Onsite ticketing print on demand

U-Con is changing our process for ticketing this year.  We have gotten rid of the old pegboard system for hanging preprinted tickets.  Instead, we will print tickets on demand at Registration.  It may be a little slower, but we also will run two cash registers during busy periods.  Tickets will be 4″x2″ stickers instead of those long thin strips of paper.  All preregistration materials remain preprinted and can be picked up onsite.  We appreciate your patience!

Read on if you want to know why we’ve made this big change.

As long as I’ve been working on the con, we’ve kept our tickets on four giant pegboards at Registration.  There are some great advantages to the peg boards.  The inventory of tickets is controlled, so if we need to add tickets or reduce the inventory, this is as easy as walking to the board and altering the number of tickets.  And many GMs like to ask us how many tickets are left to their events, which is also easy to find out when you have the physical tickets handy.

There are also some annoying things about the ticket boards.  Our number of events this year wouldn’t actually fit on them.  They are very large and awkward to move.  That last point is very problematic as we keep Registration in an unsecure location, and we have had to move ticket boards each night to a secure location.  Some the staff may recall the painful time when half the tickets fell off one of the boards as we tried to move the board back into place one Saturday morning.  This spring brought a lot of soul-searching, and we began to explore alternatives that would be easier to manage than the ticket boards.

We researched a number of options for printing tickets onsite.  Spending an arm and a leg was not an option, as we have always sought to keep the cost of the con well within the reach of folks.  The most cost-effective option we found was a label printer.  The label printer can print one ticket in a second or two once it gets started.  I made some test software to ensure that it would print readable tickets, and these tests were successful.

Then I spent quite a bit of my free time over the last five months designing and building a brand new, onsite inventory tracking system.  It’s built as a cash register operated by U-Con staff.  The system allows for the selection of tickets, badges, and merchandise.  Selecting a ticket creates a reservation so that other cash registers cannot select the ticket.  Completing a purchase ensures that the ticket is no longer in the inventory.  The operator will still be able to tell you how many tickets are left for an event you are interested in.

The ticket-collection process has also changed for our gamemasters.  In the past we have provided envelopes for collecting tickets.  This year we are instead providing worksheets.  GMs are instructed to stick the tickets onto the worksheet as they provide a count.

This is quite a large change for us.  Practically every volunteer who works for the con is going to need to be retrained in this new system: from folks operating cash registers to those tracking completed event data.  We expect some bumps along the way, but we very much appreciate your patience.  We also look forward to your feedback about the new tickets after you give them a try this convention.

See you next week!