CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I think what you are suggesting would be warmly received ;-)
The only other aspect that springs to mind, but which you may want to sidestep, relates to 'booths' that exhibitors etc may often require at such events.

EDIT: oh and the other aspect is around voting that often happens around AGM type events - well outside your intentions but hopefully worth flagging.

tontate --
this is a great discussion to kick off. here are some of my thoughts:

- we should think through the pros/cons of having a separate CiviConference component vs. extending the existing events component. there clearly would be a lot of overlap if they were separate. if the overlap can share code effectively, maybe that's not an issue. but we wouldn't want a situation where one or other developed functionality over time and it became difficult to port over to the other. also, creating two components with similar/cross-over functionality may be confusing to end users (which do i use?!). however on the other hand, we wouldn't want to build out so many complex functions that it became tedious to create very basic events.

- when i first looked at the features, i was thinking "what existing tools could potentially achieve this functionality." in my case, i typically use participant custom data to track session registration (if there's no direct fee associated). so your "tracks" could be profiles -- groupings of these sessions. right now we're limited to two profile sets per event, but that's an artificial limitation because of how they are handled in the templates. so if we could have more profiles included in an event, they could be grouped as tracks.

- rooms and speakers are session-specific. one idea is to create a new custom data type that is used to modify existing custom fields. i'd have to think through whether the existing schema would hold up. but it's an idea, and would mean we could work within existing tools

- regardless, the custom data/profile creation tools would be too clunky for actually handling the initial confi. we would want a new interface specific for this purpose, but perhaps working with the existing class methods

- fee permissions: i've done this a couple ways. one way is to require members to login first, and then to hide/display fees specific to members. i recently accomplished this another way by doing a lookup on the email address when entered, determining if it had an existing contact with valid membership, and then allowing the registrant to continue if their fee selection was suitable for their membership. the first is easier to accomplish because the person is already validated and so i can limit their options when they get to the form. this is definitely an important piece for associations.

- for the reg page -- maybe that could be accomplished with jquery tabs. for example, what if we had smarty tokens available to the event description field that let people organize all the content in that field into multiple tabs?

- some of what you're suggesting is shifting the emphasis away from the constituent, and turning this into a project management tool. what if the case functionality was harnessed for some of that (it has similar project management type roles)?

- another common feature request is the ability to limit registrations for specific events or fee options. right now you can limit registrants to a set number, but if you are hosting a banquet or something where people may purchase multiple tickets, the maximum allowed needs to be calculated based on items purchased, not total number of participants attending the conference

- agree with pete that we would want exhibitor related functionality, such as purchasing booths and selecting the preferred booth location from a dynamically updated visual map

- also related to exhibits -- perhaps having some kind of "terms and conditions" option that people must choose before continuing with the registration. that could be done with a custom field linked to a separate article, but maybe there's benefit in having something built-in

- another great feature i'd like to see with events/conferences is the ability to create multiple event reg pages per event. for example, one might want to create a reg form geared toward registrants, another for exhibitors, and a third for potential speakers (call for presentations). all should filter into the same event.

i'll post back if i come up with any other ideas...
-Brian

agree with pete that we would want exhibitor related functionality, such as purchasing booths and selecting the preferred booth location from a dynamically updated visual map

really cool idea - but the thought of implementation is making me sweat.

he he - i hate it when it turns to a cold sweat

some work has been done on the 'visual map' referenced here http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=11879.new;topicseen#new

You can see it in action here http://www.rlaba.com/civicrm/event/register?id=1&reset=1

Quote

agree with pete that we would want exhibitor related functionality, such as purchasing booths and selecting the preferred booth location from a dynamically updated visual map

really cool idea - but the thought of implementation is making me sweat.

he he - i hate it when it turns to a cold sweat

some work has been done on the 'visual map' referenced here http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=11879.new;topicseen#new

You can see it in action here http://www.rlaba.com/civicrm/event/register?id=1&reset=1

Just to note, regarding that map, the shape of it was done custom for that particular event, to represent the booths at that "conference" (actually a street fair) and the coding was done as a Drupal module, i.e. not in CiviCRM. Participant fields are used to store which booth each registrant has purchased.