search

Appsterdam / open

Appsterdam is an open community-driven organization. This public repository contains all the knowledge used in the creation and running of Appsterdam.
41 stars 14 forks source link

Who comes to the Appsterdam HQ? #58

Closed judykitteh closed 9 years ago

judykitteh commented 10 years ago

I would love to have a way to keep record of who comes to the Appsterdam HQ so we can measure things like:

Being a rather non-technical person, my low-tech solution would be to have a sign-in sheet on paper or online database (Google doc), but that's cumbersome and inefficient. There must be some better way, something similar to a Foursquare check-in (but not Foursquare, yuck), perhaps just using Twitter like BounceSpace/Seats2Meet does.

What suggestions do you have to solve this?

mattfeigal commented 10 years ago

Have you seen Mediamatic's RFID chip system? Years ago, they created sensors that would log your entry (or interact with their exhibition). It linked an RFID chip to your userid (which could be email, facebook, twitter, etc). They printed up 1000s of cheap cute keychain fobs ("ik tags") and distributed them freely. But you could also use the system with any RFID, for instance you could register the RFID on your OV Chipkaart. These days you could do the same, or let people use their phones (NFC or Apple's version) So:

  1. there's options for cheap & easy signin technology (get readers that can read NFC and/or Apple's version and/or RFID)
  2. there's ways to make it fun and Appsterdam branded (cute RFID keychain fobs or stickers, get online points, "badges" or recognition, etc)
matteom commented 10 years ago

@mattfeigal What do you mean for Apple version? AFAIK there is nothing like that on the iPhone and there won't be in the immediate future. Android makers also started dropping the technology, if I remember correctly from the news.

ratkins commented 10 years ago

Do we have our own wifi router?

If we do, I think the simplest solution is to get it to log all the MAC addresses (as in "Media Access Control", the unique identifying number of a wireless device) that connect. This will get you basic stats, and we can work out an indirect way of mapping MAC addresses to people if we need to.

If A-Lab are providing the wifi you might be able to sweet-talk the admin into doing this logging for the closest access point to the Appsterdam space, but it's an external dependency.

ratkins commented 10 years ago

The "modern" version of the RFID system suggested by @mattfeigal is to hack something up with an iBeacon (which uses Bluetooth 4.0 aka Bluetooth Low Energy.) This will work with the iPhone 4S and later and whatever Android devices support BTLE.

ratkins commented 10 years ago

However, I really do like the sign-in sheet idea. Low tech, simple, reliable.

judykitteh commented 10 years ago

We don't have our own wifi router.

I know about Mediamatic's OV chipkaart/RFID sign-in thing, which is exactly what I would love to have, but I don't have the know-how to get the right equipment or set it up. I would love for someone else to handle this because 1) I'm doing a lot of things already and 2) there'd be less of a chance for a non-technical person to mess it up.

Having a paper sign-in sheet, although a quick solution, makes the organization look bad as a group centered around technology.

mattfeigal commented 10 years ago

Some good news, I see that Mediamatic has shared some of their knowledge in an article on their sitehttp://www.mediamatic.net/52471/en/interfacing-rfid. They have a examples and a python library for talking to an RFID reader. So that's a good start, I know we have python people around.

If it's like other card reader systems I've seen, it just gives you a long code back. The trickier part will be then connecting that number to "Judy" or "Matteo", your Appsterdam or Twitter identities. At Mediamatic, they have a touchscreen interface for setting up your account / linking to your profiles. But I can't tell which of their articles (AnyMeta? Federated Social Networks?) is up-to-date.

I have been out of touch with Mediamatic for a while, but I'll send them an email, see if they have any helpful materials. (... is Axel still active? I see he won an ikTag / Mediamatic related contest from 5 years ago called ikWin http://www.mediamatic.net/52953/en/ikwin-google-battle, maybe he knows more)

I'll report back when I hear from them. In the meantime, anyone else with ideas please pitch in!

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 5:21 PM, judykitteh notifications@github.com wrote:

We don't have our own wifi router.

I know about Mediamatic's OV chipkaart/RFID sign-in thing, which is exactly what I would love to have, but I don't have the know-how to get the right equipment or set it up. I would love for someone else to handle this because 1) I'm doing a lot of things already and 2) there'd be less of a chance for a non-technical person to mess it up.

Having a paper sign-in sheet, although a quick solution, makes the organization look bad as a group centered around technology.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/Appsterdam/open/issues/58#issuecomment-25458686 .

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” - George Bernard Shaw