There's certainly a profitable startup idea somewhere that targets improving ticket sales and purchases for hot items. Google itself is absolutely miserable in this area, and I think most other large sites are as well.
A lottery, maybe?
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-io-2012-extend...
In the meantime, be sure to brush up on your coding skills. They’ll come in handy when the new application process opens in February. That’s all we can tell you for now, but we’d advise against making travel arrangements until then.
* Increase ticket prices and then corporate people push out indie developers.
* Increase venue size and then each attendee gets less value out of it, and there's an upper limit to venues anyways.
* Add a lottery and now your most loyal customers may not be able to go.
It honestly seems like the best solution is to just throw open the floodgates at an announced time, and assume the people who really want a ticket will be the ones most committed to getting one.
let people bid for tickets, they see the current lowest bid that got in so they can increase their bid, then charge everyone the lowest bid that got in