And here I just thought it was awesome they had angled the text to match the tilt of having the lanyard connected at the corner, providing more space for names.

Then I scrolled down to discover the booklet and all its goodies.

Surprise and delight.

The entire conference design is supreme:

http://designforfun.com/display.php?id=99

Name isn't on both sides. They missed the most important part :)

But sometimes I like to be able to hide my identity when checking out / chatting with the competition ;)

Which is exactly the reason I wish conferences would put the name on both sides :-) I actually find it more with financial analysts than competitors. Many deliberately turn their badges around in the hopes of getting some tidbit from someone in a show floor booth who isn't on their guard.

But this is Facebook we're talking about ;)

Hanging these from the corner means that it's much less likely for them to flip, so you don't need the name on both sides.

Umm.. the nametag for www2010 was very similar. It opened and had the schedule for the conference inside along with other info. (plus the name was on both sides)

This is taking the concept a bit further to be sure, but I don't think this is an innovation of the scale it is being presented to be.

I went to an IETF meeting in the fall of 1998 where the thing hanging around your neck was a clear plastic holder that contained both your name tag and a brochure. Not quite as nice as this solution, since you could take out the brochure and lose it. Probably much cheaper, though.

I don't think they're trying to present this as an innovation in name tags. It's just a showcase of an elegant novel design.

If I'm not mistaken, innovative is a synonym of novel.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines novel as "new or unusual in an interesting way". While it may not be new, it's definitely unusual.

(Also, you're not mistaken, according to the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus. But they are different words.)

Ben is a stand up guy, and one of the best designers I've ever seen, I'm glad to see him being recognized (more).

I know it's kind of beside the point, but Facebook could have done some amazing stuff with hardware-hackable badges considering their budget. Defcon has multi-purpose modular badges, HOPE has RFID and multi-purpose, and even a party by an elitist hacker group has a badge which does multi-player video games.

Surely a badge with wi-fi or bluetooth combined with a custom Facebook app would allow for all kinds of useful communication and location within a conference. Is this just too complicated? (On the booklet thing, most hacker cons have mobile con guides for browsing and offline mobile apps for use)

The facebook chips made me think about things like the ability to tap on a phone and give user information, which would be nifty- to a point.

What about a system that would let a user know what seats that their friends are sitting in? That would eliminate the stress that finding a friend in a large conference room is.

I think Addieu (http://addieu.com) is doing something like your first point: tap your respective phones to exchange contact info and social networks (full disclosure: I'm one of the cofounders, and we're iPhone only right now).

As for your second, if you know what your friends look like, you don't need to know exactly where they're sitting, so you don't need RFID. SitBy.Us (http://sitby.us) illustrates this perfectly: if they found a biz dev guy and expanded beyond SXSW & Mozilla Summit Conf, they'd be killing it. If Lanyrd is smart, they'll snap up or clone SitBy.Us.

Everything about these looks amazing and they look like they do a perfect job of maximizing both visual pleasure and practical purpose.

Fun fact: The first use of those RFID tags was for a Stanford CS210 project. (I've had one on my keychain for nearly a year now.)

A good design. Like everyone else said name on both side would have complete it. I really like the Moleskine likeness of it.

ok, that page crashes the stock android 2.2 browser every single time.

My Optimus V's android 2.2 browser opened it successfully