One of the things we’ve done most years in Orlando is to print poster sized schedules. This started out as a supplement to giving everyone a printed schedule and soon replaced it. Posting a handful of these is easy and when the schedule changes, you just send someone with a Sharpie to update them. As an attendee I’d argue it’s a much nicer experience to stand in front of the schedule to review your options versus trying to scroll around on your phone.
The effort though, is in the creating of the document. This year we didn’t get it done, one of the few things that fell through, and it was definitely missed. So high on my list for next year is to figure out how to make these near painless. Basically I want to print the schedule at 24×36 or 36×48, showing the title & speaker for each time slot – the standard schedule grid cleaned up some. I want to do it as late as possible because the schedule always changes the week prior to the event. Ideally we’d run some script to create it, take a quick look to validate, and then upload to Fedex for printing and have someone pick it up Friday afternoon.
I don’t know if anyone does this now, or would, but it would be terrific to just be able to download that document from the site when I needed it, all up to date, sponsor logos on it, etc!
