Instructions¶
Managing a conference is a complex task that involves many different aspects. This chapter will guide you through the process of creating a conference in LionsBase.
The main difference between a “conference” and a normal “event” is that a conference is typically used for the yearly district and multiple district convention where voting is involved. This means that the system must be able to generate tickets for the participants and to scan them at the entrance of the conference.
In addition, the participant must be able to register individually for the different parts of the conference, e.g., the gala dinner, the general assembly, the workshops, etc.
And since a Lions convention may involve foreign Lions and non-Lions guests, the system must be able to handle a “guest program” typically targeting only those guests.
Creating a basic conference¶
Create a new event record and configure it as follows:
Event type: Event with registration and questions
Nature: National Convention
Additional options:
Allow external guests/partners
Generate personal tickets (including QR-code)
Generate invoices (this is optional, but recommended)
We can summarize the steps to create a conference as depicted below:
Next, configure the dates and times for the whole conference. A national convention in Switzerland typically lasts from Thursday (for governors) to Saturday (for all participants). So that the conference/event will span over three days.
Choose a wise registration due date, typically only a few days before the conference starts. This is important because most participants will register only at the last minute. Do not worry, additional options are available to allow early birds to register at a reduced price!
Next, switch to the “Extended information” tab and configure one or more target groups. We recommend that you first work with some “testing” target groups to ensure that the registration process works as expected. Once you are confident that everything works as expected, you can choose the final target group(s), typically “All members”.
Preparing the program of the conference¶
The program of the conference or the national convention is typically divided into several parts, and we suggest to “group” them by day and possibly separate them if they are supposed to be aimed at guests or members only.
A program will look like this:
Each part of the program should be configured as a separate “question”:
Use the type “Title” for the groups or sections (in green)
Use the type “Checkboxes (yes/no answers)” for all other parts of the program. In addition, you should mark the question as being a “meta-event”.
This is depicted in the following screenshot:
Marking a question as a “meta-event” will make it possible to finely control that “question” with many additional options like start and end dates, location (room XYZ), price, etc.
Hint
We suggest that you use a meaningful title for the question, e.g., “Gala dinner” or “General assembly District 102W” and that you use that title for both the “Question or Text” and “Allowed Answers/Options” fields of that question (or meta-event):
As you will read below, the configuration of the meta-event is crucial to ensure that the registration process works as expected. You may restrict registration to some target groups, set a price, and much more. To help you keeping track of the different parts of the program, LionsBase shows a few icons next to the title. This shows if there are some restrictions on the number of participants, a price set, etc.
Targeting groups¶
To target a specific group of participants, you can switch to the “Access” tab of the corresponding question (or meta-event) and configure the target group.
Typical target groups are:
Some function groups (e.g., “Governor Council”)
District XYZ for the corresponding general assembly
“Lions/LEO members” for general events such as the gala dinner or some workshops
“Guests” (and/or “External guests”) for events that are not meant for Lions members but for guests only
You may naturally combine several target groups for a single question (or meta-event). For instance, the gala dinner is probably open to all Lions and LEO members and to their guests.
Granting voting rights¶
If the meta-event is a general assembly, you must grant voting rights to the participants. This is done by switching to the “General” tab of the corresponding question and toggling on the “Quorum is required” option:
Then switch back to the “Access” tab where you will see two ways to targeting the participants as described below:
Restrict question to following members. Choose any group that may participate in the general assembly. This typically includes all members of any district.
Voting allowed only for the following members. Choose the group of members that may vote in the general assembly. This typically includes only the delegates of the corresponding district if the question (or meta-event) is a general assembly of some district, or the Lions members of all districts (but not the LEO members!) for the general assembly of the multiple district.
You will use some “district” target group for the delegates, but internally, the system will only consider the N first members of each club showing up at the entrance and consider them as delegates based on the number of allowed delegates for that club.
In addition, you should switch to the “Review” tab and configure the “Reviewers of the participants” as the various members that will stand at the entrance of the general assembly and will check the tickets of the participants thanks to the QR-code scanner in the LionsBase mobile application.
The QR-code scanner will mark the participant as “present” and will show the reviewer a message if that participant is allowed to vote or not, thus supposed to receive a voting card or alike.
Prices¶
If you want to charge a fee for some parts of the conference, you can configure the price in the “Prices” tab of the corresponding question (or meta-event).
Hint
Each time you configure a price, a flat rate (see below) or have early registration discounts, the system will automatically show a table with the different prices and options to the participants. This is depicted in the following screenshot:
Flat rates¶
Sometimes, you may want to charge a flat rate for a group of meta-events. For instance, you may want to charge a price for attending the district general assembly or the multiple district general assembly, and both should include the fee for the lunch, while still allowing guests to register only for the lunch, that would then be charged separately.
Let’s assume that the following fees apply:
Lunch alone: CHF 45.00 (currency automatically depends on your country)
Each district general assembly, incl. lunch: CHF 120.00
Multiple district general assembly, incl. lunch: CHF 120.00
In addition, attending both the district and multiple district general assemblies should be charged only once, i.e., CHF 120.00.
To achieve this, you should assign the price of CHF 45.00 to the meta-event corresponding to the lunch (under the “Prices” tab of that question) and tick the “Prices are covered by flat rate” option:
You should save the event and then switch to the “Prices” tab of the event and configure the flat rates.
A flat rate is a given “bundle price”, similarly to the prices associated with the meta-events (the lunch meta-event in our example) and two lists specifying the meta-events that flat rate should apply to, and the meta-events that should be considered as “free of charges” when the flat rate is applied.
The system will automatically let you choose among the different meta-events whose “prices” section has the option “Prices are covered by flat rate” ticked for the first list.
In our example, we want to charge CHF 120.00 for attending a district general assembly, and offer the lunch for free. And we do not want to charge anything if attending the multiple district general assembly as well. To do so, we should create a flat rate record that we will name e.g., “District general assembly”, configure the price to CHF 120.00 for everybody (possibly with some discount regarding the “Lions” price for “LEO” members), and select the various district meta-events:
As described in the screenshot above, this means that the flat rate of CHF 120.00 will apply to the registration to any of those meta-events.
Note
To make it clear, a participant registering to, say, two of the selected meta-events, will be charged for each of them, thus CHF 240.00. Since any given participant is not supposed to attend different district general assemblies which, in Switzerland, are held at the same time, this is not an issue. But if this is the case, you should create a separate flat rate for each of the different groups of meta-events.
Then, you should select the lunch and the multiple district general assembly as meta-events “free of charges”:
Similarly, you should create another flat rate for the multiple district general assembly, this time choosing only that meta-event as covered by flat rate, and having the lunch as a meta-event “free of charges”.
Hint
You do not need to make the district general assembly meta-events “free of charges” in that case, as the system will look for the various flat rates and apply the first one that matches the registration.
Early registration discounts¶
The “Prices” tab of the event itself allows you to configure early registration discounts. This is useful to encourage participants to register early and to help you plan the conference more efficiently.
You can configure up to two different early bird discounts based on the date of registration:
For each question (or meta-event), you can configure whether the early registration discounts apply. This is done in the “Prices” tab of the corresponding question, by toggling “Apply Early Registration Discounts”:
Invoicing¶
If you configured the event to generate invoices, the system will automatically generate (club) invoices for the participants and take the various options into account, e.g., the early registration discounts, the flat rates, etc.
An additional “Invoice” tab will appear in the event record, where you can configure the invoice settings such as the “sender”, the IBAN number, VAT, etc.
Similarly to the reviewers of the participants, you should assign some members to the management of the invoices. This will allow them to generate the invoices when the event is over, and to send them to the clubs and the external guests.
The generation of the invoices is done by visiting one’s club website and reaching the list of participants of the event. The system will show a button to generate the invoices for the participants.
Note
A PDF file will be generate for each club, listing all their participants and guests and the amount to pay, together with the selected options.
The PDF files will be grouped by district.
A control list spreadsheet (Excel file) will be generated for the overview of all invoices, and the details to be invoiced manually and separately for external guests not associated to any club.
The whole will be compressed into a ZIP file that you can download.