How Privacy matters to RSVP.lk?

We at RSVP.lk deal with lot of user data, like usernames, contact details and whatever information users enter in registrations forms for each and every event. Some being what they think of the event, why they should be selected to participate the event, what they think about a particular technology, etc.

These data may contain lot of sensitive privacy details of the users. An average event collects roughly round 200, 250 user entries and one entry contain details roughly around 1Mb of different type of data. This means we collect Gigabytes of user data in a particular month!

As we all know, data is money in this era of information & technology. Lot of hype out there for  big data and statistical analysis. Businesses are trying to track everyone having a digital footprint on the Internet, looking for potential customers for their businesses.

As professional Software Engineers we follow "Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice" as recommended by the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force. What the Code of Ethics and Professional Practice recommends about clients' privacy data are as follows.

2.03. Use the property of a client or employer only in ways properly authorized, and with the client's or employer's knowledge and consent.

2.05. Keep private any confidential information gained in their professional work, where such confidentiality is consistent with the public interest and consistent with the law. 

Therefor we are ethically bound to protect these valuable data of our clients. We would not  use these data for our own personal gain. We would not handover these data to any unauthorized 3rd party without the consent and knowledge of the client unless we are forced to do it by a court order. 

Whom we are targeting and why they use RSVP.lk?

We are targeting organizations that host events in Sri Lanka and everyone who participates these events. Specially tech related organizations who host tech events like Google Developer Group, IEEE SL, Linux User Groups, software companies like WSO2, 99x, Microsoft, and various tech related user groups like TweetupSL, JavaColombo, Stackoverflow SL, etc together with their participants are our main focus for now. We hope to focus on other organizations like schools, universities and institutes or other societies when expanding.

Organizations can create events and publish. They can create registration forms for participants, speakers, etc. We have provided tools to help evaluating the responses got for the registration forms and select who should be given chance to participate. They can send invitation emails to these people. Invitees can RSVP their participation through the system. At the days of the event, organizers can check the authenticity of invitations and mark the participation of the participant through the system. Our mobile apps will help in this. 

We have given options like ability to add the events to participants’ calendars ( Google Calendar and Facebook calendar ) and ability to log in to the system through Google+ or Facebook to increase the usability. Each event will have a unique page for it, where organisations can add date, time, venue with a Google Map, and once the event is over they can add the slideshows and photos of event.

How we honor proper financial practices at RSVP.lk?

4.04. Not engage in deceptive financial practices such as bribery, double billing, or other improper financial practices.

Our revenue model is very clear. RSVP.lk will have two organization account types which are free and premium. All participant accounts will be free and anyone can register in RSVP.lk for free. 

When creating an organisation, we charge $10 as a registration fee, but we credit them the whole amount, and their digital wallet will have $10 from the beginning. We charge $5 when creating an event. We will be showing non-annoying ads via Google AdSense platform on event pages which are created by non-premium organisations. Premium organization has to pay $20 dollars per month.

Free organization accounts will have limitations in service, like maximum participant count for an event would be 400, maximum number of pageviews for an event would be 50 per minute . The premium accounts will have these limits raised. Premium accounts will have the facility to host commercial events with ticketing.

If someone wants unlimited service for their organization then RSVP.lk will create a seperate virtual machine instance of the RSVP.lk platform on Amazon Cloud for that organization and there will be a payment for the instance and the billing will be calculated on monthly usage. For example the amount of events hosted in the month, total number of responses received per event will affect the monthly bill of that organization.

There is a huge demand for this kind of platform among organizations, specially with who host tech related events. We have already discussed with Google Developer Group Sri Lanka and they are quite happy to be the first customer. We are working with them to improve the system by understanding their needs. We are planning to launch the system as a pilot trial with Google DevFest 2105.

Why we are unique?

Unique feature in RSVP.lk has is the ability to evaluate the registrants and to select who should get invitations to participate the event. For example, an event like Google DevFest gets around 1000 registrations but only 400 will be invited to participate the event. The problems the organizers face are,

1. selecting the best 400 from 900 registrants
2. sending invitations to the selected 400
3. managing the invitees’ RSVPs
4. validating the invitations at the event gate
5. marking the participated invitees for future references
6. blacklisting people who continuously register for events but do not participate when invited ( Surprisingly, records of events show this as a major issue)

RSVP.lk simplyfies and combines all these processes into one solution. We make the evaluation process easy and intelligent. We keep track of the people who registers, who get invited and who really participate the events. Organizations can see the past records of each participant when in selection process. System automatically grades the users as of their activities. Registrants with more grades will get have a higher chance getting selected in the selection process.

What is RSVP.lk?

RSVP.lk is an event management web platform that helps different organizations or individuals to host and manage events and its participants. RSVP.lk mainly has two domains. One is for the organizers and the other for participants. RSVP.lk lets organizers to create and host events. These events will have their own page with all the details and registration forms which are custom created for participants to register for the event. Participants can log in to RSVP.lk and see all available events and register to them. RSVP.lk lets participants to see all events they registered and participated before and suggest new available events based on their previous participation.

Organizers can then evaluate responses, rate user responses, select and send confirmations to all selected participants. RSVP.lk also helps to maintain vip lists which will be used to send custom invites to events. RSVP.lk also let organizers to issue tickets with a price for events which participants can pay on RSVP.lk through a secure portal. Then RSVP.lk let organizers to correctly check in participants at the venue. After the event organizers can see the summary of which participants confirmed and came and who didn't come. Organizers will then have the chance to down rate people who confirmed and did not participate. Participants will also get the chance to rate the event as well.