Can't say I didn't see this coming. It's been the same absurd registration experience for several years now. What Google really needs to do is stop throwing all this free swag around so the conference can really find its intended purpose and audience again: developers. I've to most I/Os since its inception, and damn has the quality of the actual conference gone down since the first.
Although I don't think the free stuff helps matters, WWDC tends to be a very similar free for all - slightly less hectic, but that's only because Apple don't give notice of when the tickets are going on sale, so it's more of a mad scramble than a pre-planned thing.
Which is to say, in terms of registration issues I'm not sure making it more technical and getting rid of the free swag would alleviate matters, if you just go by what happens with WWDC.
Interesting. I've never gone to a WWDC, but I've been to the first three I/Os, and while it could be the fact that the conference has become better known since then (and increasingly at larger scales), you can definitely see the effects that the free swag have on registration demand (and the effect on the quality of the people going to the conference) over the years. It's been really disappointing to witness the change, as personally I/O was my favorite tech event back when it was true to its original purpose: a conference for developers.
Oh, it's I/O time again.. HN for the next few days will be nothing else than blogs crying about not getting in (and various reasons for why it is not fair). Oh well..
I'm not really bothered by the fairness (or otherwise) of it, I'm just amazed that Google keeps getting this so horribly wrong. I thought they might have learned after the Nexus 4 mess that they need to improve their purchasing system, but no.
Their 'fix' appears to have been handling page reloads for us, and making sure it's only done every 30 seconds- rather than, say, addressing the underlying weakness in their system.
I would wager that a fair chunk of the demand for Google IO is people wanting to be showered in gadgets and then there are people who legitimately want to learn stuff. Maybe I'm just being cynical. I have never been to Google IO so I don't really know. Any previous attendees have impressions about this?
yeah well, my response was a little tongue in cheek. i tend to watch the videos online. people don't go there just to watch stuff. they go there to network, and get free stuff.
contrary to what the current conference/technology trend may dictate, technology is not a rockband where the live show is better than the studio recording.
Yes, I've been to several prior events and the number of folks that used to be Devs has certainly migrated to folks that are in for the free goodies.
I have to believe eliminating the "free goodies" will definitely return it to a dev conference vs. an Oprah event. Maybe this will be the year. This year the system said they found a ticket (actually several times), but apparently they were just dangling it in front of my nose, because I couldn't get through payment gateway, Google Wallet.
Each year registration is like a game of Google Plinko.
I'd be curious to know the # of user requests that brought the Wallet to its knees.
The online videos are great. Although it would have been beneficial to sit down and talk some of the teams in person. Anecdotally I have heard that in talks with engineers on different teams you can learn a lot of little tips and tricks that aren't made widely available to the public because of a lack of interest and/or ability to make the information useful, or because they are little quirks in the system that can be helpful if you know them, but if everyone does then would cause problems.
I've always thought it would be interesting to see how long it takes tickets to sell out if you had to write a bit of code first. Something simple like fizzbuzz perhaps. The architecture from code jam is there.
I've never been, but given that the tickets seem to sell out long before the list of panels/events is even posted, I'd say that Google is as much at fault as the gadget-grabbers.
I'd love to know what, exactly, I'm trying to spend a cool grand on.
Searches never got anything for me. Girlfriend got to buy button which never returned from graying out after pressed. Wish I'd tried the dismiss popup and retry or check wallet in another tab tricks people mentioned working here. As it is, lost the ticket due to the 5 minute finish count. Oh, well, always next year. :)
This brings up a common problem I have with high demand ticket sales. Why not, for at least the first portion of tickets, us a scaling price? When sales open, the price is $10,000. Drop the cost by 1% of the starting price per minute for the first 90 minutes. Recalculate the starting price at the current price and begin again until we reach a floor.
So if sales start at 9:00 am we have the following schedule:
09:00 am : $10,000
09:01 am : $9,990
10:30 am : $1,000
12:00 noon: $100
Google doesn't necessarily want the richest companies/developers to attend. Nor are they interested in extracting the maximum amount of money (though of course they could do a few charity auctions). A good mix of small companies, freelancers, corporations is probably what they're aiming for.
If the goal is to spread tickets evenly over all potential attendees, then lottery style ticket sales make more sense.
Although if they want to control the composition of their audience even more, they can sell some tickets via Dutch auction and use the profit to pay for the costs for attendees are specifically invited.
How irritating. I got as far as getting a ticket for Google I/O three times. Google Wallet failed to complete the transaction all three times, although once it got as far as creating a "pending" transaction. After the third Google Wallet failure, Google I/O was sold out.
Kind of happened to me. The first time, the modal didn't complete, but I received an email that the charge updated. For kicks, I jumped into the queue again and that time the page completed all the way to the reg form. I now have two pending $300 charges.
I think this is definitely not a good first impression of Google Wallet. It was my first time using Google Wallet and I think it was for many others as well.
I hate to be obvious, but putting registration up in the morning for a bunch of developers (most of whom are on the West Coast) isn't the best idea in the entire world. Especially when it sells out in 15 minutes.
I mentioned this in another thread: lots of engineers do live outside of California. The majority of engineers in the world are not based on Pacific Time.
Last year Apple put WWDC tickets on sale at 5:30AM PDT without notice...the rumour mill suggested this was deliberately done by Apple to ensure more attendees from outside the west coast. I heard something similar from someone at Apple as well.
Whatever time you put tickets on sale, somebody is going to complain. There are certainly two sides to the coin here...I'm not pretending to have a solution, but merely pointing out a time that's convenient to you may well not be convenient to, say, developers in Asia.
