Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes | Hacker News Reader

Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes

techcrunch.com

41 pointsderpenxyne39 comments

Three people (including me) from my team were attempting to get tickets. We were all on the page 30 minutes before opening and entered the queue within seconds of opening.

2 of us never got anything other than the looking for tickets page multiple times.

1 of us got to the payment page on one attempt only to have it fail.

It's frustrating that we should each spend 1.5 hours of time to babysit what is essentially a lottery.

If it's going to work like a lottery, then just make it one.

This was a global waste of developer time resource.

myself and 3 others at my company did the same. Everyone but me got a ticket. One of them was hit by the google wallet problem, but just closed and re-opened that popup and got it to go through on the 4th attempt.

Two in our company were on it also. Started within seconds of it opening and went through the 6-minute process 7 or 8 times. Neither of us even got to the Wallet stage.

I managed to get one last year on my third attempt but I was using multiple browser windows. They had a clear warning about that this time, so we stuck to one tab each in the vain hope that it would give us some priority or preference.

I will try again next year. The uncertainty makes it hard to plan though, given that I'm living in Ireland.

Freebies are nice and all but would happily forgo them or pay 3-4x the ticket price to be able to attend.

I had to go through the same experience. I started my first ticket search at 7 AM pacific time sharp. I kept staring and clicking on button only to see sold out message finally.

Really, a lottery would have saved tons of engineer hours.

Given that 99% of the people I could see on Twitter were not able to get through to the checkout, 49 minutes feels like a relatively meaningless number. I suspect that if the system actually worked properly it would have sold out in 30 seconds.

From what I've been reading, it sounds like Google Wallet was really the weak link in the chain. A significant number of reports from people who were lucky enough to grab a slot indicated 5xx errors and other difficulties with the payment processing stage. If that hadn't been an issue, I think the sellout would have been reached a lot sooner.

Four people from my team were able to get to the Wallet stage after 1-3 cycles of waiting for a ticket, but the purchase failed to convert to registration for all of them. For one, the CC charge went through but the redirect to the registration form didn't happen. For two of them, they were able to get to the payment phase again and successfully converted into registered purchases. I suffered a number of 500 errors and long waits, but at about 7:35 PDT I was able to get a ticket and pay+register painlessly (Wallet processed the payment nearly instantly).

What a mess, but hey, all but one of the people from my team who tried to get a ticket were able to. #Winning?

Several people at my work had the same Google Wallet problem. Most of us had a $900 charge that was later cancelled. Ultimate tease.

This was my favorite tweet:

"Another year, another batch of developers who will be sure to never ever use +Google Wallet in anything they build. #io13" [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/seedifferently/status/311856162440093696

It would have been better for aspirant attendees to have been able to put the price of the tickets into an escrow attached to Google Wallet and/or pre-authorise the transaction with their payment provider.

I'm always perplexed by the way that they handle these ticket sales--they know that the demand considerably exceeds supply.

Why not have a 24-hour period for people to register for a lottery, then randomly assign tickets? Tickets that aren't claimed (and paid for) in a certain amount of time go back in the pool.

The advantage would seem that the attendees aren't just those who were best able to buy the tickets and thus more representative.

"they know that the demand considerably exceeds supply."

That's true in 2013 (clearly), but was that always true?

Yes, ever since they started to give away cool gear at IO.

Interesting. Seems to me that giving away stuff is a bad idea then since the wrong people will be attracted.

I'm not sure how you would even distinguish it from never being open. I tried to sign up at 7:01 and it said, "Registration closed." I reloaded 5 times and at one point saw the form but clicking through lead to the first 500 I've ever seen from Google.

How can they not scale this? This is 3rd-year-in-college 2 week project level scaling challenges.

It's an interesting problem... before virtual servers. The traffic spike Google receives for events and Nexus device launches must look like a DOS attack. We don't know where the bottleneck lies, but considering the 500 server error I received on my first spin of the wheel, I don't think it was a network problem. I wonder if the load balancers are effectively distributing things? Since it seems that so many people got dropped at transfer points, maybe they just need an improved queuing system so they can process requests without putting strain on registration systems or Google Wallet?

Maybe they should rewrite this system with Go? Then they could reduce the number of servers they use from 30 down to 2? :-)

I'm pretty sure this outcome is exactly what Google wants. Hardest tickets to get in town, even with a $900 price tag. Why else would they continue to give away such great swag at an event with such high demand?

On the up side, streaming basically the entire event for free does calm the righteous indignation to a degree.

Still, it would have been nice to get a chance to meet and chat with other people working on the platforms I use.

As well as the online streaming, I highly recommend going to a I/O Extended event, if one's happening near you (Google will publish a page listing them all nearer the time). Last year the London event was over at Google's co-working space, and as well as streaming some of the sessions, they brought along sample hardware, t-shirts (if that's your thing), and a lot of good networking opportunities.

"I'm pretty sure this outcome is exactly what Google wants. [...] Why else would they continue to give away such great swag at an event with such high demand?"

I agree. Giving away equipment worth more than the ticket price doesn't attract the right crowd.

Apple has similar problems (lots of devs who want to come, but not enough space or manpower) but it at least seems to put in an effort to filter out the developers who don't need access to Apple engineers. It doesn't give away equipment, ticket price was raised to $1600, tickets are personalized and are non-transferrable, and the presentations are put online for free soon after WWDC ends. Despite all that, last year's WWDC was sold out in under 2 hours.

> Despite all that, last year WWDC was sold out in under 2 hours.

...and I'm willing to bet that if Apple announced the time WWDC tickets went on sale in advance, as Google do, it would sell out a lot faster.

I doubt it. Just as with I/O, the ordering system is the bottleneck. If the systems could manage it, both events would sell out in mere minutes.

Recap of WWDC 2012 ticket sales: for the first time, Apple didn't pre-announce the WWDC dates or when ticket sales would start. People were quite upset because it was so sudden and because it was so early in the day – sales began at 8:30AM EST. Per John Gruber, on the day: "Sold out in two hours, before the U.S. west coast even woke up." http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/04/25/wwdc-2012

At least this year the tickets are non-transferrable. I'm hoping a lot of scalpers get screwed on this.

This is the real question - what is it that Google wants out of I/O? Do they want developer engagement, or do they want to publicize their most recent toys? Either is certainly valid, but the current setup does not optimize for engaging developers.

But, you've got to hand it to them, they certainly do wring out all of the PR they can from I/O. I'm honestly not sure how I'd change it... expect maybe make the keynote a separate ticketed event. I'd love to go just for the developer talks, even if it meant skipping the swag-laden keynote.

With the way the checkout system worked wouldn't it have been better to just have developers note their intention to attend beforehand and then on sales day just hold a raffle (in batches)? Everyone gets an email when they are able to purchase a ticket (selected at random, hence the raffle) and you only send out emails as long as you have tickets available for purchase.

This type of process would control the flow of participants and keep the experience optimal for those going through checkout. I wonder if they are going to release any numbers for how many people were trying to hit the servers all at once.

I was extremely frustrated that, while I had been "reserved" a ticket, the payment repeatedly timed out and I was kicked back to the "we're looking for tickets" page.

Oh well, I guess that's what happens when hundreds of thousands of people are DDoSing a page.

You're definitely not the only one. My order was canceled due to "unable to notify merchant of this order". Very frustrating.

And everyone thinks they're getting a glass for $900

I got a ticket-- been lucky the last four years.

Frustrating experience every year.

I "got" a ticket three times, but Google Wallet times out and wouldn't let me buy the first two. The third time around (after waiting in the queue), I noticed an ajax request being fired when you clicked the "buy" button (which would become disabled.... it would time out and it would still sit there as if it were doing something. Reenabled the button, pressed it again... it fired off the request... timed out... timed out... then finally it made it and kicked me to the rest of the registration process. Apparently refreshing the "buy" Google Wallet page would work too.

Google Wallet fail.

Any tips for next year? I never got even a Google Wallet popup.

It looks like the dev team running Google I/O website also had issues to get tickets... for the Velocity conference. ;)

I thought I had gotten a ticket. This makes me sad.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--gAC0BE9NrA/UUCiUYUp90I/A...

I was on the site at opening, got to the "looking for tickets" page, and never got further than that. I'm kind of pissed that they didn't price the tickets high enough to clear the market; I would've gladly paid more, but now I can't.

I was victim of this too, i even set my clock ahead and attempted to register 5 mins early (which was working as far as i could tell).

Not entirely true story what the headline is implying. It's not that all who logged in before 7:50 PDT got the ticket, I waited and waited and kept on trying without any luck. I started at 6:59 am and gave up at 7:38 am.

I haven't been to I/O, and have only seen a few of the talks online. Can someone explain what the biggest appeal for going to the conference is? Talks? Networking? Workshops?

Free gear. Last year was the Nexus Q, Nexus 7, and Galaxy Nexus.

The talks are good too, but the appeal has definitely been the gear, which is unfortunate.

Edit: to add, interacting with the devs is really nice. I went 2 years ago and was able to talk with the GWT team a bit after one of the talks. As well, if you want to network, there is definitely lots of opportunity for it, but it is not something I've cared about.

Networking is the major reason I go.

Test devices are nice, but I can have my company buy me pretty much any test device I need.

Sessions are good too (but are also online)

I wanted to go too, wow the tickets really sold out fast.

Ah well, the sessions are available online; though of course, lose out on the networking not being there.

Friend of mine had her ticket timeout twice because Google Checkout and Wallet kept breaking.

How do they still have these problems after all these years?

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