Google I/O Sells Out in 30 Seconds | Hacker News Reader

Google I/O Sells Out in 30 Seconds

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69 pointspanarky69 comments

"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...

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?

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.

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

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.

If I don't have an Android device there is next to zero chance I will write a Android app.

If you can't stomach the minimal cost of Android devices, you also aren't going to write an Android app. Barriers to entry have seldom been a problem (just look at Apple -- they neither give out free iPads or iPhones, or the Mac computer stack necessary to develop for it).

It isn't just about one gadget, at past IOs attendees have walked away with like 4+ gadgets depending upon the talks they registered for, with the resale value of those gadgets far exceeding the ticket price to get in, especially when the gadgets are new on the market and hard to find.

For the organizers, giving away gadgets makes some sense in that if you're doing a deep dive into how to code for XYZ, it is nice if you know everyone in attendance has a default configured XYZ.

I've tried to register for IO in the past and never made it past the always-overloaded servers... this year, I didn't even bother... I'm sorry for those who tried and didn't make it but glad I didn't waste my time.

Anyway, if the conference is still selling out in 20 minutes, I guess this means they can bump the price by another $500 or so next year and see how it goes.

And things are getting worse by the year! The registration lottery system they did was frustrating but I see no other way of handling it. But they definitely need to rethink the swag thing, or I/O will become irrelevant soon (if not already so).

Are there any number about the percentage of attendees only interested in the gadgets and not in the talks/workshops?

I remember people complain every year during registration, but then during the conf it never surfaces.

I think that might be in part because the people that attend solely for the gadgets probably only show up to pick up the freebies, so you aren't likely to run into them at the talks.

In my group of friends alone, I know of at least 10 people (non-developers with no interest to start) that got tickets last year, went up to I/O as a SF vacation, stopped by Moscone to pick up the freebies, then sold them off to pay for the trip and then some. While I, as a developer with an Android app published, didn't manage to get tickets last year nor this year.

They should've at least done that coding contest that was initially rumored. At least it would've brought in only developers that might actually use those devices to make apps.

I think this is one of the reasons the price doubled this year.

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.

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

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.

They do that with the Google Developer Days. Interesting things happen then - sometimes, the attendees who pass the test are not sufficient to fill up the event and they have to start the ones who failed it.

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!

I hope they revoke this guy's ticket: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Google-IO-2012-GA-Adult-Ticket-/2307...

You're assuming he has a ticket.

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

Why do you want them to revoke the ticket? Is it because he acquired a limited resource and is now profiting from the demand? Is it because you want to go, but don't want to spend $2000?

Registration is for people who want to attend, not scalpers.

Why do people hate the free market when it doesn't suit them?

Since when does the free market mean Google can't say "non-transferrable ticket, intended for developers only"?

But as long as Google will sell anyone a ticket and allows the tickets to be transferable, you can't be upset about someone reselling tickets.

Looks like they aren't transferrable[1]:

"Tickets may only be used by original purchaser. Tickets may not be resold. The resale of a ticket will render the ticket null and void without any responsibility to Google."

[1] https://developers.google.com/events/io/ticket-terms

Why not?

I can support free speech while still being upset by bigoted speech.

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.

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.

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.

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.

looks to be officially sold out now. I have been trying since 7 am.

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" }) };

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.)

It sold out in 30 minutes, not 30 seconds.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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).

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

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

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?

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

The real number was 20 minutes: https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/iyc4arLj...

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...

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

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

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.

You would think this is an obvious fix ... but you wouldn't get the hype, now would you?

I didn't get a ticket this year on purpose. 900 is a bit too much for my blood (I pay for it out of pocket and don't want to resell the swag). I went last year and it was both fun and sad. The concert, robots and devices made me go to geek heaven. The sad part was that it felt a lot of folks were there just for the swag. I also went to pycon last year and had an amazing time. The production values were far less but I felt that almost every single person in the room was a craftsman (craftsperson?). In terms of contacts, both events were a bust ... I don't think I socialized properly .. didn't make any lasting contacts in either places. This year, I'm saving my cash ... have already watched a lot of pycon talks on video. Will do the same for I/O

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.

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

<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.

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...

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...

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.

It was NOT a first come first served:

https://plus.google.com/112824291715893708090/posts/KVGsrug3...

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.

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.

I hope you all get chromebooks, hahaha.

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

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

Hardly an official news release.

Now both sold out...

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

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.

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

Frankly, I'm planning on going to as many after-parties as I can -- the reason to go to Google I/O is the people.

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.

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