Community/PaperlessKiosk

Paperless Kiosk For Conferences
The problem is that we get to conferences with way too much paper and since paper is relatively inexpensive to print but costly to store and transport, we end up throwing away a lot of it when the event wraps up and that makes me feel bad all the times. The material that gets printed is available on the Marketing Portal.

I don't have a definitive solution for the problem so the candidate should be somebody interested in


 * precisely frame the problem
 * investigate the state of the art: I'm sure that we're not the only ones that noticed and some (partial) solutions may exist
 * take inspiration from the best solutions found, add anything needed and start coding

The expected outcomes for this project go from learning how to solve social problems, learn how to interact with multiple stakeholders (since the needs of the Marketing and Events team will have to be taken into account) and eventually also write some code. So coding a solution is only a part of this idea, maybe not even the main one.

The candidate may be interested in learning about market research, interviewing multiple stakeholders and develop a working plan with them. Since I'm not a coder myself I'd be more interested in the initial research because I myself am not an expert in this field. I'd be happy to provide help to find experts for coding problems, should they arise.

Contribution
The mockups:http://imgur.com/a/IanYC represent my idea of a solution to the paperless kiosk problem and represents an alternative to the SCHED platform currently being used by Openstack for it's mobile app website.

As can be seen from the mockups:http://imgur.com/a/IanYC, my solution will consist of a Ruby on Rails mobile app website with HTML5 and responsive design (which will allow the website to instantly adapt to whatever screen may be viewing it at the time.). Specifically regarding the remit to display the pdfs, presentations and other marketing material, I have proposed a solution with the whitepapers option (as seen on the mockups) which will display the documentation, allow it to be listed and sorted and also provide an option for the attendee to either view the material online or download it to their device.

The mockups propose a solution for a mobile web app, for use by OpenStack, to support it's conferences.

My decision to use a mobile web app, as opposed to a native mobile app (Android/iOS/Blackberry), for this solution is for the following reasons:-

1. A native mobile app doesn't provide event planners enough control in order to execute a mobile strategy successfully

2. At this time, there are over 800,000+ apps in Google Play (Android store) and 900,000+ apps in Apple App store making a conference app difficult to find

3. Even if a native app is launched a month before an event, only 50% of attendees are likely to download it ahead of time. Imagine a scenario where the other 50% of attendees arrive on the day and attempt to use the venue's wifi (which would tend to be of limited bandwidth) to download the app leading to huge delays or worse still, connections falling off

4. Apple, Google and Blackberry systems tend to demand approval of a native app before deployment making the process fraught with difficulty

5. Mobile web apps, on the other hand, are available instantly and will reconfigure itself for the device that happens to be viewing it at the time whether that be an iPhone, Dell desktop, the latest Amazon kindle, Samsung tablet or Blackberry phone

6. A mobile web app, and it's content, can be optimized for social media. Schedules, talk descriptions can be instantly shared on social networks making this information instantly available to the world

7. Content on a mobile web app can be quickly updated, by an event organizer, seamlessly, behind the scenes, offering them flexibility and control

mockups: http://imgur.com/a/IanYC

Contributed by: Angela Ebirim