EventSpin Manual

1. Overview

EventSpin is a web-based random draw tool for live events. No software to install on any device — the host opens a browser, the audience joins from their own phones, and the winner is revealed live on a projector screen.

Three browser screens cover every role:

• Host Controls the session: adds names, chooses the visual mode, and spins.
• Join Where attendees enter their name to be added to the draw.
• Spotlight Full-screen projector display: shows the countdown, the draw animation, and a QR code to join.

2. Getting Started

Subscription & Login

1. Purchase an EventSpin subscription from the Cue Congress website. You will receive a license key by email.
2. Open cuecongress.com/eventspin/host.html in a desktop browser (Chrome or Firefox recommended).
3. Enter your license key when prompted and click Activate. The key is stored locally in your browser — you will only need to enter it once per device.
4. Enter a Room Code (4–8 letters/numbers) or accept the generated one. This creates your session room. Share the room code or join link with attendees.

Typical Event Setup

3. Host Screen

The host screen is divided into two panels:

• Names panel (left) — the attendee join link with its QR code, bulk import box, manual add field, the live list of everyone currently in the draw, and the optional Prizes list.
• Controls panel (right) — visual mode picker, the Spin button and winner box, Settings, and Winners history.

The header shows the room code (or its saved name, once you've given it one — see Saving & Loading Rooms), a Copy Join Link shortcut, a button to open the Spotlight screen in a new tab, Extend View (opens Spotlight pre-positioned to fill a second monitor, if one is connected), Save Room, Save New Room, and My Rooms (see Saving & Loading Rooms), License to deactivate this device's license, and Close to leave the room on this device.

Join Link & QR Code

The attendee join link box shows a small QR code alongside the link itself. Click Copy link to copy the URL, or ⬇ QR to download the QR code as a PNG image — useful for pasting into a slide, a printed flyer, or an email invite ahead of the event. The downloaded image is exported at full resolution even though it's shown small on screen.

4. Adding Names

There are four ways to build the pool of names for a draw:

Add One at a Time

Type a name into the Add a name… field and press Enter or click + Add.

Bulk Import (Paste)

1. Paste a list of names into the bulk import box — separate them with commas or new lines.
2. Click Add all. Up to 300 names are added per paste.

Import from CSV or Excel

1. Click 📁 Import CSV/Excel next to the bulk import box and choose a .csv, .txt, .xlsx, or .xls file.
2. EventSpin reads the first column of every row and drops the names into the bulk import box for you to review — a header row like "Name" or "Full Name" is skipped automatically.
3. Check the list, then click Add all as usual. Nothing is added automatically without this review step.

Let Attendees Join Themselves

Share the join link or QR code. Attendees type their own name on the Join page and are added automatically — no host action required. See Attendee Join Page & Privacy Consent for the optional phone/email fields attendees can fill in.

Duplicate Names

Manually added names (via Add or Bulk Import) are rejected if an identical name is already in the pool. When an attendee self-joins with a name that's already present, EventSpin automatically appends a number instead of rejecting them — for example a second "John Smith" joins as "John Smith 2" — since many attendees on the same venue Wi-Fi can share a name.

Removing Names

Click the ✕ next to any name to remove it individually, or Clear all to wipe the entire pool and winners history and start fresh.

5. Running a Draw

Choose a visual mode before spinning — it's shown live on the Spotlight screen:

• Wheel — every name sits on a segment of a spinning wheel that slows to a stop on the winner.
• Spotlight — names flash by one at a time, slowing down until a single name remains highlighted.
• Bubbles — every name floats on screen as a bubble; bubbles pop away one by one until only the winner's remains, centred with confetti.

Spinning

1. Make sure at least 2 names are in the pool — the Spin button is disabled otherwise.
2. Click SPIN. A 3-2-1 countdown plays on both the host button and the Spotlight screen.
3. The winner is drawn and the animation plays out on Spotlight. The name stays blurred on the host screen until Spotlight has revealed it, to keep the surprise for the room.
4. Once revealed, click ✓ Next Round to log the winner to history and continue (removing them from the pool if Raffle Mode is on), or ↺ Undo to dismiss the result without confirming — the name stays in the pool either way you choose Undo.

6. Prizes

Prizes are entirely optional — leave the Prizes list empty and every spin just awards a plain winner, exactly as described above. Set up a list if you want to run through a sequence of named prizes (e.g. a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize) in one room instead of tracking that by hand.

Setting Up Prizes

1. In the Names panel, type a prize into the Prizes field — e.g. "1st prize: iPhone" — and click + Add.
2. Add as many prizes as you like, in the order you want them awarded.

How Prizes Are Drawn

Each spin always draws for the prize at the top of the list. A "Next prize" label appears above the Spin button showing what's coming up. Once a winner is confirmed with Next Round, that prize is removed from the list for good — on both the host screen and the Spotlight display, its name appears instead of "Winner" (e.g. "🎁 1st prize: iPhone" instead of "🏆 Winner"), and Spotlight also shows "Drawing for: …" during the countdown.

Clicking ↺ Undo instead of Next Round does not consume the prize — it stays at the top of the list for the next spin attempt, since nothing was actually handed out.

Once every prize has been awarded, the host screen shows "All prizes awarded" and further spins go back to being plain, prize-less draws.

7. Raffle Mode

When Raffle mode is on (Settings), confirming a winner with Next Round removes them from the pool — so every spin picks a new person and nobody can win twice.

Turn Raffle mode off if you want the same pool available for every spin (for example, a repeating "spin to decide who goes next" use case where a person can be picked again).

8. Exporting Winners & Contacts

Two downloads are available as real .xlsx Excel files (not CSV), so accented and non-Latin names always open correctly:

• ⬇ Export Excel (next to Winners history) — every confirmed winner, with their prize (if any), the date/time, and their phone/email if they consented to share it when joining.
• 📇 Export Contacts (Excel) (next to Names in the draw) — every attendee who consented to share a phone number or email, with their consent date, regardless of whether they've won yet.

9. Saving & Loading Rooms

If you run several draws a week (or multiple events in one day), you can prep a room once and reuse it every time — from any device, since it's tied to your license key rather than one browser.

Saving a Room

Two buttons in the header handle saving, depending on what you want:

• Save Room — saves this room under its existing name with one click and no prompt. The very first time you save a room, it asks for a label (e.g. "Friday Raffle") since there isn't one yet.
• Save New Room — duplicates everything in the current room (names, prizes, and settings) into a brand-new, independent room, switches you into it, and asks for a name for it. The original room is left exactly as it was. Use this when you want two separate rooms you can each find and load on their own — for example, prepping "Friday Raffle" and "Saturday Raffle" from the same starting list.

Once a room has been saved, its label is shown instead of the raw room code in the header, on the Spotlight display, and on the attendee join page — so everyone sees "Friday Raffle" rather than a code like "6T74S6".

Loading a Room

1. Click My Rooms in the header (or on the initial room-code screen before opening any room).
2. Click Load next to the saved room you want.

Loading a saved room opens it exactly as it was left — names, prizes, settings, and winners history all included. Nothing is cleared automatically. If you're reusing a room for a new audience and want to drop the previous names and winners, click Clear all after loading it.

Retention

A saved room is kept for up to 12 months after its last use; a room that was never saved is cleared after 30 days of inactivity. Opening or loading a saved room resets its 12-month clock, so anything you actually reuse never expires in practice.

10. Spotlight Display

Spotlight is a projector-optimised full-screen display, opened from the host screen via Spotlight (opens a new tab) or Extend View (opens pre-positioned to fill a second monitor, if one is connected). Use the fullscreen button in the top-right corner of the Spotlight page itself to go fullscreen — browsers require a click on the page to grant fullscreen, so it can't happen automatically.

What Spotlight Shows

• Idle — the event title (if set), how many names are in the draw, and a live QR code attendees can scan to join. If a Join Countdown is running, the time remaining counts down live right next to the QR code.
• Countdown — a 3-2-1 count synced to the host's Spin action, with an animated sparkle icon at the centre of the Wheel. If a prize is set up, "Drawing for: …" appears above the count — see Prizes.
• Draw animation — the wheel, spotlight, or bubbles sequence, depending on the chosen visual mode.
• Winner reveal — the winner's name on a banner, with sound effects and confetti (bubbles/spotlight modes) if Audio is enabled in Settings. The banner reads "🎁 [prize name]" instead of "🏆 Winner" when the round had a prize attached.

11. Attendee Join Page & Privacy Consent

Attendees open the join link (or scan the QR code shown on Spotlight) and type their name to be added to the draw. No account or app download is required.

• Joining is only available while Allow attendees to join is on in Settings.
• Each attendee's device can join up to 3 times per room, to prevent accidental flooding of the pool.
• If the exact same name is already in the pool, the attendee still joins — EventSpin appends a number to their name automatically (see Adding Names).
• Once joined, the page shows "You're in the draw!" and remembers this on the device, so reopening the link doesn't ask again.

Optional Phone & Email

Below the name field, attendees can optionally add a phone number and email — useful if you need to contact winners to arrange delivering a prize. These fields are only usable if the attendee ticks the consent checkbox below them:

"I agree to share my phone number and email with the organizer, who may contact me only if I win a prize. This info won't be used for any other purpose."

• The checkbox is unchecked by default. The phone/email fields stay disabled until it's ticked, and are cleared again if it's unticked.
• Declining consent does not block joining — the attendee still enters the draw with just their name, no phone/email collected.
• Consented contact info is stored separately from the public name list and is only ever readable by the host of that room (see Exporting Winners & Contacts) — it's never shown on the Spotlight screen or sent to other attendees.
• Removing someone from the draw (the ✕ next to their name) also deletes any contact info they'd shared. Winning and being removed via Raffle mode does not — their info is kept so you can reach them, and appears in the Winners export.

Joining from a Shared Wi-Fi

Large venues often put every attendee's phone behind the same shared Wi-Fi network. EventSpin tracks the "3 times per device" join limit above by the device itself (a private id stored in the phone's browser), not by network address — so hundreds of attendees on one venue Wi-Fi each still get their own 3 joins, rather than the whole room being treated as a single device.

12. Settings

All settings live in the right-hand panel of the host screen and apply live to the Spotlight screen — no reload needed.

• Event title — shown on the Spotlight idle screen, useful for showing your event or session name.
• Collect phone/email — show or hide the optional phone/email fields and consent checkbox on the join page entirely. See Attendee Join Page & Privacy Consent.
• Consent text — replace the default GDPR-style wording shown next to the phone/email consent checkbox with your own, e.g. to match your organization's legal phrasing or another language. Leave empty to use the built-in default.
• Join countdown — auto-close joining after a set time. See Join Countdown below.
• Spin speed — Fast, Normal, or Slow — controls how long the draw animation runs.
• Audio — sound effects (ticks, pops, fanfare) on the Spotlight screen.
• Raffle mode — remove the winner from the pool after each confirmed spin. See Raffle Mode.
• Allow attendees to join — toggle off to lock the pool and stop new self-joins via the join link, immediately.
• Stay signed in — how many days this device trusts your license key before quietly re-checking it (1–30 days). Only affects this device/browser.

Join Countdown

Instead of (or as well as) manually toggling Allow attendees to join off, you can set a countdown that closes joining automatically once it runs out — useful for a dramatic "doors closing" moment, or for a poll/raffle that should stay open for a fixed window without you needing to remember to close it by hand.

1. Enter a number and choose a unit — seconds, minutes, hours, or days — then click Start.
2. The host screen shows the live time remaining, with a Cancel countdown button to stop it early if you change your mind.
3. The same countdown appears live on the Spotlight idle screen next to the QR code (e.g. "Closes in 4:32"), so the room can see it counting down too.
4. When it reaches zero, joining closes automatically — the QR code and join link disappear from Spotlight, and any attempt to join is rejected, exactly as if you'd switched Allow attendees to join off yourself.

13. Troubleshooting

Attendees Can't Join

• Check Allow attendees to join is turned on in Settings.
• Check whether a Join Countdown is running and has reached zero — joining closes automatically when it does.
• Check the join URL is correct — it should end with /eventspin/join.html?room=XXXX.
• Try sharing the QR code from the Spotlight screen directly instead of a typed URL.

"This room is already controlled by another host device"

Only the first device to open a room can control it (spin, clear, change settings). If you need to switch host devices, close the room on the original device, or open a different room code on the new device.

License Key Not Accepted

• Copy-paste the key from your email to avoid typos.
• Check that your subscription is active at cuecongress.com.
• If activating on a new device, contact support if you're unsure whether your key is already in use elsewhere.

Logged Out Unexpectedly

EventSpin stores its activation in your browser's localStorage. Clearing browser data or using Private/Incognito mode will remove the stored key. Re-enter your license key to reactivate.

Spin Button Is Disabled

The pool needs at least 2 names before you can spin. Add more names or wait for attendees to join.

Support

Email info@cuecongress.com with your license key and a brief description of the issue.