Registration for the 71st AAS Gala Dinner.

Before 01 / 05

Every detail, and every change to it, went through the Secretariat.

Guests answered by message, by email, and in person. One variation from one guest meant another round trip, and the corrected list still had to be retyped at the end. Nothing moved unless the Secretariat moved it.

After 02 / 05

The details go straight in, and changes never come back.

The AAS Secretariat sends one link to a table, once. Each guest enters their own name, dietary requirement and contact detail. A guest who changes their mind edits their own row, and nobody has to be told.

What that removed 03 / 05

One message was never one message.

A variation never arrived as data. It arrived as a sentence: actually I'll have the fish instead, you've spelled my name wrong, can I bring my wife. Somebody then had to work out who was writing, which table they sat at and which field it touched, before a single character could be corrected. Then reply, then edit.

Multiply that by every guest and every kind of change, and the cost was never the typing. It was the re-orientation, once per message, and the ones that quietly scrolled past on a busy day and never made it to the list at all. Remove one message and all three go with it.

The work now 04 / 05

One message, self-service, nothing lost in translation.

No invitations to send one at a time, no replies to collect, no reminders to write. The guest taps the link and lands on one form. No account to create and no password to choose, for something they will use once.

If this is familiar 05 / 05

Is one person the only route your information can travel?

That is usually the cheapest thing in an organisation to stop relying on. Tell me which process it is and I will look at it with you.

Tell me about one process