

Google I/O Sells Out in 30 Seconds - panarky
https://plus.google.com/u/0/111395306401981598462/posts

======
zdw
"Lets create a conference where the swag is easily resellable items worth more
than the conference admission. Nobody will figure out how to arbitrage
that..."

I've heard great things about I/O, but the device giveaways seem to always
turn registration into a circus...

~~~
donw
To be honest, that was really annoying.

I've become a minimalist in regards to personal property, and the last thing I
need is another gadget -- I'm already busily cutting down on what I own, to
the point where my fiancee is getting a little annoyed.

It's just more cognitive load to manage that much stuff.

Is a Galaxy Tab bundled in with the admission that much of a draw for people,
or is this more a way to offload inventory?

~~~
abraham
I think the gadget gifts is more about making sure developers have the
hardware to develop for. If I don't have an Android device there is next to
zero chance I will write a Android app.

~~~
estel
But there are enough Android developers that I/O seems better targeted at
existing devs who already have the devices.

~~~
abraham
To an extent. Last year not many people had tablets or Chromebooks and the
gadgets are usually top of the line or running an OS that is no consumer ready
devices are running yet.

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ceejayoz
I guess that's what happens when everyone who attends gets a free
phone/tablet. Maybe registration should have a quiz requiring knowledge a
developer would have.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Last year, they claimed they'd be doing something like this. For some reason
they backpedaled.

~~~
zach
It seems like the "let's try to find actual developers" faction lost
convincingly.

Last year, I won a ticket via Last Call for Google I/O, their Google-
technology programming competition, but got no early registration access this
year (yes, I was shut out this morning too). So not only did they not qualify
developers for registration, Google had no interest in registering developers
who _already passed_ a recent Google-technology developer test.

I think they're squeamish about restricting access too much, even by a
meritocratic approach. I admit that it would be a huge PR problem if
developers are angered at feeling classified as "unworthy", or if Google I/O
is perceived as elitist. So I guess developers are going to be complaining
about I/O registration year after year from now on.

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raghus
30 seconds? Vic Gundotra's post on the page says _Google I/O has officially
sold out! It took just a bit over 20 minutes!_

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justinchen
I hope they revoke this guy's ticket: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Google-
IO-2012-GA-Adult-Ticket-/2307...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Google-IO-2012-GA-
Adult-
Ticket-/230768084849?pt=US_Tickets_all_in_one&hash=item35bad98771#ht_500wt_1182)

~~~
fourspace
You're assuming he has a ticket.

~~~
justinchen
In the description he says the ticket is in his name.

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koko775
Sold out as of now. I had been trying since 7:00:00 - and still could not get
a ticket.

And I need one for work, damn it - I actually care about Android development.
I couldn't care less about a free device.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
For what it's worth, the Google Android team (as well as many other Google dev
teams) host weekly "Hangouts" on Google+ where you can ask questions. They
call them "Office Hours", and you can find the list here:

<https://developers.google.com/events/>

Oh, and of course all the I/O talks will be livestreamed and then posted to
YouTube.

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sumukh1
It wasn't actually 30 seconds. It just was timing out. I got one in the first
six minutes or so. and as of 7:26 PDT there are still regular tickets left.

~~~
juiceandjuice
The silly thing was this:

They had a page that said "Don't refresh this page or you will lose your spot
in line"

So you wait, after 6 30 second requests to the server, it times out and says
"We were unable to find a ticket... please try again"

So I waited, instead of crazily just refreshing the page and disregarding what
they said, hoping it was true and Google had implemented some sort of queueing
system (call me crazy). My very first request to the page was at 7:00:22 AM.

So, obviously it wasn't actually a queuing system, especially because it was
still getting {"status":"waiting"} responses for about a minute after all
tickets were reported as sold out on the main page.

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jellomaster
devsite.registration.checkWaitListStatus = function (a) { var b =
"/events/register/waitlist/status/" + devsite.registration.waitListKey + "/";
$.get(b, function (b) { var d = b.status; "waiting" == d ?
a.setTimeout(devsite.registration.checkWaitListStatus, 25E3 + 1E4 *
Math.random(), a) : devsite.location.href = "fulfilled" == d ? b.details_page
: "/events/io/register/noticket" }).error(function () { devsite.location.href
= "/events/io/register/noticket" }) };

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danellis
I got a ticket, but every time I try to pay for it I get "We couldn't complete
your purchase because of a technical issue." Anyone else having similar
issues?

(It did tell me "declined" once, but I called my bank's fraud department and
had them remove the block.)

------
jonmarkgo
It sold out in 30 minutes, not 30 seconds.

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possibilistic
Academic tickets sold out, and I can't afford the full price. Skipped class to
try at 7:00 PDT on the spot, oh well.

Some people on Twitter are still getting tickets. I imagine that if you're in
the queue and someone fails to pay for their ticket on time, you might get a
chance.

~~~
iceron
Have the exact same story. Always next year I suppose.

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jfoutz
Is it actually sold out, or did you just time out when requesting a ticket?

It's not really clear from the "checking for available tickets" polling.

also, academic tickets are clearly marked as sold out, but the main tickets
aren't.

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ColMustard
I'm not sure this is the definition of 'first come, first served', I hit the
register button the first time around 07:00:06, watching painstakingly as
every spinner eventually return "No tickets found". What a slap in the face.

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runjake
The article the submitter links to says it sold out in 20 minutes, not 30
seconds.

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cr4zy
It didn't sell out at 7. The POST to the ticket URL kept timing out until
7:03. The timeout would cause a redirect to the no ticket page. After 7:03 the
POST hung until they showed a reserved ticket at 7:07 (for me).

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mdwrigh2
Tickets are officially sold out according to the registration page. [1]

[1] <https://developers.google.com/events/io/register>

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Teef
It looks more like it was lottery than anything else. If you clicked on it at
the right time and got lucky in a 30 minute window. I have been to a number of
them since I went to the first one (part of the android challenge before there
was an android phone) I have really enjoy the conference every time I have
gone. This year I mainly wanted to get some time in with the Go group and
reconnecting with friends I have made over the years. Look like time to start
looking for another conference with lots of web startup. Anything going on in
the UK?

~~~
estel
Hopefully the London GUG will host an IO Extended this year.

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eslaught
The real number was 20 minutes:
[https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/iyc4arLj...](https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/iyc4arLjidR)

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cwassoc99
We were in our campus server room and got 3 of them. Connection speed didn't
matter, it was very random, but we're shocked we got 3 tickets given the
demand:

[https://plus.google.com/108430678066988816876/posts/AAuhFJKv...](https://plus.google.com/108430678066988816876/posts/AAuhFJKvs18)

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mcdillon
Its definitely not sold out yet (academic tickets are gone though). As someone
else mentioned it looks like they are releasing the tickets in batches.

Edit: it is sold out now: <https://developers.google.com/events/io/register>

------
huherto
They should probably allow one day for people to request the tickets and then
assign them at random.

~~~
colinloretz
This is how Burning Man did their tickets this year. It didn't work out very
well for them but I think it would work well for something like this. You'd
get a better distribution of devs and people just looking to get "free"
devices.

~~~
ek
The problem I have with this is that Burning Man and the festivals are
general-audience events. I'm okay with not getting tickets for Coachella
because there are only so many of them and everyone wants to go. Such is life.
I'm not okay with attending a low-quality I/O because bad people were able to
purchase tickets.

My proposed fix was make people code something simple in JS and then run an
automated it before allowing registration. That way, dumb people try to
register, and by the time they can Google a solution to FizzBuzz and copy-
paste it, all the developers have already registered.

~~~
duaneb
But then you're discriminating for developers who know JS (I don't).

~~~
ek
<Pick your favorite mainstream easy-to-interpret language here> , then. I
don't think expecting developers to know enough JS or Python to write FizzBuzz
is unreasonable.

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foresterh
They should not give away anything this year, so those that didn't get a
ticket will get a similar streaming experience and those that got one just for
swag will get nothing for their "investment"

and I got a ticket, so I'm not saying this out of spite...

------
joejohnson
According to Vic Gundrota, it took "just over 20 minutes" for the conference
to sell out.
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/107117483540235115863/posts/iyc4...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/107117483540235115863/posts/iyc4arLjidR)

------
djenryte
I think there was a heavy geographical element involved. All my programming
friends from OC got in, some hitting the site as late as 7:04. Those in SF and
LA were all locked out even after constant refreshes.

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CCs
It was NOT a first come first served:

[https://plus.google.com/112824291715893708090/posts/KVGsrug3...](https://plus.google.com/112824291715893708090/posts/KVGsrug3ZhM)

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nabilt
Academic tickets sold out fast, but genreal tickets were available for about
20-30 minutes. Last year google had another round of tickets so be on the
lookout.

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emwa
I also didn't get a ticket even though I was on the registration page at 7.00
on the spot. After four retries the tickets had sold out.

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00joe
I hope you all get chromebooks, hahaha.

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weej
Looks like I'll be attempting to watch the live streams, again, this year.

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shrub
I took 4 spins waiting, but I got my ticket at 16 minutes past the hour.

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eternalmatt
Hardly an official news release.

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alfbolide
Now both sold out...

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funkah
Uh, awesome. Hope you had your finger on the button if you are an actual
developer who wanted to go.

~~~
jc4p
I did, no such luck. Same as every single year I've tried. You'd think having
been invited down to Google for other summer events would help but it doesn't.
I'd buy a ticket that doesn't qualify you for any swag if I still get to talk
to people but it seems like they don't care about that.

~~~
koko775
Agreed! The only reason I want to go is to share wisdom and learn.

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ascendant
If there's such huge demand, you'd think that maybe they'd move it somewhere
larger where they can satisfy more of that demand? If you want developers to
get and stay excited about your platform, making it impossible to come to your
conference doesn't help.

