Conference photosfrom attendees, room by room

Before you start

A conference has a different photo problem from a party: several rooms at the same time, and the people who matter most, the speakers, want one precise thing, the photos of their own talk, the next day, for their own LinkedIn. Attendees meanwhile photograph the slides, the full room, the group at the coffee break. A classic shared album, like the one in Google Photos, needs an account from whoever adds: with three hundred people you do not know, that is a barrier that cuts out the majority.

Before: one event, and the QR in two places

1. 1

   Create the event with the conference's name

   Title, start and end dates, the venue. "Private" until you decide what to publish: you see the attendees' photos first.

2. 2

   Put the QR on the badge, or on the back of the programme

   Four centimetres are enough, with one line: "Conference photos: scan and upload". It is the thing everyone wears for two days, and looks at while waiting for coffee.

3. 3

   Put the same QR on a transition slide

   Between talks, on the big screen, for one minute: "Photographed the talk? Upload it here". On the screen the QR has to be big, because it gets scanned from far away: DENSO WAVE explains that the code's side grows with the reading distance.

During: one room, one moment

Whoever scans uploads from the browser, with no app and no account, and can type their name. To know which talk a photo belongs to, ask them to write it next to the name: "Room B, 11 o'clock talk". The photos land in a queue only the staff sees; none goes out before approval, and the staff discards any uploaded by mistake from the queue.

In the evening: five minutes of queue

At the end of the day one staff member opens the queue and approves. With a hundred photos it is a quarter of an hour; with "approve all" and one round of checking, five minutes. That is when you remove the photos with confidential slides, the ones where someone looks bad, and the duplicates. The next day the album is ready before the first session.

The next day: what to deliver to speakers

Every speaker wants two or three photos of their own talk, whole, within twenty-four hours, while the talk is still the topic. With the photos labelled by room and time you make a selection for each and send the album's link with a one-line message. It is the thing speakers remember about a conference, and the reason they come back.

Consent, in one line

Attendees bought a ticket; they did not sign a release to appear everywhere. If the conference's terms cover photography, say so at the entrance and on the badge; if they do not, the album stays private and you hand-pick the public photos. Dumpbox does not manage consent: it gives you the queue, the button to remove a photo and a report link on every image.

Frequently asked questions

Do attendees have to install an app?

No. The QR opens a page in the browser and the upload happens there. No account: that is what makes it possible to ask three hundred strangers.

How do I tell room A's photos from room B's?

By asking people to write it next to their name when uploading. Alternatively, create one event per room, with a different QR in each: more precise, but more signs.

Can photos of the slides be published?

It depends on the speaker: some slides are confidential. That is why the queue exists: you approve the room photos first and ask the speaker about the slide ones.

How much storage for two days?

For photos, the free 5 GB plan handles a small conference. With talk videos you need the 1 TB beta, and heavy videos get uploaded by staff on Wi-Fi, not by attendees on mobile data.