Last year’s Google I/O conference sold out in under 60 minutes. This year, with many more tickets available, it sold out in just 28 (according to my browser) or 20 (if you read Vic Gundotra’s Google+ post here). Google could have sold every ticket at least three times over last year. Or, if you just count the tickets not sold to previous attendees – at least ten times over.
In any event many people were not going to get a ticket for this year. I was fortunate enough to go last year (thanks to eBay) and after reading this year’s registration FAQ was hopeful that demand from scalpers would be damped down by the price rise and non-transferability of tickets making re-selling a big gamble. Add in the fact that this year there was no opportunity for previous attendees to pre-register and you have 5000 tickets available instead of the 1500 or so. What’s to go wrong?
Well first there was a hint of a ‘coding competition’. This didn’t come to fruition, all you needed was to be able to code your way through creating a Google+ account and a Google Wallet account, and then sit pressing F5 (or Command-R) until registration opened.
Next there was the concept of ‘first come, first served’. This is a silly statement to make as we’ve already established that demand far outstrips supply. Registration opens and immediately there were, apparently, over 6000 registration attempts. Per second. So first come, first served has no meaning in this context. All it does is allow Google to say that they had no favourites. However I’m already reading posts that say the ‘searching for tickets’ page simply polled the server periodically. This could still be a first come first served system, but from the outside it doesn’t look that way.
The fact that my browser didn’t start reporting the conference as sold out for 28 minutes indicates what? Simply that the system in place was, just like last year, woefully under-sized for its task – it just didn’t crash horribly like last year.
So is that the end to the PR own goal that Google I/O registration has turned in to? No. The first eBay listing was up just 39 minutes after registration opened with a general admission ticket up for sale at the bargain price of $2000 and as I write now there are two sold tickets and one cancelled sale.
I’m sure Google won’t be reading this blog post any time soon but I have some simple and easy to implement suggestions that, while they won’t cure the demand for Google I/O, can be used to minimise the bad press.
1. Ask people to pre-register. Have a pre-registration window and once the closing date has gone, that’s it. Only those that have pre-registered can then apply for a ticket. You now know the level of interest and can think about how you are going to make tickets available. Or taking up an option on more space.
2. No transfers allowed. Period. If you can’t transfer your ticket, you can’t sell it. Allow people to return their ticket for a full refund (feel free to sting them for a small admin charge if you like).
3. Run a ballot for returned tickets. This is where pre-registration comes in again. When a ticket is returned, draw a name from those remaining. Give them the ticket.
4. Stop giving stuff away. Even if you stop the scalpers you won’t stop people registering who have no interest in developing on the back of your products, because of the free stuff you hand out. Make it clear at registration: no freebies to be had at this conference. Instead, allow all registered attendees and speakers to purchase one item that will be useful in their job at a reduced cost.
Having been to Google I/O once I found it to be a fantastic experience and one I will never forget. After this year, though, I also expect never to go to again, because the odds of getting a ticket are use too long. At least the £2500 saved by not going (plus another week’s fees from my current client) allows me to look at purchasing more development hardware and take a few days off working on somebody else’s software to work on my own.
I’m not asking Google to change their core ticket sales process. With demand far exceeding supply, every system is as bad as the next and all Google can do is to reduce demand or increase supply. I won’t be watching live streamed presentations – I can watch them at my leisure on YouTube – but I am thinking about organising an Android hackathon with a group of friends.