Flock 2016 Software Tool Comparisons

Feature	Conference Manager
	Open Source Event Manager	Open Conference Ware	Zookeepr	regcfp
Software Stack	Ruby on Rails	Ruby on Rails Engine	Python	node.js
Email Nags	Yes; all emails can be controlled with custom templates easily accessed from admin dashboard: Onboarding Email sent when user registers for conference Proposals Email sent when proposal accepted Email sent when proposal rejected Email sent when proposal confirmed but speaker hasn't registered Update Notifications Email sent when conference dates are updated Email sent when conference registration dates are updated Email sent when venue updated Call for Papers Email sent when Call for papers dates are updated or when schedule made public Email sent when Call for papers dates are updated		Automated emails: 'Confirmation of your registration to Flock 2016' 'Password reset confirmation' Confirmation when proposal submitted Confirmation when funding request submitted (optional) Send to a specific address when any proposal is updated Manual / pushbutton mails Invoice payment nag (/invoice/remind) Send out registration details reminder to all registrants	Yes, emails are sent via cron and templated so can be customized.
Voting on Session Submissions	Yes. I think so anyway. There is a CfP 'role' you can apply to accounts. It looks like these users can vote on proposals (by clicking on 5 stars), and can also set a 'rating' (out of 5 stars) for a proposal.	Yes. Assumes a committee is making selections, requires voters to be added to selection committee.	Yes. Assumes a committee is making selections, requires voters to be added to selection committee. Has a pretty sophisticated interface for listing out proposals that need review, proposals that have been reviewed, with ratings numbers and comments fields for each proposal. Seems to consider a proposal reviewed and rated by one person on the committee as "Reviewed" Blind review not currently possible. See https://github.com/zookeepr/zookeepr/issues/41	Yes. Not sure how the perms for this work yet or how open it is. You can give proposals -2 -1 0 +1 +2 and make comments on them; you can also promote proposals to being accepted or not on the page where you review people's ratings on them.
Allows submitters to tag talks into category	No. It does have a track system, but session submitters can't tag their own talks, it seems only admins can.		Yes. You can do this via streams although the feature is hidden and not linked to from the admin panels! Go to /stream on the site and you can create and edit streams. Any proposals submitted will be given the opportunity to affiliate with a stream.	Yes. Tagging and tracks merged.
Allows for co-speakers	No. It doesn't seem to allow submitters to add a co-speaker. It has a "submitter" field and a separate "speaker" field but it doesn't seem possible for admins to edit the speaker field or add a co-speaker.		Yes, but pain. There's a field in the DB you have to edit manually. No UI. See https://github.com/zookeepr/zookeepr/issues/49	Yes.
Remotee Attendance	No. However, does allow posting a video player to the session details. This could work post-event.	No.	No. However, does allow creating arbitrary pages to be listed on the site, could use this feature to create a page for remotees and link to session video URLs if need be.	No.
Registration	Yes. Also allows admins to display customizable checkbox, radio button, or yes/no questions (with customizable radio button answers) to registrants. Also has a conference arrival / departure time field they can fill out, but no space for airline details.	Yes.	Yes. Extensive registration options. A run-down of what's configured now: Name / email (email verification built-in) Country Company Voucher Code Over 18 (yes/no) Dietary requirements Other special requirements Previous years' attendance at conference Fun little survey thing (favorite shell, editor, distro, vcs, etc) Your superhero name / IRC nick GPG key RSS for blog mailing list subscription requests Do not know if these fields are customizable (guessing based on how Paul was able to add some Flock options here but can't figure out how to modify them.)	Yes. Custom fields can be defined in the config file.
Can it track registrant region?	Yes. Can add a custom radio button question with the 4 regions. Tested this out and it works.		Yes. But it's hard to get a good breakdown of registrants by region. The one report we found that lists country is here: /admin/registered_followup It tracks exact location too but it looks like you have to look up individual registrants to get this data.	Yes. Custom registration fields can be defined.
Can it track registrant visas?			No? Doesn't seem like it.	No.
Funding request management			Yes. Has several reports/controls on admin panel for doing this: Funding Requests by Max Rank (list of all the funding applications ordered max score, min score, then average) Funding Requests by Strong Rank (list of all funding applications ordered by number of certain score / total number of reviewers) Review index (to see what funding requests still need review) Funding types (manage fund types) Funding approve (change proposal status for funding applications) However it is still pretty lacking; it's not easy to review / grant funding requests with an eye towards any sort of budget, see the following feature requests for more information: https://github.com/zookeepr/zookeepr/issues/9 https://github.com/zookeepr/zookeepr/issues/10	No.
Can it track reimbursements?			No? Doesn't seem like it. Tracks funding requests and approvals/denials, but doesn't seem to let you store any data about who got reimbursed how / when / how much / etc.	No, but planned. The GNOME travel board requested this feature so it will be added. People will be able to ask for reimbursement, and in the travel board page it will show the amount of budget configured, the amount of budget planned so far (will update as items get ticked/unticked), and whether the person currently has a paper accepted. So you can check per person whether hotel and/or travel is funded, and up to what percentage, and it will update the displayed page live (before you submit it.)
Mailing List Management			Yes. Under "Mailing Lists" in admin panel. Gives you the following reports: People who signed up for main / low traffic conference announcement ML People who signed up for conference attendees mailing list People who should be subscribed to miniconf organizers mailing list List of partners program people for mailing list List of planet-compatible blog RSS feeds People who should be added to speakers ML People who should be added to volunteers ML Note that it doesn't automatically subscribe people to these lists. But it gives you text you can copy/paste into mailman to mass subscribe all of the people in each list.	Can generate a list of user email addressess.
Schedule	Yes. Includes feature where you can drag-and-drop accepted sessions onto a time slot / room grid. Schedule part of software seems a bit disconnected from main app though and a bit rough in appearance.		No. Does not have built-in scheduling tool, but allows you to create arbitrary pages on the site and manage through the dashboard. So you could likely easily embed a sched.org schedule into the site.	No.
OpenID or Persona Login	Probably? At least, you can associate an OpenID with an already-created account. Assuming this means you can probably just log in with OpenID too given a particular configuration.	Yes.	Yes. Has Persona support, no openid. Would require development work to add openid or FAS support (but probably doable.) See also https://github.com/zookeepr/zookeepr/issues/25	Yes. Has Persona support.
Social Media Management	Yes. Has a social media section that integrates content from conference Twitter/Google+ hashtag, conference Facebook page, Google+ URL for conference, Twitter page for conference, Instagram page for conference. Note this focuses on conference accounts, not attendee accounts.		Yes. /social_network allows you to add any custom social network that conference registrants/attendees can indicate their username for. Out of the box has Flickr, Google+, and Twitter configured. Note this focuses on attendees accounts, not conference accounts.	No.
Venue Information	Yes. Allows you to plug in details about the venue and also create the rooms the talks will be in with fields for the each room's name and capacity.		Yes, but pain. You have to go to the database-editing like config file panel under /admin/change_config, then you can add info like event_host, event_fax_number, event_airport_code, event_city, event_phone_number, event_postal_address, google_map_url, google_map_latlng. You can also create a custom page to talk about the venue, which seems to be the way LCA does it currently	No.
Hotel Information	Yes. Allows you to enter in freeform details about recommended hotels and other lodgings near the conference.		Yes, sort of. Have to do via custom page. No form fields or anything like that it seems.	No.
Sponsor management	Yes. Allows you to create sponorship levels and enter in sponsors according to sponsorship level. Will result in a display of the sponsors' logos into categories on the conference front page.		Yes, but pain. Involves manual input of JSON into a database-like config edit gui under /admin/config. The field is under general > sponsors.	No.
Custom Static Pages	No. It doesn't seem as if the interface lets you add in custom static pages.		Yes. Interface is under 'Zookeepr Administration' > 'Manage Pages' in the left sidebar. Allows you to edit and add pages in the admin panel via form field.	No.
Provides Volunteer Signup Forms	No.		Yes. (according to a 2011 dev presentation)	No, but planned. Volunteer management functionality has been requested by the GUADEC organization.
Venue Bid Voting	No.		No.	No.

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