Print and paper are not two strategies. They are the same stack of paper with two names. The useful question is which object still has to exist when a phone is dead, missing, or in a grandparent's other bag.

The case for moving the program itself off paper is in digital event programs versus printed programs. A campus that already made that switch for orientation is in completely replace paper. This guide is the short list of things those posts should not talk you out of printing.

Three objects, three decisions

A fourth object is not a program. It is a half sheet: parking, the accessible route, the start time, and a phone number. That sheet is for the guest who will not download anything. It is not a second copy of the schedule.

The schedule should be able to change

A booklet is finished the hour you send it to the printer. Orientation, move-in, and move-in break that assumption. So do the smaller student engagement events that still change rooms the morning of. A room floods. A speaker cancels. A college runs long.

Commencement can keep a printed program. The names do not move at 9 a.m., and families keep that page. The rain location, the guest entrance, and the order of the ceremony can still move. Print the names. Put those three in the app.

Put the schedule, the map, and the change in one channel. Event apps are that channel when the attendee will use a phone. A branded app is that same channel with your name in the stores, on the plan you buy. Maps and a push when the room changes are on the features page. A self-guided campus tour is the visit whose route should update there, not on a map printed in August. The same split holds for a conference: the agenda can move, the badge cannot. Static floor-plan images work offline. On the Engage plan, a session can point at a region on that image, and the interactive map works without a connection. A reprint cannot.

If you also email the change and post a sign and leave yesterday's booklet in the bag, you have three channels. Staff will be asked which one is true. Pick one.

The door still needs a backup

Event check-in software is the scan, the name search, and the record. A paper list is the backup for the ten minutes the network or the scanner misbehaves. Print that list the morning of, with the names you actually expect, and put a person in charge of marking it. Do not print it a week out and call it the plan.

Admissions days have a second version of this. Digital check-in for admissions is the scan the family sees. The clipboard remains for the guest whose phone died in the parking garage. One backup. Not a full program.

The badge is a print job on purpose

A badge is supposed to be paper or plastic. The badge page says you design it, put the attendee's Guidebook ID on it as a QR, and use that code for check-in and session attendance. Print paths are a file you print yourself, an order, your own printer, or on-site printing through an Expo Pass partnership. What badge printing is is the short definition.

That QR is the useful ink. The schedule is not. A badge that reprints every time a room changes is the program problem in a smaller size. Name, role, QR. Stop there.

Confirm badges are on the education plan you are buying. They are a product on the badge page. They are not a rumor included in every app tier.

What not to print again

• The full grid, after the first change of the day.
• A map you already know is wrong because an entrance closed.
• Speaker bios that attendees will not read in a line.
• A second booklet for families that repeats the student grid and hides the reunion time.

Print the reunion time, the accessible door, and the badge. Update everything else once, in the app, and tell staff to stop answering from memory.

The hour a room changes

Hall B is closed. The session is now in Hall C. You have about twenty minutes before the line forms.

A March booklet leaves you printing or shouting. Staff at three doors will give three rooms. The guest with a paper map walks to the closed door.

Update the one channel, then give staff one sentence: "Check the app. Hall C." The floor plan already on their phone still opens if the network drops. A reprint will not be ready before the line forms.

Leave the badge alone. Name, role, and the QR do not include the room. Reprint the half sheet only for a guest who will not use a phone: one new page, that morning, with the new room and the same parking line.

Decide what still has to exist on paper

Circle the next campus event. List what you printed last year. Move the schedule and the map to the app. Keep the badge file, one morning-of door list, and the half sheet for guests. If the badge path is the open question, start with event badges or book a demo and bring last year's badge.

Frequently asked questions