Google I/O Sells Out In 20 Minutes 221
netbuzz writes "Last year it took almost an hour, but this morning Google's enormously popular conference for developers sold out in about 20 minutes, Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of engineering, told his followers on Google+. 'While we're overwhelmed with the interest and enthusiasm around Google I/O, we know it can be very disappointing and frustrating when an event sells out this quickly,' he wrote. Those who did not get tickets were not only disappointed and angry, but mystified as to why they were left out of a first-come, first-served sale despite being online and ready to buy the second the bell rang. And, of course, tickets were quickly being scalped on eBay." Of course, everyone who gets in drives away in a free Tesla.
Hopefully Google does the right thing (Score:4, Interesting)
If Google does the right thing, they'll find and cancel the scalped tickets - and do a second round.
Re:Better way to give out tickets (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe instead of an online first-come first-serve
I'm not so sure this was the case. I applied, and after the first "Sign up" button there was a page that said something like
:-)
"We're looking for a ticket for you. Please don't refresh this page or you will have to start over"
It lasted about 3 minutes before going to the next page where you could select your T-Shirt size, food preference and a few more things.
I don't believe those 3 minutes were overload. Maybe when google said "We're looking for a ticket" they meant "we're looking you up, looking for android, linux and java in your gmail / google + and so on".
Of course it's a theory I just made up. But if you have a better explanation for a 3 minutes delay (different to each user) other than some kind of priorization, go ahead
Solutions to Scalping (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a little late, but I have two thoughts. One was a band that discovered something like 80% of their tickets had been bought by scalpers, who were demanding 10X the ticket price. Their solution? They held 3 more shows. The first, originally scheduled, show was practically empty - the other 3 were packed.
Solution type: Increase supply.
Another option is to hold a 'dutch auction' for the tickets. Easy enough for shows with one seating category, but only a touch more difficult with multiple to handle people who are willing to pay $X for 'good' seats, but $Y for 'normal' seats only if they don't get good ones. The tickets then go for the minimum price that 'just' sells all tickets. Yes, this means that only the richest and/or most dedicated fo fans get to go, but at least the money ends up in the hands of the artist's company, not scalpers. If the artists feel that the price has risen too much, add shows.
Solution type: Increase the price so that demand equals supply.
Re:Better way to give out tickets (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:no scalping (Score:4, Interesting)
All Google has to do is ban scalping of the tickets. You buy a ticket, YOU get in, not the holder of the ticket.
How would one implement that while maintaining the ability for a business to decouple purchasing a ticket from the decision of which member of a development team gets to go?
So a business can buy a ticket for a to-be-named-later employee, but you gotta prove you're an employee of the company to use the ticket. You can get your money back up to a certain point in time, and that spot goes to the next person on a wait list. It's not that fucking hard to ban ticket scalping for these kinds of events.
A Better Way (Score:2, Interesting)
rationing high-demand slots (Score:3, Interesting)
Any of the following is probably better than "first come first served" when "first come" is hard to determine or unfair to large numbers of potential attendees
1) Auction to the highest bidder. Takes scalping (mostly) out of the equation but locks out those of limited means. If you pride yourself on being non-greedy, donate the "over the face value" profits to charity.
2) Limit "1 per organization" and prohibit transfers outside of a pre-files small list of alternate users. Limits scalping.
3) Invitation-only event.
4) Require participation to attend, e.g. submit a paper, if it's accepted, you get in but you also have to / get to present your paper.
5) Require you submit a portfolio showing your presence is desirable for others who are there and/or that you are likely to benefit from attending more than someone else in line.
6) Lottery.
7) "Diversity" factors, e.g. we want 40%-50% of the attendees to be experts in the topic of the conference, 10%-20% to be newbies, and 30%-50% to be somewhat knowledgeable in the topic. Or, we don't want any more than 10% of attendees from the same company or more than 25% from the same industry segment.
There are other ways to "shake things up a bit" as well.
You can do this with just about any "over-subscribed" event from concert tickets to elementary-school transfer requests.
"First come first served" has its place, but when people start standing in line early for the sole purpose of making a buck on eBay, then either they are denying others who really should be there but can't pay $$$ a slot or they are denying you or your charity the $$$ you could've made with an auction.
Re:Solutions to Scalping (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a little late, but I have two thoughts. One was a band that discovered something like 80% of their tickets had been bought by scalpers, who were demanding 10X the ticket price. Their solution? They held 3 more shows. The first, originally scheduled, show was practically empty - the other 3 were packed.
Solution type: Increase supply.
Another option is to hold a 'dutch auction' for the tickets. Easy enough for shows with one seating category, but only a touch more difficult with multiple to handle people who are willing to pay $X for 'good' seats, but $Y for 'normal' seats only if they don't get good ones. The tickets then go for the minimum price that 'just' sells all tickets. Yes, this means that only the richest and/or most dedicated fo fans get to go, but at least the money ends up in the hands of the artist's company, not scalpers. If the artists feel that the price has risen too much, add shows.
Solution type: Increase the price so that demand equals supply.
How about Google consider who they want in the audience, and make a strategy to get tickets to those people? They aren't trying to sell the most tickets or make the most money, but promote their technology. They could do simple things like: scatter pre-registration codes through tech channels months before, or have tech questions tied to the registration system, or make people identify their 3 main areas of interest and restrict tickets to those events, etc...
Solution type: Innovative