David Aguilera 3:07 pm on April 1, 2019

WCEU – Workshop Booking System

WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe 2019 includes some workshops in its schedule (as WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. 2018 or WCEU 2017 did). Workshops are more interactive than regular talks and have a limited number of spots.

As far as I know, the process of controlling who signs up for a workshop, number of available spots, and so on has been done “manually” in previous years. We need a system that integrates to the WordCamp website for this.

Deadline: Please share your input before April 12th.

Requirements

After discussing the topic with the @content-team, we came up with several requirements.

Must Have

Only attendees (i.e. people who purchased a ticket) should be able to register for workshops
We should be able to limit the number of spots an attendee can book tops
Attendees should be able to sort their preferred workshops
Attendees should be able to change their preferred workshops at any time
We should be able to require attendees to confirm they’ll assist to the workshops they registered to a few days before the event
We should be able to notify attendees via email about:
1. When the registration period opens
2. When the confirmation period opens

Nice to Have

Attendees should be able to see when a certain workshop has been sold out and, therefore, registering for it puts them in a waiting list
We should be able to notify attendees via email about:
1. When a workshop they booked is about to start
2. When a workshop is about to start and it has free spots, we should notify those who registered for it and didn’t confirm

How Would the Booking System Work?

When an attendee registers for a workshop, the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party stores the date and time of the registration, as well as the attendee’s preferred options. This helps us decide who can attend to a certain workshop:

Only spots for those attendees who confirmed their interest in a workshop are actually booked (that is, no one can take them unless the attendee doesn’t show up when the workshop is about to start).
The order in which spots are given to confirmed attendees is as follows:
1. First, confirmed attendees are sorted based on their preference. That is, those who selected the workshops as their first option come before those who selected it as its second choice.
2. Given two attendees who set the same preference value for a workshop, we’ll take into account the registration time. That is, first to register, first to get a spot.
3. In the unlikely event that two attendees registered at the exact same time, the spot will be given randomly/alphabetically/other ideas?
Any free spots available at the time the workshop is about to start will be given to those waiting outside, in the order in which they arrived.

Plugins Screens

Registration/Confirmation

Attendees can register and confirm the workshops they’re interested in using CampTix’s Attendee Edit Screen:

List of Attendees to a Given Workshop

We need an admin screen to control who accesses a workshop. Basically, given a specific workshop, we need an alphabetically-sorted list of attendees that confirmed their assistance.

Settings

We need a settings screen to tweak the plugin:

Maximum number of workshops an attendee can register for
Confirmation period start/end?
Emails?

Carrie Dils 4:24 pm on April 1, 2019
💯to this idea, David!

Other considerations for the booking system:
- If an attendee hasn’t checked in to WC by camp start time the day of the workshop, their spot is automatically released and given to the next person on the waiting list.
- Assume that 10-20% of confirmed registrants will not show up to a workshop (i.e. they change their mind at the last minute or get caught in a good hallway track conversation). We could overbook capacity for a workshop by 10-20%.
Another nice to have:
- SMS capability (in addition to email) to send registrants reminders/confirmations/start-times. (At the event, I assume most people would see a text notification before they would an email).
A thought on scheduling:
- I’d hate to see someone show up for a standby spot in a workshop, not get in, and then have missed the start time for another session of their choice. This could potentially be resolved by requiring early check-in for workshops (i.e. must be there 15 minutes before or you lose your spot to someone on the waiting list) or staggering workshop/session start times a bit. This isn’t a complete thought – just a scenario that crossed my mind.
- Ian Dunn 10:07 pm on April 3, 2019
  
  If an attendee hasn’t checked in to WC by camp start time the day of the workshop, their spot is automatically released and given to the next person on the waiting list.
  
  That’s a great idea!
  
  I’m wondering if there are any ways it could go wrong, though, and end up where an attendee’s spot is wrongfully released?
  
  Not all camps use the check-in tool, so the auto-release would probably have to be off by default, and explicitly enabled by an admin.
  
  I can’t think of any others.
  
  I’d probably scope it more for v2 than the MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia.
  
  Assume that 10-20% of confirmed registrants will not show up to a workshop (i.e. they change their mind at the last minute or get caught in a good hallway track conversation). We could overbook capacity for a workshop by 10-20%.
  
  Do you think that the system should be build to handle that, or would you just leave it up to the organizers to enter a higher number into the system? I’d probably lean towards the latter, to keep things simple.
  
  I think the waiting list feature might solve that same problem in a more elegant way, though.
Hugh Lashbrooke 9:58 am on April 3, 2019

I really like the idea of a way to formally book a spot for workshops (or any session where there’s limited seating), so I’m all for exploring this.

My main concern, and @cdils touched on this above, is that every WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. has attendee drop-off and it would a pity for a workshop to have empty seats while other folks want to join. I like the idea of integrating with the attendee check-in tool so that workshop spots can be opened up (which can be announced by the MC so attendees can then sign up).

Scheduling would also be a concern as mentioned above. This could be problematic if a workshop in one track goes on too long and people in that workshop then miss out on their reserved spot in a workshop in a different track.

All of these things can be solved of course, so this is a solid idea so long as we account for cases like these and work them into the solution.
- Ian Dunn 9:59 pm on April 3, 2019
  
  (or any session where there’s limited seating)
  
  That’s a good point, this might be useful for more than just workshops, so we may want to abstract it a bit.
- David Aguilera 6:32 am on April 4, 2019
  
  Scheduling would also be a concern as mentioned above. This could be problematic if a workshop in one track goes on too long and people in that workshop then miss out on their reserved spot in a workshop in a different track.
  
  You’re right, but I think that’s a corner case we could dismiss. I mean, speakers are supposed to stay on time.
Ian Dunn 10:12 pm on April 3, 2019

On the one hand, I can totally see how manually managing the kind of registration process you describe would be painful, and having a tool to automate a lot of it would be help a lot.

To play Devil’s advocate, though, I wonder if introducing that process is making things harder on ourselves than they need to be. A much easier way to do it would be to simply use the first-come-first-served method, where the first people to arrive at the room before the workshop starts are the ones that get in.

At most you’d need 1 volunteer at the door to make sure people form a proper queue before the doors open. It wouldn’t require any new tools to be built.

I’m sure that the process you describe has benefits, but I’m just not sure they outweigh all of the costs.
- Andrea Middleton 11:11 pm on April 3, 2019
  
  The first-come, first-served method has its problems as well. If we don’t know how many people are interested in taking the workshop, it can be hard to know where to put different sessions if some workshop rooms are larger than others. Also, people lose time lining up to enter a workshop and can’t attend other sessions or connect with other attendees. Also also, people hate standing in line (me too), so tend to get cranky. I can see a valid use case for WordCamps — especially our larger events like WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe and WordCamp US — for a workshop registration method
  .
  - Ian Dunn 5:07 pm on April 4, 2019
    
    Ah, yeah, those are all great points.
- David Aguilera 6:29 am on April 4, 2019
  
  @iandunn I agree. Actually, the first-come-first-served approach is one of the solutions we (WCEU2019 content team) discussed. We also discussed a hybrid approach: people should register to workshops during the event, when they arrive at the registration desk.
  
  I’m wondering if we really need that pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party or we’re just over-engineering things.
  
  @andreamiddleton
  
  If we don’t know how many people are interested in taking the workshop, it can be hard to know where to put different sessions if some workshop rooms are larger than others.
  
  That’s a good point. AFAIK, though, the room where a workshop will be held (and therefore, how many spots it will have) is decided beforehand.
  
  people hate standing in line (me too), so tend to get cranky
  
  Indeed. Maybe booking a seat at the registration desk would do the trick?
  - Andrea Middleton 3:01 pm on April 4, 2019
    
    I was thinking about this last night and realized that there wasn’t any real reason to limit communication about workshop registration to people who are registered for the event, because you can’t get in the event without having bought a ticket LOL. Blind spots!
    
    We also discussed a hybrid approach: people should register to workshops during the event, when they arrive at the registration desk.
    
    I REALLY like this approach — when “what room do we put the session in?” is already answered — because it reduces our user-data-storage footprint and allows people to defer their decisions until the very end.
    
    You could have a workshop signup desk to the side of the event check-in tables, with lots of paper signup sheets on clipboards — one clipboard per workshop — and then just carry the clipboards over to the workshop room and check the list of sign-ups against badges as people come in to the room. When the workshop is supposed to begin, if there are still seats available, then you can let anyone in to sit down.
    
    If you set expectations clearly with attendees, I think this could work really smoothly… and without a lick of code! O.O
    - David Aguilera 6:26 am on April 5, 2019
      
      That’s exactly the alternative solution we had in mind, @andreamiddleton.
      - Andrea Middleton 11:24 pm on April 5, 2019
        
        Sounds like we might be tabling this feature suggestion for now — what do you think?
      - David Aguilera 12:25 pm on April 8, 2019
        
        I think it does, @andreamiddleton. We don’t have much time to get the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party ready for WCEU2019 anyway, so…
        
        Personally, I think that giving this a try:
        
        You could have a workshop signup desk to the side of the event check-in tables, with lots of paper signup sheets on clipboards — one clipboard per workshop — and then just carry the clipboards over to the workshop room and check the list of sign-ups against badges as people come in to the room. When the workshop is supposed to begin, if there are still seats available, then you can let anyone in to sit down
        
        at WCEU2019 and seeing how it works is a good idea. Then, based on our experience, we can resume the conversation and see if we really need a plugin or we were just discussing an over-engineered solution :innocent:
        
        Andrea Middleton 4:09 pm on April 8, 2019
        
        Kudos to you for starting the discussion, and for courageously identifying the possibility that we were talking about fixing a problem with code that we could solve with a non-code-based process. 🙂 I love it when we can experiment with “lighter” ways of doing things, and look forward to the report on how this worked! Thanks @davilera and kudos again.
        
        Ian Dunn 6:49 pm on April 8, 2019
        
        +100, kudos @davilera
        
        Finding a lighter solution to this allows us to focus our engineering time and energy on another high-impact project, so it’s kind of like getting 2 solutions for the price of 1 🙂
Vedanshu Jain 12:57 pm on April 4, 2019

We should be able to notify attendees via email about:

When the registration period opens
When the confirmation period opens

I have a minor concern that people often do not check their mails, or their mails get lost in spam. So it might be not a good idea to require attendees to confirm again in order to attend the workshop. Perhaps we can send a confirmation mail, with “RSVP NO” link, and open up slots if some one clicks on that link, but otherwise assume that person is attending?
- David Aguilera 12:22 pm on April 8, 2019
  
  You’re right: people tend to ignore their emails. Unfortunately, implementing an opt-out solution wouldn’t solve our problems either: we want to reduce the no-show rate, so we want to make sure that anyone who said would come, will come. And, for this, we’d need to double-check they do want to come.