I’ll start by saying the intent of the notes isn’t to complain, at least too much. I’m looking for opportunities. It looks far nicer than v1/v2, but the functionality shown still tends to be a page per table/entity. I look at the app and think we could easily do 2x as much to engage potential attendees. Not all these ideas will be worth doing, but ideas tend to drive other ideas. The web site is a vertical app – make it a rich one.
I registered for SQLSaturday Orlando to see how it worked. The top part was confirming/updating my contact info, that part looked good (except it didn’t ask for LinkedIn info – why not?). The second part of the form has more questions. I think it’s a good start, but I’d like to see some tweaks:
- “Volunteer at event” is too ambigous – what am I signing myself up for? I think (thinking as a the volunteer coordinator this year) that I’d rather it said “Notify me about volunteer opportunities at the event” or “May Volunteer at event” and regardles of wording, add the “I” (like the one after the “sponsor may contact me directly”) that explains in 2-3 sentences that we have a range of volunteer tasks and that aren’t committing to a task yet). At this stage I want the biggest possible list of those that are interested even though I’ll mention the volunteer tasks in at least one email to the “all” list.
- The info button about sponsors doesn’t work. This is important to fix. Why should I say yes? Does that mean they will call me?
- Want to see a chapter created? Do they know what chapters we have? Not sure this question fits here
- Post event social. Would be nice to have a link right there if the location is known (and I get that if may not yet be known)
- Are we doing anything with First SQLSaturday? Does it tag their name badge (which would be good) or it just for the organizers (what do we do with the info?
Related to this, I’d love to see something added at the top about “this is the 23rd SQLSaturday you’ve registered for”. Or “this is the 9th consecutive time you’re registered for SQLSaturday Orlando”.
I think the page looks good overall, but let’s do just a little more with it.
I clicked ok after entering the captcha, which seems to be case sensitive. I think we should note that right next to it. Then I was sent to the lunch payment form (which I forgot to capture). It wasn’t clear to me if I had to do this now or how to opt out. I just registered for South Fla but they aren’t charging the fee, so I didn’t get the page. I’d like to see an option for “I’ll decide later”. Deciding now would be easier if I could get details on what food would be served right there on that page.
I then received this email:
I think that might be the original template (and if it is, then I’m about to complain about my own work). I liked that it quickly, seconds after the OK. It’s functional, but we can do more!
- Event specific logo
- Link to the site (the logo isn’t linked)
- The twitter hashtag/link
- “Team SQLSaturday” is nice shorthand, but it would be interesting to see the names of the key organizers, make it a little less anonymous
- Link to the iCalendar – we want it on their calendar (I wonder if the ical gets generated by the site now?)
- I don’t see that event leaders can edit it. Not sure it’s important that they can, but it wouldn’t hurt anything either.
I can think of at least one data driven idea we might add to it – if we see that more than one person from a non-generic domain registered last year, we could tailor a sentence about that. “Please remind your colleagues about this event. Last year 0 other people from the blahblah.domain attended SQLSaturday Orlando – lets increase that this year!
