vCards

Allow attendees to share personal information using a QR code

Bill Horsman avatar
Written by Bill Horsman
Updated over a week ago

What is a vCard?

vCards are a standardaized way of sharing personal contact information. A common example would be printing someone’s vCard on their badge to be used for lead capture by sponsorship booths. In raw form they look like this:

BEGIN:VCARD 
VERSION:4.0
N:Moneypenny;Eve;;;
FN:Eve Moneypenny
EMAIL:eve@example.org
ORG:Acme, Inc.
END:VCARD

When vCards are enabled on an event (Settings > Tickets > Attendee vCards) we embed information for each attendee into a QR code:

Hint: with a compatible smartphone, use your camera app
to reveal Eve's personal information.

How to use vCards at your event

The most common use of vCards in an event context is allowing attendees to easily share their contact details with each other and with any interested parties such as a sponsor at a booth.

Attendees can simply scan someone’s QR code with their compatible smartphone to add them to their address book.

Sponsors dealing with many attendees may want to use their own apps with more advanced features to capture attendee data, for example, allowing them to easily export data after an event. An example would be https://badgy.ie/

Typically vCard QR Codes are printed onto the attendee badge to allow easy access during the event and can be exported as part of the Attendee export.

Privacy concerns

As an organiser it is important that you respect the privacy of your attendees. Their information should never be shared with anyone outside of the event organizing team without explicit consent from the attendee.

If you are including the vCard QR Code on attendee badges you should ensure that each sponsor understands that they are responsible for any data collected and that consent is gained at the time of scanning the badge. This is part of GDPR compliance that every organizer must adhere to if they are based in, or have attendees from, the EEC.

The difference between the vCard QR Code and the Ticket QR Code

The vCard QR Code looks similar to the Ticket QR Code that attendees can use to enter an event (find out more about check-ins here) but it's not the same. The Ticket QR Code should be considered private and only shared between the attendee and the organizers.

  • The vCard QR Code only contains name, email and company name (if known).

  • The Ticket QR Code can be indirectly used to access more information (e.g. the answer to any question or their address).

Don't share the URL to generate the vCard image. You should only share the image itself.


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