AUGD: QR Codes and Meetings
AUGD: QR Codes and Meetings
- Subject: AUGD: QR Codes and Meetings
- From: David Feng <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 23:31:31 +0800
We do meeting signups/registrations the quick and easy way at BeiMac.
Apart from operating an online signup system, we've opened up an SMS
channel where people can sign up by SMS. But that was pretty
tedious... people had to remember which phone number to send the
whole thing to, and that was a pain.
(Signing up at our meetings, BTW, is highly recommended -- that way,
we know how to do the venue right. Preparing a thousand-seat venue
with only 30 people turning out at the last minute just doesn't work
out, so we need some guidance -- and a feeler for how many people
will actually be there helps us a lot.)
We've found this incredible thing called a QR Code. The way this
works is very, very sweet. All you need is a compatible cellphone
(check www.beimac.cn for more - scroll down; you're looking for a
weird semi-barcode-ish like digitized square on the right side of the
page -- and we're not asking you to decipher the Chinese characters
instead). Install the software on your cellphone (beam it to the cell
using Bluetooth). Then, all you need to do is to launch the app on
the phone and aim your camera at this QR Code. A pre-written message
is sent immediately, and all we do is fire back a boilerplate message
asking you for your name, number of people coming, and preferred
language (as we're multilingual). That's it! You've just spared
yourself the hassle of a handwritten SMS!
(For more on QR codes, which are big in Taiwan, Japan and
Switzerland, see http://reader.kaywa.com/ )
We are pretty sure we're the first Chinese group to do this. I'm not
sure if we're the first around our own planet, but it's... pretty
neat and something that all of you could try out.
By the way -- here's a little survey we'd like to do. We have people
sign up to attend our meetings (the whole thing is free). Yet the
number who sign up and the actual number turning up is a bit on the
short side. We had about 170 people sign up for the March 2007
meeting and only 90 came. The April meeting fared better, with 41
signups and 27 in attendance. We're often around the 50%-66% turnout
level. We place our meeting flyers in about 4 to 5 stores in Beijing,
as well as on major Chinese Mac forums and on all BeiMac websites.
So how does your group fare in this? (And do you guys use QR Codes?)
David Feng
BeiMac
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