This is an old revision of the document!
On 4/28/06 RobLandley said: “MarkMiller can set up the convention so you can take credit cards at the door. He did that for LinuCon, and it worked quite well. (Live approvals, not the paper and send it in kind.) I believe he still has the credit card swiper machines and everything.”
4/28/06 - Ron Wilson - The missing element was/is a proper merchant accound. Otherwise, I do have Perl code for credit processing, though the swipe machines are more convenient for in-person payments.
For prereg, we were accepting credit cards via PayPal, but their system does not distinguish event admissions from any other kind of payment, so we had to cut off all PayPal payments well in advance.
Why computerized At the Door registration?
Partly, Penguicon is a technical convention. Computers for rregistration fit in. Mostly, however, doing data entry with the registrant standing right there resolves issues with hard to read registration forms.
Why not “self service” registration?
We were going to do this, but decided the physical realities didn't work this time. Inside the Ops/Registration room, the only place for a self sevice terminal would have been the corner where many things were being stored. We considered the terrace outside the room, but running an ethernet cable out there was not an option and we did not have own private WiFi. Maybe this can be worked out for next time. I'm very disappointed about this.
Other comments
This time, with Ops and Registration sharing a room, setting up an Ops query terminal was unnecessary.
Last time, the 2nd (and last) year at the Novi Sheraton, a PC was configured and tested, but was never used.
For more history on this, see the AdventuresInAtTheDoorRegistration document.