Imagine going into your attic or crawlspace and pulling out an old shoe box, looking inside and finding some treasures that remind you of your high school days. Shoe boxes full of faded pictures and buttons are fun, but I’m not sure they will have the same appeal to kids in 2012.

Recently, I came across the term Infographic and realized that it does the same thing as the shoe box in the sense that you can use this tool to collect memories.

If you break down the word you can probably guess what an Infographic is — but the definition (I am paraphrasing Wikipedia here) is that Infographics are graphics that represent information, data or knowledge. They can convey complex information quickly and clearly.

So I got to thinking, this is a great tool for teachers! Infographics probably have plenty of uses in the classroom, especially when it comes to helping students better comprehend data sets. But here is a more practical idea.

Have students create an Infographic of their high school career and noteworthy events that took place in their life during this time — sort of like the shoebox idea. This is just one of many visual tools that teachers can use when trying to engage students and (to me) it would be a heck of a lot of fun to have the students interpret each others’ Infographics to see if they agree on what the most important or most memorable events from high school were.

What a great way to chronograph grad!

Seeing as it’s almost the holiday season, we wanted to surprise all of you with a special gift – a new feature that will surely add an interesting dynamic to your elections!

Multiple Votes per Ballot

Multiple votes per ballot (aka Weighted Voting) is a way of allowing one person to have more influence on an election than another voter. We wanted to implement this feature as a way of tackling the condominium board community and homeowners associations. It is also extremely useful for proxy voting at board elections. We have gotten a lot of requests for this feature, so I’m pleased that we able to introduce it to everyone! In the past ElectionBuddy operated on a “One person, one vote” tallying system. With this new feature, organizations can assign multiple votes to a ballot, when elections are set in the First Past The Post, and Referendum method.

Who uses Weighted Voting

While weighted voting can be used for a variety of applications, it is prominently seen in elections done by homeowners associations and condominium boards – where multiple votes can be assigned to a ballot. For more information on how condominium boards across Canada operate their elections, I invite you to read our Condominium Board Blog Series. We have also looked at US Homeowners Associations and Condominium Boards to see how ElectionBuddy might be beneficial to them.For example, in a Condominium Board Election, John owns 5 units in a building totaling 18,000 sq. ft. and Amanda only owns 1 unit for 2000 sq. ft . The way votes are completed for this board are such that John would receive 18 votes and Amanda would receive 2 votes, on their respective ballots.  You will notice that most condominium bylaws state that number of votes someone receives is set by how much square feet they own.

How to Use it in ElectionBuddy

We realize most elections operate on “a one person, one vote” tallying system, and didn’t want to impact those who use it that way in the slightest. ElectionBuddy users love the simplicity of the software, so we wanted to keep it out of the hair of users who won’t be using it. Here’s how to use it:

1. In Step 1: Election Details, elect either First past the post or Referendum. A new option will appear below where you can assign how many ballots each vote is worth. Note:  If you select “One vote per ballot”, then ElectionBuddy will appear as normal.
2. If you chose “Multiple votes per ballot”, you’ll notice a brand new email address and voter information field on Step 3: Voter Setup. Whether you select,  Email ballots, printed ballots, choose to distribute ballots yourself, or a combination of the three, you will be able to assign multiple votes per ballot!
3. The Ballot Identifier is our unique way of attributing a number of assigned votes to a certain person. For example, if you are using manual keys, then you need to which voting key is whose, as they will be weighted differently. The Ballot Identifier could be an apartment number, phone number, really anything that you’ll know how many votes a voting key is worth.

We’d love to hear what you think about this new feature. We are all extremely excited about it and hope you are too! Please leave us a comment below, or reach out to us on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s been a while since InviteRight has acquired a new appearance. Over the past few months, we have worked attentively at the design of the application and always considered users on how confortable and enjoyable it is to create new events and view and extract all the data gathered from the system. Some of the changes have been drastic while others are very subtle. The new design will be implemented in the next few weeks so in the meantime; I will provide a sneak peak at some of the new look and feel.

Administration Area
You may notice that our mascot “Dwight” will be emerging more in our system. He is here to aid and direct you through any problems that you may stumble upon. When you first log into the system, you may spot Dwight at the top of the screen. This new administration bar Dwight sits in extends across the screen allowing you to easily see your login information, sign out button, help button and the capability to jump to any of your events instantly.

Buttons
The buttons on the site are now rounder and colourful. In sharp glance, all of the action buttons are more visible and invoke a more gratifying feeling.

Event List
The data in the event list is now simpler to read. The heading of the columns are bold and data is separated within a table. Subtle shades of grey and white are alternated between each row for ease of viewing large amounts of data.

These are just some of the alterations we have implemented. We hope you enjoyed this sneak peak of the design changes we have implemented just for you! Stayed tuned for the system update!

For the past couple of weeks, I have done a year-end review of all the features we’ve implemented since last summer, as well features you maybe not have been aware about. I realize it’s still August, but I explain why a recap was done now rather than December/January. Part 1 and Part 2 can viewed here and here.

But before I invite you to help us develop and introduce new feature, I would first like to thank you for a great year. We’ve had so much fun at watching your elections take place. We passed 1000 elections in April. We’ve seen ElectionBuddy used for all different types of organizations, including a number of non-profits and prestigious schools  And just last month we ran our biggest ever election! So from all of us at EventIQ… Thank You for the great year!!!

Right, now on to the good stuff!

As always, we value your feedback. It’s how we can improve our services, and develop a community of election organizers, and introduce new features.

What would you like to see in the near future? Are there any features that you think we can introduce to aid in your elections?

Leave us a comment below or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. Whoever comes up with the next great feature that we should develop, will get a very nice prize!

Please welcome the newest addition to InviteRight…the Status Bar! This little guy plays a big role in enhancing the registration experience of your guests.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, EventIQ is very attuned to details and we’re constantly tweaking and improving InviteRight and all of our products. A crucial element to the registration experience that we are very attentive towards is immediate user feedback – when you click on a button you want to know right away if: 1) you have activated the action 2) your action is being processed. This is where the Status Bar really shines.

Now any time a green proceed forward button is clicked you will know right away that your registration information is being processed. There’s absolutely no chance for confusion nor the need to senselessly click the proceed button repeatedly (I’ll save you my rant on those repeated Elevator and Crosswalk button mashers!)

All improvements to the guest registration experience have been met with extensive testing. For example, the buttons on the Visual Floor Map likewise offers immediate feedback on such information as seating availability, and names of other seated guests. Most importantly our system allocates Table/Booth selection priority on a first come first serve basis right down to the very nanosecond! For events that can expect a mad rush of registration, InviteRight is well equipped to ensure a fair and equitable registration.

Immediate feedback is also important in the creation status of events. A similar progress bar appears whenever you click on the Save button when you are Creating your events, so you will know that all of your important changes have been committed.

At EventIQ, every step of your guest registration experience is important to us, and the Status Bar offers a logical and intuitive indicator that will help to reduce confusion during the registration process. This ultimately this will save you time and effort in having to answer fewer phone calls or emails from guests wanting to confirm their registration.

See, a little bit of smart design goes a long way!

Spring time is upon us and with it comes the excitement of change and renewal. Here at EventIQ we’re starting the season off with a fresh new look to Inviteright. If you’ve logged onto your account recently to create a new event or edit an existing one you’ll have witnessed the improvements first hand.
Our re-designed interface is even more intuitive than before, mirroring the look and format of the registration page that are used by your guests. The colour coordination and blocked off titles for each section allow for easy navigation and logical work flow from one area to the next. You’ll find creating your events even easier and faster than before! This new design will save you time, which makes it easier for you to create even more events in Inviteright.

I can attest to how this design has already made a tremendous impact on my setups with our clients. Every week I juggle between the creation of several new events so I spend a great deal of time within the Create status. With the smart new layout, my eyes move from one important detail to the next with ease. Now admittedly this may not seem as though it should warrant such enthusiasm, but believe me, as any event organizer will tell you, the success of any event is in the details, big or small. At EventIQ we place a great deal of emphasize on our attention to details, because the absence of such details can have a major impact on your Guest’s registration experience. The new design maps everything out cleanly and logically so that I won’t miss those details…and neither will you!

This is only the first of many improvements that we’ve made recently and I’m very excited to show them off in the coming weeks. You’ll learn about fantastic new features in InviteRight, and I’ll even uncover some old features you may have never known about before. Feel free to check out www.inviteright.com for yourself and take a look at all our new features.

The lull of winter is over, and we’re ready to spring into action, so let’s go!

We built a website awhile back – www.cheercards.net.  We did it because there are are number of people on our team who used to play competitive sports and some of us have kids who are playing now and we wanted to give something back…

Cheercards.net helps you create wallet sized team rosters for kids sports – soccer, basketball, football.  Coaches give them to parents, parents hand them out to relatives.  Fans cheer using team players’ names – no more “Go Number 7!” Or print game, practice and snack schedules, coach and parent lists and much more…

We’ll email you the cards so you can print them yourself, or we can print and and mail you the cards cheer cards.

And while we support the website with donations, the reality is we do it for free… the hope and the payback is that we put a smile on a kids face

If you have used cheercards.net, and it has put a smile on your kid’s face, please tell us the story to put a smile on OUR team’s face.

At EventIQ, we are dedicated to refining and building new features for all of our products. Many of our improvements were in fact, the product of all the fantastic feedback and suggestions we received from our fine users. To ensure that you are able to utilize all of our newest developments, we suggest that you clear your web browser’s cache every so often.

For those unfamiliar with the term, cache refers to the temporary files stored on your computer to allow your web browser to function quicker.  Issues arise however when your web browser draws from this internal cache rather than from the updated files hosted on the web sites you visit.  Clearing your cache periodically ensures that you will have the most up to date user experience with EventIQ.

Please watch the following videos to learn how to clear your cache, and please be on the look out for all our new and exciting features!

To clear cache and cookies in Internet Explorer

To clear cache and cookies in Firefox

To clear cache and cookies in Safari

In InviteRight, it’s really easy to get fast answers to tough questions by creating your own reports through views.  When you create an event and start accepting responses, 2 views are automatically created for you:

1) All Responses (showing your entire list of guests and all their contact or professional details), and
2) All Payments (which lists the status of all transactions per guest).

Switching between these 2 main views is easy, giving you an instant update on your entire guest list.   Within these 2 main views, you can instantly edit records, send reminders to guests who haven’t paid yet, or even refund guests when necessary.  You can also export these views as a spreadsheet or text file.

InviteRight also makes it easy for you to generate your own custom views .  For example, say you wanted to provide your venue with a list of guests and their special meal requests.  You can define only those details and InviteRight will instantly create a view that you can download as a spreadsheet and email to your caterer.

 InviteRight also summarizes information automatically for you  For example, the Fee Summary gives a simple overview of all payments which you can sort by payment method:

And if you want to see the status of payments, you can access the Payment Log to view transaction details for payments:

No matter how many guests you have, InviteRight makes it easy to report and manage the guest list.  This means you spend less time on administration and more time on planning the fun parts of your event.

Based on feedback from our user community, it was very common for returning officers to accidentally misspell an email address when creating the eligible voter list.

To help with this, we improved ElectionBuddy error checking to make sure the email address is of valid form (eg. example@example.example).  We also gave returning officers the ability to edit email addresses after the election has been started. This is great when you find that one of your voters lets you know they’ve changed their email address, but you’ve already sent the ballot.  Changes will tracked to ensure the integrity of the election.