During WordCamp US 2017, the organizing team received a lot of questions about why some folks had their picture on their badges and others didn’t. The answer to this question is fairly simple and easy to take care of. The profile images on people’s badges came from their Gravatar profile.
What is a Gravatar?
A Gravatar is a “globally recognized avatar.” You upload your picture and create your profile once, and when you register using your Gravatar email on any website that uses Gravatars, your Gravatar image will show up there. Gravatar is a free service that is included with every WordPress.com account and is run and supported by Automattic.
How does it show up on my badge?
The short answer: magic, mostly. The longer, more technical answer:
The badges for WordCamp US are created using what is called a Data Merge. In the backend of the WordCamp US website (and any other WordCamp website) is a place for organizers to go in and download an export of attendee ticket data (rest assured, no payment information is stored in our websites). Our design team takes that ticket data and uses it to automate the creation of the hundreds of badges for our attendees. One of the fields that our design team is able to bring in is the Gravatar profile image.
The beauty of doing our badges via data merge is that the weeks-long process of creating a badge for each of our attendees can be taken care of in a fraction of the time. Once the data is merged and all of the badges are created in InDesign (an Adobe design program used for creating layouts and more), all the design team has to do is go in and tweak any badges that don’t fit the ‘typical’ template (ex. badges that have longer than average names).
How do I create a Gravatar?
You can sign up for Gravatar using a WordPress.com account. If you don’t already have a WordPress.com account, you’ll need to create one. Once you’ve created your Gravatar account, you’ll add your profile image and any other information you wish to share and you’re good to go! It’s important to note, the Gravatar account needs to use the same email address that you used to purchase your WordCamp US ticket.
If you already have a Gravatar account using a different email address, you can update the email address on your WCUS ticket using the link in your ticket confirmation email. If you purchased multiple tickets at one time, make sure you update all of the tickets purchased with that person’s email address associated with their Gravatar profile.
Can’t find your ticket email? Contact the organizers using our contact form.
Is there a deadline?
If you wish for your Gravatar to show up on your badge, you need to make sure you purchase a ticket or update your ticket information by Thursday, November 1st. Tickets purchased after this date won’t have a printed badge (we are pulling our data export on 11/1) and tickets updated to include an email address associated with a Gravatar profile won’t have the Gravatar image on their badge.
Having Issues?
We’re sorry, that stinks. If you shoot us an email via our contact form, someone will be happy to help you out!
Featured Image Credit: David Needham