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Why can't we stop this madness? I don't see how first-come-first-serve here serves developers well at all.
Why don't they let anyone with a credit card join a ticket lottery? Just trying for a ticket could cost say, $10 to discourage people from trying every one of their credit cards. Perhaps to make it more fair, a winner must take their tickets, to discourage gaming.
This goes on for two days. Then the "real" tickets go on sale, the lotto winners get their tickets.
This way if you run to the computer at 10:03 or get out the hospital the next day or just simply forget until dinnertime, you still get a chance.
I honestly don't think the problem is how you portion out the tickets. The system you describe does not seem to be any better at getting the tickets in the right hands. I'm not so concerned with the unfairness of the current system, but with the fact that many of these tickets will be completely wasted.
The real problem is that they've combined a 1 hour media event with a developer conference. So many people every year use their ticket JUST for the keynote. It's like combining the Super Bowl and JSConf, then reaching the conclusion that obviously JSConf needs a bigger venue because millions of people tried to get a ticket.
I'd be really curious to see how many developers would seriously be willing to throw down $1600 for a keynote-less conference that notoriously offers no free stuff (ala Google IO) and has many of the materials available afterward. Then instead of trying to solve the intractable problem of a lottery that leaves more people satisfied, you'd actually see who really cares about the content.
The problem with a cheap Lotto is it levels the playing field TOO much, everybody and their mother who has any interest at all even considering going to the event will put their name in the hat, why not? Now, people who make their living for themselves or are representing a multi-million dollar company have to compete with hobbyists or really anybody who just wants to hang out
I'd prefer a solution that scales the cost so as to make tickets available for every level of 'desire':
-first 1000 tickets cost $500 to get people in who may have never been able to otherwise
-the next 4000 cost $1500
-the next 2500 cost $3000
-the next 2000 cost $4000
-and the final 500 cost $6000 or more so there are ALWAYS some tickets at the upper end available if you REALLY have to go.
Put bluntly: this is bullshit. The advance notice was slightly better than last year, but the website was intermittently down for the entire two minutes tickets were on sale.
I was there, trying to buy them at 9:59am, at 10:00:20am the website finally went live, pressed the buy button and was greeted by "unable to process your request."
Seriously, Apple needs to figure this shit out. Whether that means opening up more seats, making tickets more expensive, or even just having a website that doesn't go down on you… something.
Was the advance notice any better than last year? Last year, you either knew about the sale in the window or you didn't. This year, even if you knew about it, people missed out.
Everybody's reporting this "sold out in 2 minutes" number, but I got nothing but errors the instant they went on sale. I think they actually sold out immediately (where "immediately" means "as long as it took for the transactions to process).
I got an error in Chrome, then immediately switched to Safari which worked. They were all sold out by the middle of my buying process though... tickets definitely weren't saved in your cart until you buy.
Is the world becoming a smaller place? Google I/O has been impossible to get into the last couple years selling out in minutes, now WWDC too.
But it is not just dev conferences. As an avid runner I've run a number of races every year. Recently a number of them have gone from selling out 12K slots in months to hours. In grad school classes filled up in seconds as well when registration opened.
This is a manifestation of our JIT culture. No longer do you mark the registration date in your calendar. No, now your call family and friends and have everyone raring to go at 11:59 PM before registration opens. If you're keen, you might probe their API and reverse engineer the site to get a jump on others.
Now that everything is in the ether, there is no concrete queue. You can't get there early if you're diehard. It is simply the roulette wheel of HTTP errors that determines who gets what today.
I believe they were just being funny, reporting how ridiculous these event ticket buying process became, instead of reporting this as a comparison between two companies.
I tried to log in as soon as the site came back up, it offered me team selection for another company, and even then wouldn't let me continue. I switched browsers to try again and they were already sold out. Very frustrating.
I had a ticket in my cart, billing/shipping info filled out and everything. I hit the "Purchase" button, and the ticket was gone. It kicked me back out to the store page.
Honestly, I think the question is "when are people going to realise they don't really need to go?". Videos of the talks are being put online, and while access to engineers is great, the majority of people probably wouldn't need/want it anyway.
Same as Google IO, these events have become like popular concerts- people leap on tickets because they know they're going to sell out, not because they've thought through why they'd want them.
The limitation isn't really the venue. While the sessions are useful they're made available online and the patterns suggested become common practice pretty quickly.
In my experience the value of WWDC is getting to spend time doing Q+A with Apple engineers, and moving to a bigger venue with more competition for engineers reduces the overall value of the conference rather than increasing it.
I got the error page that said to restart my browser at 10:00 am. Then the maintenance page at 10:01. At 10:02, it was sold out.
Should they go to a lottery system? It seems like who gets in is pretty arbitrary already, at least it would take the stress out of it. I was nervous about it all morning, and my heart was racing just before 10. Such craziness.
I heard there was a pre-sale yesterday for the "blessed" companies (you may have noticed that the developer centers were down for a bit yesterday as they were again today). So there were probably not that many tickets actually available today.
For future reference, is it possible to login to the developer center before the tickets go on sale, so you don't have to login? I didn't think to do that until 9:45 pacific, and by then logging in got a 'we'll be back soon' message.
i felt that i had good timing for getting wwdc ticket last year. after seeing how quickly they sold out this morning, i know i was very lucky to get a ticket this year!
like last year, i'll make a stop at the alternative wwdc (http://altwwdc.com) conference that has some good people from appsterdam spitting out the truth.
for me, wwdc is a great time to meet some cool people in town for the conference, but it's easier to meet people (and have a conversation) at the get togethers/parties/bars over a beer versus during the conference itself.
first 5000 connections with using account/session where the credit card was already on file. This didn't work for us since we were attempting to pay with the corporate credit card.
The way competent ticket sellers work is that they give out tokens to people as they start the process. Once all the tokens are given out, new people get denied. The token has to be refreshed as they go through the purchase steps, otherwise it gets put back in the pool.
I don't believe that it actually took 49 minutes for Google I/O to sell out - that's just when they put the notice up. I started trying to buy a ticket the second orders opened and still didn't get one.
I got that at first, opened an incognito window and re-logged in and that appeared to have fixed it, perhaps sessions created from before the maintenance were broken?
I'm not sure they will have. Perhaps a few of the really major companies like EA, but I know some pretty prominent developers for the platform and none of them have ever mentioned anything about getting priority tickets.
[+] [-] simonsarris|13 years ago|reply
Why don't they let anyone with a credit card join a ticket lottery? Just trying for a ticket could cost say, $10 to discourage people from trying every one of their credit cards. Perhaps to make it more fair, a winner must take their tickets, to discourage gaming.
This goes on for two days. Then the "real" tickets go on sale, the lotto winners get their tickets.
This way if you run to the computer at 10:03 or get out the hospital the next day or just simply forget until dinnertime, you still get a chance.
[+] [-] tolmasky|13 years ago|reply
The real problem is that they've combined a 1 hour media event with a developer conference. So many people every year use their ticket JUST for the keynote. It's like combining the Super Bowl and JSConf, then reaching the conclusion that obviously JSConf needs a bigger venue because millions of people tried to get a ticket.
I'd be really curious to see how many developers would seriously be willing to throw down $1600 for a keynote-less conference that notoriously offers no free stuff (ala Google IO) and has many of the materials available afterward. Then instead of trying to solve the intractable problem of a lottery that leaves more people satisfied, you'd actually see who really cares about the content.
[+] [-] shizwizzle|13 years ago|reply
I'd prefer a solution that scales the cost so as to make tickets available for every level of 'desire':
-first 1000 tickets cost $500 to get people in who may have never been able to otherwise -the next 4000 cost $1500 -the next 2500 cost $3000 -the next 2000 cost $4000 -and the final 500 cost $6000 or more so there are ALWAYS some tickets at the upper end available if you REALLY have to go.
[+] [-] SeoxyS|13 years ago|reply
I was there, trying to buy them at 9:59am, at 10:00:20am the website finally went live, pressed the buy button and was greeted by "unable to process your request."
Seriously, Apple needs to figure this shit out. Whether that means opening up more seats, making tickets more expensive, or even just having a website that doesn't go down on you… something.
[+] [-] smackfu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schwa|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dionidium|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkamb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twistedpair|13 years ago|reply
But it is not just dev conferences. As an avid runner I've run a number of races every year. Recently a number of them have gone from selling out 12K slots in months to hours. In grad school classes filled up in seconds as well when registration opened.
This is a manifestation of our JIT culture. No longer do you mark the registration date in your calendar. No, now your call family and friends and have everyone raring to go at 11:59 PM before registration opens. If you're keen, you might probe their API and reverse engineer the site to get a jump on others.
Now that everything is in the ether, there is no concrete queue. You can't get there early if you're diehard. It is simply the roulette wheel of HTTP errors that determines who gets what today.
[+] [-] CoffeeDregs|13 years ago|reply
WTF kind of statistic is this? The measure of two tech giants is how ludicrously quickly they sell out tickets to their conferences?
[+] [-] mistircek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maqr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] collias|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yardie|13 years ago|reply
I thought I barely missed the cut, now I see that I wasn't even close.
[+] [-] chrisdinn|13 years ago|reply
Looks like it sold out in the exact amount of time it took to process a transaction.
[+] [-] kemiller|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|13 years ago|reply
Same as Google IO, these events have become like popular concerts- people leap on tickets because they know they're going to sell out, not because they've thought through why they'd want them.
[+] [-] arn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kerbs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bri3d|13 years ago|reply
In my experience the value of WWDC is getting to spend time doing Q+A with Apple engineers, and moving to a bigger venue with more competition for engineers reduces the overall value of the conference rather than increasing it.
[+] [-] EvilLook|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xenophanes|13 years ago|reply
This is not an ideal solution but it's much better than the current one.
[+] [-] lutusp|13 years ago|reply
The problem with raising prices should be obvious -- it preferentially selects wealthier attendees, not necessarily those who "value it the most".
> This is not an ideal solution but it's much better than the current one.
I don't think you've thought your position through. All raising prices achieves is to limit attendance to those who didn't care about the high price.
[+] [-] olgagalchenko|13 years ago|reply
I got the error page that said to restart my browser at 10:00 am. Then the maintenance page at 10:01. At 10:02, it was sold out.
Should they go to a lottery system? It seems like who gets in is pretty arbitrary already, at least it would take the stress out of it. I was nervous about it all morning, and my heart was racing just before 10. Such craziness.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lsllc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaxGabriel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cleverjake|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannowatts|13 years ago|reply
like last year, i'll make a stop at the alternative wwdc (http://altwwdc.com) conference that has some good people from appsterdam spitting out the truth.
for me, wwdc is a great time to meet some cool people in town for the conference, but it's easier to meet people (and have a conversation) at the get togethers/parties/bars over a beer versus during the conference itself.
[+] [-] harshaw|13 years ago|reply
first 5000 connections with using account/session where the credit card was already on file. This didn't work for us since we were attempting to pay with the corporate credit card.
[+] [-] smackfu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanthoms|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzlobin|13 years ago|reply
By the time I pivoted to Safari one minute later it was sold out.
[+] [-] MaxGabriel|13 years ago|reply
The only exceptional thing about my account was that I'm a member of two dev programs, a business and an enterprise, on the same account.
[+] [-] scoopr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deminature|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kurry|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] harshaw|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twistedpair|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pat2man|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n9com|13 years ago|reply
Obviously, the bigger devs would have got their tickets days (weeks?) ago.
[+] [-] danpalmer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] collias|13 years ago|reply