Event organisers, conference teams and exhibitors
How to run QR codes across an event — badges, booths and sessions
An event prints more square centimetres of QR code than almost any other operation — badges, lanyards, booth banners, room-door schedules, slide footers — and prints all of it before the schedule is final.
The way through is to sort the codes into two kinds. Details that will not change, like the date of the event itself, go in free static codes. Everything printed before the agenda settles goes behind dynamic links, so the artwork can be at the printer while the destinations are still arguments in a planning channel.
- 1
Put a calendar code on the save-the-date
An event QR code encodes the name, date, time and location in iCalendar format — one scan and the event is in the attendee's calendar with their own reminders attached. It is generated entirely in your browser, free, with no account. One caution: the event is encoded in floating local time, which is right for an in-person venue; for a virtual event with a spread-out audience, state the time zone in the description.
- 2
Give every placement its own dynamic link
Badge backs, the booth banner, the registration desk, each room door. The links can all open the same agenda page today — the point is that each placement reports its own scans, and each can be repointed independently when the schedule moves after the badges are printed.
- 3
Route the agenda code by time of day
A dynamic link can carry time rules, so one code on the room door opens the morning workshop's page before lunch and the afternoon panel's after. Rules are evaluated in order — time of day, then location, then A/B split, then operating system, then the default — so the fallback for outside-hours scans is whatever default you set.
- 4
Gate the private sessions
A password in front of the destination keeps the executive briefing off the hallway floor when someone photographs the door sign. A scan limit caps a link at the size of the room — the count is reserved atomically, so two people scanning in the same second cannot push it past capacity. An expiry date closes the whole thing down cleanly when the event ends.
- 5
Put your networking codes on the badge
A LinkedIn QR code on the badge back opens your profile with no typing at a noisy stand. A hosted business card goes one better: one tap saves your contact as a vCard on any phone, and the details can be edited after five hundred badges are printed.
- 6
Swap the destinations after the event
The week after, repoint the agenda links at the recordings and the slides, and the booth link at your follow-up offer. Codes on lanyards people took home, in printed programs, in photos on social media — all of them start opening the post-event content on the next scan. Nothing printed becomes litter.
What this will not do
- A scan limit caps a shared link; it is not ticketing. There is no unique code per attendee and no redemption state — for real access control you need a ticketing system, with our codes pointing at it.
- We do not host your slides, recordings or agenda pages. The code points at wherever you publish them.
- Time rules route by the hour in a timezone you set; location rules route by country only. There is no per-session check-in logic beyond what routing and scan caps give you.
- The free plan includes three dynamic links, which covers a small meetup. A conference with a link per placement needs a paid plan.
Tools used in this guide
Questions
Other guides
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- How to password-protect, expire, or scan-limit a QR codeFor codes on things that stop being valid: a door ticket, a limited run, a document that should not outlive its meeting.
- How to choose between a static and a dynamic QR codeThe difference is not quality or scanning speed — it is whether the destination lives in the ink or behind it. That decides everything else.
- How to make a digital business card you can update after printingOne code on the card that opens your details as they are today, not as they were at the print shop.
- How to put a QR code on a yard sign that outlives the listingThe sign is the durable object, not the listing. Give each sign a code you repoint as properties come and go.
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