Google I/O registration is "very soon" | Hacker News Reader

Google I/O registration is "very soon"

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Google said last year that registration would now require a programming challenge. I hope they follow through with this because developer conferences have been over-run with non-developers.

Technical talks are presented to half empty rooms, developers miss out on tickets and have to watch later online while the hallways are full of business people (got nothing against y'all, but there are plenty of other conferences)

Many of the sessions that I attended last year at io were packed. Hopefully the additional day helps alleviate this.

Yeah, there were more than a few instances when I would try to attend a session and got turned away at the door because the room was at capacity.

My experience is from a couple of years ago because I missed out on a ticket last year (I am not very good at having to do something at a very specific date and time).

I also heard that tickets will be non-transferrable this year. Last year people were scalping them on eBay and craigslist because of the free hardware that is usually given away.

Easy solution, registration for the first 2 weeks should only be through a rest api call (whose required params change every day)

Should weed out the cruft

Other than you could write a curl statement in all of 2 minutes, post it on HN and then it defeats the purpose of said coding challenge. The smart cruft will get in... they'll just do it by piggy backing on those who do the work and post it online.

They'll always be able to get in. Which isn't a problem. The problem is buisness guys outnumbering technical guys. Reducing their numbers is all that's required.

A key problem with Google I/O is that they give you enough free stuff while you are there to pay you back for the price of the ticket multiple times over: this pricing arbitrage creates miserable incentives, and causes a lot of people to register for the conference for the sole purpose of being able to obtain free stuff, after which they either immediately ditch or scalp their ticket.

It looks like they upped the price. We will see if it influences demand.

Yes; however, the result is still less than the resale value of the equipment they gave everyone for free last year (especially if you went to the talk that gave away the Xperia Play): what they really need to do is not make the conference a net-negative "cost" to attend.

"You will need Google+ to register and Google Wallet to pay."

Perhaps this requirement will do a first pass at filtering out non-developers.

OK, when I saw this on HN I clicked so hard that I nearly broke my mousepad. Last week I installed a Twitter client just to follow @googleio and to monitor #googleio. I'm really disgusted with myself for being such a fanboy.

Because, when you look at previous years there's not that much that comes out of these that Google then follows up, it looks like a lot of the talks are the pipe dreams of a couple of engineers who want to talk about something cool. And, of course, don't forget the swag, the sweet swag! I think I/O serves more as a PR and recruiting event at this point than a real dev conference.

Like a well-trained hamster I'll still do the coding challenges and even mud wrestle with other applicants for a spot. Because, I think they'll give out the HUD glasses this year.

My Android@Home device is set-up to flash all the lights in the house as soon as registration opens

How are you checking for this? Just tweaking the URL to www.google.com/events/io/2012/ ?

I think writing a simple python script that can schedule a push notification to my phone via BoxCar will help.

https://developers.google.com/events/io/ Just went live. Registration will be live and first-come, first-served at 7am PDT on March 27.

... and $900. So much for enticing developers to come. A first come, first served with a much higher price means it's more likely non-developers will come.

Hmm, didn't Google announce when the registration was going to open last year?

EDIT: I say this because I have a meeting coming up very soon. It'd be a disaster if the registration opens in the next few minutes and finishes before my meeting's done.

I'd be surprised if they just opened the floodgates without warning, though the article does seem to imply that.

It's been announced as opening on March 27.

Source: https://developers.google.com/events/io/register

I just hope they have a presale for prior years attendees like they did last year. Last year they opened registration 2 weeks early for people who had attended I/O since its inception, and then one week early for 2010 attendees.

Buying an academic ticket in 2010 meant I did not get in on the 2011 presale and barely squeaked by at registration. Did not buy an academic ticket in 2011, so hopefully that counts for something come registration time.

I hope not. Not all of us were lucky enough to attend I/O the past few years. I don't think it's somehow fair that previous attendees continue to get a leg up over the rest of us.

Historically, they've always made a big deal about repeat attendees (better seating, better shirts, etc.) to encourage people to return habitually.

It's going to be hard to be a repeat attendee if you have to fight for tickets in the middle of a workday.

Note that the Google Developer account on G+ mentioned that they are going to avoid the "registration rush" this year.

Supposedly there will be plenty of time between the I/O registration opening and any deadline, and AFAIK it's not going to be on a first-come, first-serve basis like last year.

So, settle down, no need to stalk their online accounts all hours of the day. :-)

...damn, I was wrong:

https://developers.google.com/events/io/register

I'm going to Backbone conf instead.

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