com> wrote:

> it sound good to me.
> We even need to check Tablet for rent . If anyone in mailing list have
> contact where we can rent Tablet please let us know. If we get 10+ tablet
> for rent then we can extend it to even silver sponsor's .
>
> With Thanks
> Vijay
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 6:42 AM, Haris Ibrahim K. V. <blucalvin at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Ladies and gentlemen,
>>
>> During the last offline volunteers meetup, we discussed about
>> alternatives that we could use for contact exchange between the
>> sponsors and participants.
>>
>> We had using Bar code readers in mind. Sayan and I took it up.
>>
>> In between research, Praseetha suggested using QR codes for this
>> purpose. We investigated on that end and here are the observations.
>>
>> Create QR codes for each registered participant before hand using this
>> API http://goqr.me/api/. Put them sorted alphabetically and hand it
>> over to the participants during registration. Printing it during
>> registration is a no-no. Tons of things that could go wrong.
>>
>> Have a tablet (labelled with sponsor name) at every sponsor stall with
>> QR code app installed. The app is called QR Droid. It scans and stores
>> the information within a database. The sponsor can see the history at
>> any time they choose to. After the event, the app allows you to export
>> the data as a CSV. We'll have to write a CSV parser to parse the data
>> and send it to the respective sponsors.
>>
>> The API allows 10k requests per day. So we're good there. This
>> approach will have the side effect of participants being able to
>> exchange contact info. Guess that is good side effect to have.
>>
>> This approach requires neither a centralized server nor an Internet
>> connection. The Internet is usually the main problem in these
>> scenarios. Hence, we avoid that.
>>
>> Sayan tested the API and the app. It seems to be working as expected.
>>
>> We would like to hear your thoughts. With the exception of Murphy
>> hanging around PyCon India as an uninvited guest, unless there is
>> something that could obviously go wrong with this approach, it seems
>> reasonable to implement.
>>
>> Oh, as for the Bar code reader, bar codes can only store numbers. Then
>> we again hit the problem of having a centralized server where we can
>> look up the details of the corresponding number.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> --
>> Haris Ibrahim K. V.
>> http://sosaysharis.wordpress.com
>> @harisibrahimkv
>> _______________________________________________
>> Inpycon mailing list
>> Inpycon at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Thanks,
> Vijay kumar Bang
>
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>
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