UIST Committee Responsibilities
Registration Chair
Contents
Overview of Responsibilities
| Registration |
Develop registration form
Develop and maintain registration database |
| Credit card charges |
Obtain approval for all charges, submit to ACM for collection |
| Badges, registration envelopes, etc. |
Buy, print and bring
to conference |
| Bag stuffing |
Have badges, receipts, reception tickets, etc. ready
Supervise stuffing |
| On-site sales |
Track sales of proceedings, videos, extra tickets, etc. |
| House management |
Make sure student volunteers at registration
desk have answers to any and all potential questions... |
Months Before the Conference
Registration Form
On-line-registration-only works really well. You don't have to mess
with indecipherable handwriting, you can send yourself e-mail with the
data so you minimize data entry and you can catch anyone whose paper materials
don't arrive.
Hopefully, by 1999 ACM will have its act together enough so that web
registration will be a reality, with no need to fax in anything.
Tips
- Promise and send electronic confirmation. Make it clear on the registration
form that it is the registrant's responsibility to verify that they
are registered, i.e., that if they don't get electronic confirmation in
about a week, they should check with you.
- Make it clear that you get the registration form and the hotel gets
the housing form.
- Only about 10% will need receipts before the conference, so you
can save time and money by offering to send a receipt on request in
your confirmation message. Otherwise, stick it in the registration
packet.
- Make it clear that registration includes one each of reception ticket,
banquet ticket, video proceedings and text proceedings.
- Remember to include a line for the name of the credit card holder.
This is often different from the registrant.
- You may also want to include a line for the name to be printed on the
badge.
Desired Updates
- Either fix the script to retain line-breaks or update both the script and
form to use separate lines for each line of the address.
- Add the cancellation policy to the form.
Registration Database
Spend the time to set this up right! If you can work with a relational
database so you can set up multiple databases, so much the better.
Tips
- Don't bother to separate city, state, zip, etc. Foreign addresses are
totally idiosyncratic.
- Do separate country for statistics and postage.
- Do separate first and last names
- If your script wipes out line-breaks (as the one provided here does), use a separate field for each
line. Foreign addresses are totally idiosyncratic.
- Make sure to put your cancellation policy on the form.
- Only about 10% will need receipts before the conference, so you can
save time and money by offering, in your confirmation message, to send
a receipt on request. Otherwise they can get them with their registration
materials.
- You will have cases of multiple registrations on the same credit card
(corporate cards, for instance), so it will make life easier if you create
a separate database for credit card transactions (linked to the registration
database, of course). This will also help when you need to charge an on-site
sale to the same card as was used for pre-registration. You may also need
to issue a refund for an amount that is different from the original charge.
Reports
The conference chair will regularly want to know how many people are
registered, by category: ACM early/late, non-ACM early/late, student early/late,
free registrations. Setting up scripts to generate these numbers will make
your life easier.
Materials
Credit Card Procedures
- Get credit card phone and merchange numbers from the ACM Office of
Financial Services. (Curtis Harris in 1997.)
- As you get credit card orders, you call the credit card company to
approve charge. Note that this does not actually post the charge to the
account.
- You then submit batches of charges to ACM (on a "transmittal form"
that they will give you) and they do the actual collection.
Tips
- Encode phone and merchant numbers on your speed-dial.
- Replicate the ACM transmittal form as a database report so you can
print it directly.
A Week Before the Early Registration
Deadline
- Ask the program chair to remind authors that they are not automatically
registered for the conference.
- Send a message to people from whom you've received an electronic notice,
but no paper materials, to let them know that you haven't received the
paper materials so they aren't actually registered.
Two Weeks Before the Conference
- Obtain materials
- Badge holders
- "Stringie-thingies" if you have clip badges
- Labels for registration envelopes
- Send a message to people from whom you've received an electronic notice,
but no paper materials, to let them know that you haven't received the
paper materials so they aren't actually registered.
Tips
- Consider having enough badge materials to print badges for accompanying
persons. Make them feel welcome. (But make their badges look noticeably
different.)
- Use self-adhesive labels for the envelopes
- Don't bother with small labels, you spend too much time positioning
the text on them
Three Days Before the Conference
- Print materials to bring
- Check on your printer
- Collect things to bring
- Badge holders
- "Stringie-thingies" if you have clip badges
- Envelopes for registration materials and other stuffings
- Pens, markers
- Stapler
- Ruler
- Tape
- Printer paper
- Paper clips
- Pushpins
Labels for Registration Envelopes
These should contain
- Name
- # Extra reception tickets, banquet tickets, videos, proceedings
- Special instructions, e.g., to call you for people who have not yet
paid, or ask the name of any accompanying persons (if you are printing
accompanying person badges)
Tips
- Keep labels, badges and receipts in the same sort order...
Check-In List
This helps you keep track of how many people have actually arrived and
gives you a place for SVs to note accompanying person's names and other
notes to you.
Sales Receipts
Pre-printed sales receipts makes it easier for SVs to track sales. They
fill out two for each sale: one to give to the buyer, one to give to you.
Pre-perforated business card forms work well: you can tear them off
in pairs.
Materials
At the Conference
- Student volunteers
- Bag stuffing
- Registration desk setup
- On-site sales (set up separate database)
- Attendee list
The student volunteer chair will provide you with a number of
reasonably intelligent bodies. A good workload seems to be:
| Before registration opens |
4 volunteers for 3 hours |
| First night of registration |
2-3 volunteers |
| First morning, until end of 1st session |
3 volunteers |
| All other times |
2 volunteers (you really only need 1, but this way you have one to send on errands or in case someone doesn't show up) |
After the Conference
- Issue refunds
- Send suggestions and updates to this webpage to Susanne Jul
- Try to remember what your real work was about
Refunds
- The policy for UIST '98 was that cancellations could be received
up until a few days before the conference and would incur a $50
cancellation fee -- after that, no cancellation was possible.
- Previous policy has been a full refund until the food has been guaranteed
(about 3 days before the conference), 50% after that.
- ACM can give you instructions, but usually you just submit a
(separate) transmittal form with the amounts in brackets.
Updated November 9, 1998 SJul
Created October 29, 1997 SJul