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[Cheetah]

Ok, just my 2 cents:

That's some late feedback, but since it's gone rather quite in this thread, I'll take the time to actually respond in detail.

a big (huge!) screen to display non stop actual infos like:
 - canceled or delayed events
 - maps of the rooms where events are happening
 - reminders of upcoming events
maybe a projector on the reception desk projecting on a cloth screen hanging from the "C" floor or something like that.
I can volunteer to write the software to have it running by EF19

It sounds like a no-brainer doesn't it? That's what we thought, too. But believe it or not, this has been on our agenda since EF13, and we had to find out the hard way, that the software is not the problem - a simple self-refreshing web page in a browser would do the trick - something anyone with minimal IT knowledge can do in a few minutes.

The problem is to actually gather the information, feed it into the system, and keep it updated. And until today we haven't quite found a workable solution for the organisational problem behind it.

a "feedback" box somewhere, so that people can submit feedback immediately (and not after they return home and forget half of the things)

A feedback box would be easy to implement, but then you'd either have to write your feedback by hand, or have a printer with you. On the other hand, the forum isn't offline during the convention, nothing stops you from posting feedback right away You don't have to wait.

better wifi coverage (and shorter DHCP leases! or more IP addresses...)

Yup, we're aware of that, and working on it We're improving wifi coverage step by step ... unfortunately, professional equipment that can handle 2000 people in one space has been beyond our budget so far, and mesh networking simply doesn't work well in this building.

the registration on this forum is misleading. Maybe the mail was lost or something, but I never received the second email when the account was eventually activated. I only received the first email that said that I needed to wait for the registration to be approved and that I would receive a second email when that happens. So basically my account here was active since September and I didn't know

I'm sorry to hear that. The forum is configured to send out activation emails. Maybe it was caught in your spamfilter?

The registration system doesn't allow you to specify the country that will be displayed on the badge, it defaults to the country of residence. And the rules say that it's forbidden to cover any part of the badge.

We need to know people's full address, and that includes the country. If you enter the wrong country, you'll end up submitting an invalid address, and legally that will void your contract with us. So please don't do that.

I'm sorry if people misinterpret the "country" field on your badge as a "language" field - I can see why that causes an inconvenience to you, and possibly one or other awkward situation. But we're dealing with a complex problem here.  Theoretically it's possible to have separate country of birth, country of residence and nationality - and it's even perfectly legal to have more than one country of residency within the EU, and multiple nationalities are also possible. And the actual languages spoken may not have anything to do with either of these - and a large percentage of attendees is multi-lingual.

So, what should we ask for, and where should we put all this information? If we put a single language field on the badge, I see the opposite problem that people will assume that the wearer speaks only speaks one language.

We once had the idea of handing out little country-flag-buttons that people can clip on to their lanyard to indicate their spoken languages - but that never took off because of the production costs.

So I'm afraid, at the moment I see no other way than to actually talk to people to find out which languages they're fluent in.

I spent the first 5 minutes when talking to ANYBODY by explaining that I'm not German both at EF17 and EF18. It gets REALLY annoying after the 20th time in the same hour (no, I'm not joking about this)

I have a pragmatic little suggestion: How about getting a custom badge made that says "please talk english to me" or similar, and wear it next to your official badge?

[Jumpy]

The registration system doesn't allow you to specify the country that will be displayed on the badge, it defaults to the country of residence. And the rules say that it's forbidden to cover any part of the badge.

We need to know people's full address, and that includes the country. If you enter the wrong country, you'll end up submitting an invalid address, and legally that will void your contract with us. So please don't do that.

I'm sorry if people misinterpret the "country" field on your badge as a "language" field - I can see why that causes an inconvenience to you, and possibly one or other awkward situation. But we're dealing with a complex problem here.  Theoretically it's possible to have separate country of birth, country of residence and nationality - and it's even perfectly legal to have more than one country of residency within the EU, and multiple nationalities are also possible. And the actual languages spoken may not have anything to do with either of these - and a large percentage of attendees is multi-lingual.

So, what should we ask for, and where should we put all this information? If we put a single language field on the badge, I see the opposite problem that people will assume that the wearer speaks only speaks one language.

We once had the idea of handing out little country-flag-buttons that people can clip on to their lanyard to indicate their spoken languages - but that never took off because of the production costs.

So I'm afraid, at the moment I see no other way than to actually talk to people to find out which languages they're fluent in.

I spent the first 5 minutes when talking to ANYBODY by explaining that I'm not German both at EF17 and EF18. It gets REALLY annoying after the 20th time in the same hour (no, I'm not joking about this)

I have a pragmatic little suggestion: How about getting a custom badge made that says "please talk english to me" or similar, and wear it next to your official badge?

While the correct country must be entered in the registration system, we occasionally do print manually corrected badges at registration on site, e.g. for typos or if someone becomes a sponsor last minute.

I would not allow changing real name or nickname (as this is easily abused), but I do not see a big problem if your badge displays a different country, as long as the correct info is in our database. If it is really that much of an annoyance to you, talk to us folks at registration next year. Most of the time there is at least one person there who can operate the badge printer.

Just please refrain from entering wrong information in the registration system. If we find out, you will not be allowed to attend EF again.

[Bostitch]

We once had the idea of handing out little country-flag-buttons that people can clip on to their lanyard to indicate their spoken languages - but that never took off because of the production costs.

We had something similar in the past at Ikea, when I was still working there, using small stickers on the namebadge to indicate which languages were spoken, it works quite well. 

Just an idea off the top of my head: instead of adding flags in a physical form afterwards, would it be possible to add a section to the registration system, where people can select one or more languages (with a maximum of 4-6) from a list, and the corresponding flags are then automatically printed onto the badge? Could fit either next to, or instead of, the country of residence.

(I do realise there are countries that have multiple official languages, and it will make some people grumpy, for instance Canadians having to choose a Union Jack and/or the Tricolore. But then, there's no pleasing everyone.)

[Cheetah]

Just an idea off the top of my head: instead of adding flags in a physical form afterwards, would it be possible to add a section to the registration system, where people can select one or more languages (with a maximum of 4-6) from a list, and the corresponding flags are then automatically printed onto the badge? Could fit either next to, or instead of, the country of residence.

We thought about that, but you'd end up with having about 5x6mm per flag, and they would be pretty much unrecognizable at that size.