On: WWDC2014

[Jtsummers]

For some places you may be able to transfer that room to someone else without having to pay any cancellation fees. I've looked at doing that for conventions in the past where I wasn't 100% certain I was going to go, but somehow managed to get into a good hotel for cheap with the housing block.

EDIT: An example of how to deal with this. Say you can't go, but know someone who can. Coordinate with the individual to contact the hotel. Tell the hotel reservation manager that you're wanting to transfer the reservation to another name/CC. Have the second person contact them (likely need your reservation # that you originally got) and give the hotel the info (like CC, name, address). You can contact the hotel afterwards to confirm that the transfer has occurred and that you're no longer on the hook for the room.

This is also a useful trick for getting out of leases early. They transfer the lease to the new person's name and you don't have to break it.

[protomyth → Jtsummers]

"For some places you may be able to transfer that room to someone else without having to pay any cancellation fees."

Perhaps when the actual lottery occurs we could have a thread to do that.

[Jtsummers → protomyth]

That'd be a good idea. I've never (and won't again, not an Apple dev) attended one of these, are there official forums? Housing block for the hotels near the conference? If there's an official housing block it maybe easier, there should be a group managing it that you can contact directly. If you need a room, get put on a waitlist, if you have a room they'll offer it to those on the waitlist. Official forums or very popular industry forums would be great places to host this discussion because it'd have the greatest chance of reaching the audience that needs the rooms. (And HN would likely count as a popular enough forum, but with no subforum concept it'd last a day or two and then fall off the front page.)