In short
Showing guests’ photos on a screen during the party comes down to five points:
- A screen that can be read from a distance: a television for a small room, a projector for a large one, with the room not too brightly lit.
- A laptop plugged into the mains, with sleep, screensaver and notifications switched off, and the browser in full screen.
- A network that holds: the venue’s Wi-Fi tested on site, and a phone’s hotspot as a back-up.
- A test the day before, or an hour before guests arrive, with the equipment you will actually use.
- One person in charge, who knows where the cable is, moderates the photos, and is not also asked to dance.
This guide applies to any live slideshow. The parts about EventSlide are marked as such.
Television, venue screen or projector
The venue sometimes has a screen or a projector: ask before you hire anything, and ask about the cable that goes with it and who is allowed to touch it.
The television
A television is bright and sharp, and does not mind the lighting in the room. It is the right choice for a party at home, or a room where people sit a few metres away, and it is hard to read beyond ten or fifteen metres.
The projector
It gives a big picture, on a white wall or a projection screen. It has one weakness: it hates light. A room lit “as for the meal” washes the image out, and all you see are silhouettes. An office projector is enough in a dark room; as soon as the room stays lit you need a much more powerful one (the specification gives lumens). Ask the hire company for advice.
How big?
A practical rule, to adjust: the picture must be big enough for the guest furthest away to make out a face. If the furthest tables are ten metres away, aim for a picture more than a metre high.
Plugging in: the point that most often goes wrong
- HDMI, the most common. Televisions and projectors almost always have it. Note the number of the input and the source to pick with the remote control.
- Your laptop’s adapter. Many recent laptops have only a USB-C port: bring a USB-C to HDMI adapter and test it with the venue’s equipment. Not every USB-C port can output a picture.
- A cable that is long enough. The laptop is rarely next to the screen: measure the distance, then add some margin. An ordinary HDMI cable works well up to a few metres; beyond that, a picture that flickers or disappears is possible, and an “active” cable or an extender often fixes it.
The laptop that shows the wall
A laptop that shows a slideshow for eight hours has to be stopped from doing what it usually does: going to sleep, showing alerts, installing an update. Before the party:
- Mains power, plugged in. Not the battery. If the charger comes out, the laptop lasts a few hours at best.
- Sleep and screensaver, switched off. This is a setting of the laptop (power and lock screen). The EventSlide wall asks the computer to stay awake itself, when the browser allows it. When it does not, the wall’s help tells you: “Turn off sleep mode on this computer”. Do not count on it: set it beforehand.
- Notifications, off. “Do not disturb” mode, messaging closed, calendar reminders off.
- The browser in full screen. With EventSlide, the F key puts the wall in full screen, and Esc or F leaves it.
- No account needed to show the wall. With EventSlide, the wall’s address opens without signing in. Signing in as the event’s owner is only needed to open the settings panel on site (the R key, or the discreet bar at the bottom of the screen); a guest who opens the address sees none of it, and neither does a moderator. Safest: set everything up beforehand, or sign in yourself, and do not hand your owner account to the technical contact or leave it open on a venue computer.
The network and plan B
With an online service, two things have to go through the network: the photos arriving from phones, and the wall fetching them. With EventSlide’s hosted service, the wall depends on the venue’s connection.
The venue’s Wi-Fi
- Test it on site, where the laptop will be, ideally at a time when the room will be full. Wi-Fi that works at 3 p.m. in an empty room can struggle at 9 p.m. with a hundred phones.
- If you can, connect the wall’s laptop by cable to the network (an Ethernet socket, or an adapter): it is the most stable link, and does not depend on the crowd.
A phone’s hotspot
This is your safety net: a phone with a good signal, in hotspot mode, connected to the wall’s laptop. Test it beforehand, check your data plan, and keep the phone plugged in, because sharing drains the battery.
And if the network drops?
With EventSlide, this is what happens, without you having to do anything:
- The wall keeps showing the photos it has already received. It says nothing for the first minute, shows a small discreet dot after one minute, then, after three minutes and only if its own reads are failing too, the sentence “New photos waiting for the network”. It tries again by itself and picks up when the connection comes back.
- Phones queue the uploads. A guest who has lost signal sees “Will go as soon as the network is back”: it is saved on their phone and sent by itself. On an iPhone the page has to stay open until then, and the app says so. Videos are not queued: they are too heavy, and have to be sent again when the connection returns.
- What the wall cannot do: start without a network. Open it beforehand, while everything works, and do not reload it at the first alert.
Sound
- Videos play without sound. Guests can send short 15-second videos, and the wall plays them silently: no toast ever drowns out “Happy Birthday”.
- A sound for each new photo, if you want one. With EventSlide it is off by default. You turn it on in the settings, pick one of four sounds, set the volume, then, on the wall’s laptop, press once the S key, or click the crossed-out speaker icon that appears when you move the mouse: this is the browsers’ rule, they refuse to play a sound on a page nobody has touched. If the page reloads, the wall stays silent until it is activated again.
Where to put the screen and the QR codes
The screen
- Where people walk past, not where they sit. Near the entrance to the drinks, the bar, the buffet. A screen you see while queueing gets looked at; a screen behind the diners does not.
- Away from windows and spotlights. A projector facing a glass wall is a white wall.
The QR codes
- On the screen itself. The wall shows a QR code built into its layout, with a code to type by hand for people whose device cannot read it. You adjust the size (a readable minimum is kept), choose the corner when one photo shows at a time, or hide it.
- On the tables. The app prepares A6 table cards (four to a sheet) and A5 or A4 posters with the QR code, to print from the browser. A QR code on each table, one at the entrance, one near the bar. Without EventSlide, my QR card maker does the same for any link.
The guide QR code to share party photos goes into the size, the paper and where to place the cards.
The test: the day before or before the guests arrive
This is the one part of the guide you cannot skip. Ideally, two trials: one at home, one on site.
- At home, a few days before. Create the event and open it to guests for the test: a draft event accepts no guests and no uploads (once open it can be closed and reopened, but it cannot go back to being a draft). You can also use a separate test event. Open the wall on the laptop you will take with you, and send yourself a photo from your phone. Check that the adapter and the cable are in the bag.
- On site, the day before or in the morning. With EventSlide, an event that is not yet open to guests shows “This screen is waiting” and lights up by itself at opening: so you can plug in the screen and check the cable, the input and full screen very early, without the QR code letting anyone in. You can also set an opening time in the event’s settings.
- An hour before the guests. Open the event, send yourself a real photo and a video, publish them from your phone, and watch them arrive on the screen, from the back of the room. If manual approval is on, nothing is shown without your approval. Without a template, manual approval is the default; the Birthday and Party templates publish without approval, so check the Moderation setting.
- Simulate the failure. Switch the Wi-Fi off and check that the slideshow keeps showing photos. To see the wall’s warning, you have to cut it for three or four minutes. Switch it back on: does it resume?
Who looks after it during the party?
Not you, if you are the couple or the person being celebrated, and not the person handling the cake. Name someone:
- A technical contact. They know the cable, the Wi-Fi and the laptop, and what to do if the screen goes black. They have the Wi-Fi password, a spare extension lead, and a second cable if possible.
- One or two moderators. With EventSlide, they approve or refuse each photo from their phone, with a swipe. It is not a full-time job: a few minutes at each pause. They are invited by email (the invitation is valid for seven days) and create an account: “no app or account” applies to guests only. Invite them a few days beforehand.
With or without EventSlide: what changes on the day
Everything above applies to any slideshow. But the method you choose changes what you have to watch:
| Method | What it depends on | What it asks on the day |
|---|---|---|
| A slideshow prepared in advance (USB stick or file) | Nothing but the laptop | No network, but only the photos you already have: the guests’ are not in it |
| A shared album shown as a slideshow | The network, an account, guests who add their photos | Refreshing the album, no approval before display, no wall designed for the room |
| EventSlide, live wall | The venue’s network (hosted service) and a screen | A laptop to keep an eye on, a moderator; everything arrives by QR code, with no app or account for guests |
EventSlide is free, by invitation (see request access), with no guarantee of availability. If you would rather leave nothing to the network, a slideshow prepared in advance is a perfectly respectable solution. To see how it works from start to finish, read How it works and the guide A photo wall for your wedding.