Consideration for split level, multi-track, repeating events, wait lists

[marcyDel]

I'm so thrilled GitHub is thinking about an event app!! I'm starting this thread to see if there is any hope in getting an event app that allows for the following:

1.Split Levels (no experience, beginners, intermediates, and advanced)
2.Mutil-track (dependent on the number of rooms/space available)
3.Repeating events (weekly for n weeks or custom)
4.Wait lists for all ticket types and levels
5. Volunteer sign ups
6 Youth mentor sign ups
7. Mentors '"with kids coming to the event" sign ups
8. Tracking attendance and ability level

Ideally, I'd love a system that had a preregistration component, that just sent invitations to the qualified participants and sorted out the extra "staff" accordingly… yes, I must be dreaming…

Below is some background on what we're doing in Mountain View...

CoderDojo Silicon Valley @ Mountain View has been operating since Aug 2012, and now offers monthly Scratch or web development sessions for first timers, beginners and intermediates. Following in the footsteps of the great Octocat, we just got done with our first 6-week mini series focusing on three tracks; Python, web dev and Corona SDK!

We realized, having beginners and intermediates in the same session was not helpful to the intermediates and intermediates or emerging coders needed separate sessions dedicated to their abilities. Having split level sessions has worked really well, and allows intermediates come and mentor the beginner sessions!

Things have been going well, except Eventbrite is giving me a splitting headache because it can't handle, split level or multi-track events at all nor repeating events very well.

We also have wait lists of up to 50 people for some events. Eventbrite will allow you to have different tickets types, but only one wait list for one ticket type. Also the only info collected in Eventbrite for the wait lists is name and email address. It doesn't work at all for any event with prerequisites. I end up having to split the event into multiple events with separate IDs and juggle the mayhem that follows. UGH!

We also run into issues using Eventbrite to sign up parent volunteers, mentors with kids and youth mentors, because capacity needs to be well managed as to not overpack the room.

Of course, we'd love to be able to track a kid's attendance and give out badges and belts, but there is nothing in place to make this possible.

High demand and long wait lists are why we have these pains, but we're so excited to be reaching out to so many kids!

Automation is the only way to simplify this and bring things back to a reasonable level of effort, or we could scale back. Double Ugh!

Thanks for considering these ideas, and let me know if you have any questions.

Marcy

[mikefowler]

Thanks so much for the thoughts, @marcyDel. We'll process this and figure out where some of this fits into our vision for the app.

[marcyDel]

Thanks. I realize every dojo does things very different, so I look forward to seeing what you create and am happy to be a beta tester or whatever you need.

Oh….If I only had one wish, my number one item would be a wait list that contains more than the user name and email. If the wait list could include all the registration details, like age, gender, experience level, etc,. it would allow us to easily push invites to the participants, rather than trying to reconcile issues after the fact and would save a lot of time.

Ok I'm done ;-)

Marcy