Aarhus 2017 - European Capital of Culture

EasySignup was a great help for Aarhus 2017

In 2017, Aarhus and the 18 other municipalities in Central Denmark Region were named "European Capital of Culture" which involves planning and organizing a wide range of events.

Such a task can’t be done without a registration system to keep track of attendees. EasySignup was originally only intended for registering attendees to the large opening ceremony. However, it was soon discovered that the system could help with much more.

Dorthe Dee and Sofie Van Norde share their experience here. Both were employed at the secretariat for the Aarhus 2017 Foundation as a Communications Officer and Event Coordinator respectively.

EasySignup exceeding our expectations

The plan was to use EasySignup for the big official opening ceremony, where all attendees needed to be registered for security reasons.

However, the employees at the secretariat soon realized that EasySignup could be used to a far greater extent, such as debates, shows etc.

- We would get a number of tickets to manage - up to 1000 tickets. We used EasySignup to register people wanting a ticket. It saved a lot of manual administration and we could easily return a status to the venue about how many tickets we had sold. It worked very well, Sofie explains.

The secretariat also used EasySignup to register and keep track of all the volunteers that assisted in conducting the events.

Dorthe had investigated the possibility of using a signup form on their website. However, it was too technical, complicated and difficult.

- You had to be an expert to set up a signup form on our website meaning that only a few people would be able to manage and edit it. Everybody can use EasySignup. We were up and running in a few days, which were important for us, she explains.

Both Dorthe and Sofie believe that it would have required far more resources to manage event signups without a registration system.

- We couldn’t manage the registrations if we hadn’t had EasySignup. It would be completely impossible if we were to manage it using e-mails and spreadsheets.

The advantages of EasySignup

One of the best things about EasySignup is the ability to control the number of tickets to prevent overbooking. That helped the employees a lot.

- I was very pleased about that. We always have the exact number of attendees at hand. We can quickly see if we have achieved our goal or if we needed to make an effort to sell the last tickets, Sofie elaborates.

Sofie is also pleased about the user-friendliness of EasySignup – both from an employee and attendee point of view.

- Uniformity is the key in such a large project. We quickly learned how to use the system in the office and our guests learned how they signed up for the events. It makes it easy and valuable for us to use.

Another advantage was the security that EasySignup provide in terms of registering VIPs.

- It was important for us that the system is running on a secure connection and is reliable. EasySignup was fully complaint with our needs, Dorthe explains.

The dialogue with EasySignup was very good

It’s mainly Dorthe who has been in contact with EasySignup during the project. She is very pleased with the dialogue with EasySignup.

-I receive a reply the same day I send an e-mail. It's so nice.

Dorthe and Sofie believe that anyone who currently uses e-mail, phone and spreadsheets for manual administration of signups should take a look at EasySignup.

- When others ask how we handled our hosting of European Capital of Culture 2017, we will definitely mention EasySignup as one of the positive experiences, Sofie concludes.