Collection by event type
Corporate event photo sharing, collected from the people who came
Corporate event photo sharing means one address on a slide and on the table cards, so the photographs your staff and delegates took land in one collection the comms team can download rather than in eleven inboxes.
A company event produces two sets of photographs. The first is the one somebody was paid to take, and it is fine. The second is the one that exists because forty people with phones were standing in a room together, and it is scattered: the keynote shot from the back, the lunch conversation nobody planned to photograph, the team that turned up early, the client's own representative being handed something. Getting that second set into one place is the job, and it is almost always done badly, by a hashtag nobody searches or an inbox that a colleague has to go through at midnight. Corporate event photo sharing is the boring version of this: one address, one collection, one archive at the end, and nobody having to install anything.
What you name the collection when it is not a party
At creation a collection is given an occasion, and the list is short: wedding, birthday, graduation, baby shower, anniversary, corporate event, conference, family reunion, and then anything else you type yourself. A company day has two of those on the list already, and the one you pick decides the wording the room sees. A corporate or conference collection opens its room display with a plain line above the event name and a standing sentence about the day, rather than anything celebratory, which is the correct register for a function room and the reason the occasion is worth setting honestly rather than choosing a birthday because it was convenient.
- The event name
- It appears on the guest page, on the room display card, and in the name of the archive you download, so put the real name of the day in it rather than an internal code. The date and the venue are separate fields and both can appear on the opening card.
- Whether the gallery is browsable
- A collection can be set so contributors only upload, without scrolling what other people sent. On a client day that is usually the right answer, because a delegate has no business seeing another delegate's photographs, and on a staff day it is usually the wrong one, because the browsing is half the fun.
- Whether arriving files are looked at first
- A switch on the collection settings, off by default. When it is on, nothing a delegate sent appears in the gallery or on the screen until it is accepted, and whatever is refused never reaches the download afterwards.
Four ways a room full of colleagues finds the address
On the slide deck
The one slide everybody is already looking at, with a code large enough to scan from the back of the room and one line telling people what happens to the photographs. This works because it costs nothing: the deck is going up anyway, and whoever runs the projector is already showing something.
On the table cards
A seated lunch or a conference with printed programmes is a paper environment, and paper is the distribution channel. A code printed a fortnight ahead opens the same page as one printed at the door, because the address is fixed once the collection is created.
In the joining message
The email or the calendar invitation that already goes out with the agenda can carry the link in the same breath. Delegates who upload from a train in advance are the ones who never scan anything on the day.
By word of mouth from the person filming
Every room has two people photographing everything. If they know where the files are supposed to go, the collection arrives in the first hour rather than in a shared chat that has to be trawled later.
What a colleague has to do, which is nearly nothing
Open the link or scan the code
It is a web page in the browser they already use. Nothing is installed, no account exists, and no price is shown to anybody who is only sending photographs.
Pick files from their own device
JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF, GIF and AVIF photographs; MP4, M4V, MOV and WebM clips. A single file can be as large as 15 megabytes for a photograph and 100 megabytes for a clip, which is enough for a phone to send the real file rather than a shrunk copy.
Give a name once
One field, remembered for twelve hours, so a colleague sending six files in three sittings types their name once. Whatever they type is what appears beside their photographs in the gallery and on the room display.
Send, and go back to the conversation
That is the entire flow, and it is deliberately shorter than the version where somebody has to join a workspace, accept an invitation or install an application on a managed laptop.
The work-device problem, stated honestly
There is no corporate sign-in, no single sign-on, and nothing that asks for a work account: contributors are identified only by the name they type. That is what lets a delegate with a locked-down laptop contribute from the phone in their pocket, and it is what means the collection cannot be tied to a directory of staff. Attribution is a name the person typed, which is a good record and not an authenticated one.
What the guest page doesThe screen in the room
A conference and an awards dinner both have a screen already, which makes the room display the easiest corporate part of the whole thing. The slideshow runs at its own address, separate from the upload page and separate from the account that owns the collection, opened in a browser on whatever machine is feeding the panel. It plays the collection as it grows: new arrivals join the queue, names can appear beside frames, and there are twelve arrangements for how the photographs are laid out, from a single cinematic frame to a mosaic wall that shows a great many at once. Where the room is bright and the audience is standing, the mosaic end of that range is the one that reads; where the screen is there to accompany a speaker, a single-frame arrangement is better and the wall should be off.
- Which machine, which input
- A laptop you control is safer than a venue machine you have to ask for. Decide what the panel is reading and who owns the remote, because a guest with a remote can switch your collection to a news channel in one press.
- Sleep and power
- Stop the machine sleeping, keep it on mains, and silence its notifications. A calendar banner sliding down beside a photograph of the room turns a display into a desktop in front of forty people.
- Whether it competes with the speaker
- The usual corporate pattern is off through the presentations and on for the arrivals, the lunch and the end of the evening. There are keys for stepping past a frame, holding one and going full screen from the machine beside the panel.
- Cost
- The room display is included with Celebrate at $39 and Keepsake at $69, and it is a one-off $9 add-on for a single event on the entry tier and on the free collection. Whoever books the event pays once; delegates pay nothing.
The archive, which is the part the business keeps
For an organiser the deliverable is not the wall and not the gallery. It is the folder that lands afterwards, and it is worth being exact about what that folder is. One download streams every photograph and clip the collection kept, numbered in the order the files arrived and under the names they arrived with, at standard quality on the entry tier and at original quality on the two levels above it. Contributor names live in the collection rather than inside the archive, so if the comms team wants a list of who sent what, read it out of the gallery while the page is still open. Whatever was refused never enters the download, which is what makes the review switch useful at the point of keeping rather than only at the point of showing.
- Take the download yourself rather than forwarding the link, because the address is private and a forwarded address is a way of granting access to a room you did not choose.
- Copy the contributor list out of the gallery before you take the archive, since the names are what let you ask somebody for the rest of their set.
- Note the closing date, which is counted from the event: six months, twelve months or two years depending on the tier, with longer kept as a one-off extension.
- Store the archive where the company stores files, and treat the hosted collection as the temporary half of the arrangement.
- Say one sentence in the post-event message that names the address and the closing date, because a collection stays open whether or not anybody uses it.
Nothing in a collection is indexed and no page of it is listed anywhere, which is the property that makes it safe to point a client's own representative at a link.
The paid photographs show the stage. The ones the room took show whether anybody enjoyed it.
Four things a company organiser will be asked for
- Sign-in with the company account, or a per-department view: neither exists, because contributors never have accounts and there is one collection per event rather than a workspace.
- A report of who uploaded and who did not: the gallery lists the names people typed, which is a record of senders rather than of the whole guest list.
- Automatic sorting of the photographs by subject or by speaker: nothing does that, and the organising tools are the gallery view, the review switch and the download.
- A permanent place for the files: a collection stays online for the period the tier states and then comes down, with extensions bought one-off, which is why the archive is the deliverable rather than the link.
What a company day is worth collecting, in order
- The room before the speaker arrives: coats coming off, three colleagues who have not met in person for a year finding each other, the delegate who photographed the slide with the code on it.
- The thing that went right and was not on the running order: the demonstration that worked, the table that filled up, the small group that stayed talking after the session ended.
- The end-of-day photograph nobody took because they were the one being photographed, which is precisely the frame the team wants for the wrap-up message.
- The clips: two minutes of applause, a question from the floor that was better than the panel, somebody explaining the product to a colleague in their own words.
- The keynote itself, which is the least valuable thing in the collection because the speaker's own slides, recording and notes already exist somewhere.
The ordering matters when the archive is handed over. A comms team that receives four hundred files has to look at all of them; a comms team that was told, in one sentence in the follow-up message, that the good stuff is the room rather than the stage, spends twenty minutes instead of an afternoon. That sentence is free, and it is the only editorial control anybody has over a pile that arrived on its own.
The two-week shape of a corporate collection
Two weeks out
Create it, name it, print it
The address exists as soon as the collection does, so creating it early costs nothing and lets the code go onto the programme, the joining email and the first slide of the deck while all three are still being made. This is also the week to decide whether arriving photographs are looked at before they appear.
The morning of
Test the screen, brief one person
Open the wall once on the machine that will run the room, go full screen, walk to the back, and hand the play address to one named person as text. Everything else is already settled or is not going to be.
The day itself
Say it twice, out loud
Once at the start, in one sentence tied to the room rather than to the technology. Once at the halfway point, naming what is missing: nobody has sent from the workshop tables, nobody has sent the lunch. The second pass is where a corporate collection is won.
The week after
Take the archive and write the closing date
Most of the useful files arrive after the event, from people who meant to send something and forgot, so keep the address open until the day you said and name that day in the follow-up message. Then download, copy the contributor list out of the gallery, and let the hosted collection run out its own period.
The questions an internal team asks
Where do the photographs actually live, and who can see them?
In one collection behind an address that is not listed anywhere and not indexed. Anyone holding the address can open it, which is why it is printed on your cards rather than posted publicly, and the owner can set the gallery to upload-only so contributors cannot browse what others sent.
Does a colleague need a work account to send photographs?
No, and they should not be asked for one. A browser, a name field, a file picker. That is the entire requirement, and it is the reason a managed laptop is not a blocker: the photographs come from the phone in the pocket.
How large a day can one collection cover?
The ceilings are per collection: 200 photographs and 30 clips on the entry tier, 750 and 100 at the level above, 2,000 and 300 at the top, and twenty photographs on the free one. Extra uploads are a one-off purchase, 100 photographs for five dollars or 250 for ten, if a day runs past the edge.
What happens to the material when the retention period ends?
The collection comes down. Six, twelve or twenty-four months depending on the tier, with a further six or twelve available as a one-off, and warning mail beforehand. Whatever survives is the download you took.
Can we stop a photograph being shared on the room screen?
Yes, two ways. A submission can be looked at before it appears, which is a switch on the collection settings and off by default; or a frame already in the collection can be taken back out, and a screen already running loses it without anybody reloading the page.
Is there a cost shown to the people sending photographs?
None. A contributor sees a page, a name field and their own files. Pricing belongs to whoever creates the collection and appears nowhere a guest or a delegate can reach it.
Can two people run the same event collection?
One account owns a collection and the address can be shared with whoever needs to open it, including the room display link, which is its own address and reaches nothing else. There is no second organiser seat to hand out.
Put the address on the slide that is going up anyway
Create the collection, name it with the day's real name, print the code into the programme and put the same square on the opening slide. By the lunch break the room's own version of the event is already in one place.
Photo collection by event type
Put one link on the tables and let everyone contribute.
Create a collection, print the table stands, and the photographs your guests took are waiting for you the morning after. Guests never install anything and never make an account.