Badges

Name badges are a common feature of many conferences. To construct name badges,
you need to extract the data from your roster that will go onto your badges, and then
use office software to merge them into a badge template that works with your selected
badge stationery. 

The simplest approach is to use the Badge Report (under the reports tool). This report searches your roster for information that is useful for badges, and presents it in a simplified format that can be exported. It will automatically find and make use of the following information:

• first_name, last_name
• badge_name
• registration type (ie. fee name)
• city, province/state, country
• email, phone
• membership type (if they are a member of your organization)
• organization

Note that the registration system normally collects first_name and last_name as separate values. The badge_name is normally just these two names concatenated together. You can override this behaviour by explicitly asking for badge_name on the registration form. This can be useful in cases where attendees might have professional names different from their legal names, or where you want to make sure you spell their name exactly as the registrant specifies.

Extended Badge Information

You can configure the registration system to look for additional information about the user. You can make use of any data that was provided in the registration form, or any membership profile metadata that is included on the event rosters.

To add those items to your badge report, list the extra badge information in your Register.conf configuration files, like this:

badge_info += form:abc
badge_info += meta:xyz

This example will include registration form fields named abc, and membership profile settings named xyz.

You can add as many lines as you like. If you do not specify anything at all, the registration system will try to look for the following:

badge_info += meta:honorific
badge_info += meta:job_title
badge_info += meta:suffix

If you want to include both these default metadata and also your own extensions, specify both in the configuration file.

Creating Badges from the Badge Report

Use badge generating software such as Avery Design & Print. Select your badge format and a design template. It should allow you to import/upload your badge data from the Badge Report, in either .xls or .csv format. You can selectively pick from this data to lay out the front of your badge with information such as the registrant name, organization, home country, registration type, and so on.

The back of the badge is typically used for an event map, schedule, or agenda. It can also be used to carry a virtual business card in QR code form (see next).

Badge QR codes

Virtual business cards (vCards) allow your attendees to exchange contact information by capturing a QR code using their mobile phone. To include a vCard on your badge, use your badge software to:

1. Add a QR code to the back of the badge.
2. Select information from your data import to include on the vCard. Name, email, and/or phone are usually sufficient, although you can include more if you don't mind the QR code getting larger and busier.
3. Add text instructions for the attendee so they understand what the QR code is for. For example, "Scan QR code to share your contact information".

If privacy is a concern, you should explicitly ask registrants for the contact information to include on their badge, so that you don't accidentally give out personal information that should have been kept confidential. Ask for this information on the registration form, and prepend vcard_ to the field names (for example vcard_email and vcard_phone) so that the badge report will recognize and prefer these values over their usual contact info.