Technology Advisory Group

At today’s IT Forum, Andrea Mulrine from Development showed a demonstration of event management system RegOnline.  RegOnline is a web-based service that provides online registration and attendee tracking and reporting as well as tools like customizable event websites, customizable registration fields and questions (e.g., t-shirt size, dietary preferences), invitation and automatic reminder emails, automatic name badge creation, credit card and payment processing, etc. Judging from the demo, I was impressed – it looked like a pretty sharp but user-friendly tool.

Andrea is the chair of the Event Management Committee, a subcommittee of IMAC (Information Management Advisory Committee). The Event Management Committee, which included representatives from IR, Development, Alumni, the Library, CTLE, and Finance, reviewed seven event management products and recommended RegOnline as the product that would best serve the needs of the University.  Today’s demonstration offered a chance for the broader University community to provide feedback on the product.

At this time, there’s no budget set aside for a product or service like this.  Pricing is volume-based, so the Event Management Committee’s next step is to gather information about how many departments on campus need something like this and how often they would use it.

I’d like to find out if there is a need for this kind of tool among the faculty, so if you think you, your department, or a committee/group that you serve would be interested in an event management service, please let me know:

1. What events or type(s) of events** you would use it for
2. Approximately how many events per year you hold
3. Approximately how many attendees your events have

I’ll put our feedback together and send it along to Andrea. Thanks, all!

**At this point in the process, the Event Management Committee is thinking big, so send me anything you’re thinking about. Some past or recurring faculty-driven events that occurred to me: Biology Dept Pig Roast, MELUS, disAbility, Ready to Run, Education for Justice trip to the 9/11 memorial, guest speakers…