I just attended an amazing conference called Gnomedex. The name tag system that was used was provided by a company called Pathable. I have been to a ton of conferences and dealt with a number of registration systems. This was hands down the best that I have ever experienced. Here’s how it worked:

1. The registrants sign up for the conference in the normal manner, but they specify some “tags” of topics they are interested in. They can enter anything they are interested. Nothing is off limits. It truly captures the desires of the registrants.
2. Once you pay, you are provided with an image representation of your namecard. It looks like this:

You will notice that among the normal information, it shows my chosen tags along with five people that are “matches” for me. These are people that should be good for me to meet and network with.

3. Now the fun starts. The attendee list is then published on a secure website for attendees only. The type of conference I was attending was a social networking one. The culture was such that everyone provided their contact information and encouraged contact BEFORE the conference even started. This gave all of us the ability to pre-network with people. I was able to develop a list of people I was interested in meeting so that I could be efficient at the conference.

In short, it was amazing. I have never had such a productive conference and I think that most of the attendees thought that way as well. I would suggest that any non-profit putting on a conference check out Pathable. It will be worth your while and will help your attendees get more out of the conference.

I spoke with the CEO of Pathable, Jordan Schwartz. He is a great guy and has some great ideas about how to make a conference more exciting!

The ideal conference in my mind would be one managed by Pelotonics and supported by Pathable’s registration suite