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Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

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Re: Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

#91

Post by mikeash »

tolmasky wrote: post #87
mikeash wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The building is packed all week. I don't think that keynote-only attendees are a significant factor here. If the two were separated, then maybe it would have sold out in 80 seconds this year instead of 70 seconds. Big deal. The imbalance between the number of people willing to pay $1600 for the conference and the number of tickets available is so enormous by this point that there's simply no way to make it fair. It d…

So one interesting thing is that the "two disparate events, one conference" problem goes a little deeper. There seem to be four "things" you get out of WWDC: 1. Meeting with people (can be achieved without a ticket and just going to SF that week) 2. The sessions (many of which are recorded and thus largely don't require a ticket, but some are not I think?) 3. The keynote (not actually important for developers) 4. 1-o…

I think that #1 is still enormously enhanced by the conference itself. You don't get the same experience if you just hang out in the area that week. (Or I assume you don't, I've not tried it.) The serendipitous socialization aspects are a big deal, even only looking at doing it with people who don't work at Apple.

I agree that #2 isn't all that important (although there are probably some people who learn better in that sort of environment) and #3 is basically just a free show that you get with your ticket and could easily be made completely separate.

I like the idea of a week that's just focused on direct contact with engineers, but I fear that it would end up in very inefficient uses of their time due to being flooded with people asking basics because they couldn't be bothered to watch the intro sessions. In general, I fear what would happen without enough structure. But perhaps it could be made to work, and it certainly seems worth considering.

The obvious first step seems like a bigger venue, though. Apple keeps saying they can't... but other companies pull it off, so I have to wonder why Apple can't.

Re: Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

#92

Post by Someone »

mikeash wrote: post #82
harshaw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps more conferences? Geez back in the Microsoft heyday there were many different conferences. Sure, the PDC had 20K attendees if you wanted to go to that but there were other smaller conferences as well. Hell, I'd settle for an east coast conference so I don't need to hang out with the skinny-jeans hipsters :)

More or bigger. Allowing for 20,000 attendees would be huge for WWDC. Currently there are only 5-6,000 tickets available. I imagine it would probably still sell out at 20,000, but it would be a lot less crazy, at least.

And a lot less useful. For the "talk to Apple's engineers" part, the current head count already is stretching it, if not overstretching it.

Re: Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

#93

Post by nglevin »

mikeash wrote: post #79
tolmasky wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't think the problem is how you portion out the tickets. The system you describe does not seem to be any better at getting the tickets in the right hands. I'm not so concerned with the unfairness of the current system, but with the fact that many of these tickets will be completely wasted. The real problem is that they've combined a 1 hour media event with a developer conference. So many people every ye…

The building is packed all week. I don't think that keynote-only attendees are a significant factor here. If the two were separated, then maybe it would have sold out in 80 seconds this year instead of 70 seconds. Big deal. The imbalance between the number of people willing to pay $1600 for the conference and the number of tickets available is so enormous by this point that there's simply no way to make it fair. It d…

> They need a vastly bigger space, or multiple conferences throughout the year, or a higher price, or something to manage the insane demand, if they actually want to improve this stuff.

Regarding multiple conferences, Apple decided not to do the Tech Talks for 2012. I hope they'll reconsider for 2013. That really was a great resource to have, and the 1:1 with the evangelists and DTS was excellent.

For higher prices, I keep on hearing this rumor and it never happens. There was a bump in the prices around 2010, and it never went further up from there. Maybe they're afraid of pricing out the indie developers? I have no idea.

Re: Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

#94

Post by neop »

smackfu wrote: post #58
harshaw wrote: post #32

Our guess in how this went down: first 5000 connections with using account/session where the credit card was already on file. This didn't work for us since we were attempting to pay with the corporate credit card.

The way competent ticket sellers work is that they give out tokens to people as they start the process. Once all the tokens are given out, new people get denied. The token has to be refreshed as they go through the purchase steps, otherwise it gets put back in the pool.

This was certainly not the case here. Many people (including me) were able to add the tickets to their shopping cart and start the checkout process, only to be received by an error after entering shipping and billing information.

Re: Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

#96

Post by mikeash »

Someone wrote: post #92
mikeash wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or bigger. Allowing for 20,000 attendees would be huge for WWDC. Currently there are only 5-6,000 tickets available. I imagine it would probably still sell out at 20,000, but it would be a lot less crazy, at least.

And a lot less useful. For the "talk to Apple's engineers" part, the current head count already is stretching it, if not overstretching it.

I must hang out in the unpopular labs. My experience has been that the engineers currently have a lot of down time and it's really easy to get their attention if you want it.

Re: Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

#97

Post by magicalist »

tolmasky wrote: post #76
magicalist wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like combining the Super Bowl and JSConf, then reaching the conclusion that obviously JSConf needs a bigger venue because millions of people tried to get a ticket JSConf also sells out in like 10 minutes, which is why they moved to a lottery system. There are no media events or giveaways there (mostly), just a really really good event that refuses to get larger because getting larger may (probably will) spoil…

Was this for some previous JSConf? I ask because from what I can recall of JSConf "back in my day", the price was pretty cheap and the seats were incredibly limited -- so I can definitely see ~200 seats @ $200 a pop selling out in 10 minutes and a lottery being necessary. I'm not so sure the same holds for WWDC however. I mention this because if I go to the JSConf US 2013 site right now, there seems to be 32 days til…

This year was 100 early bird tickets at $650 with the usual ticket rush, then 200 tickets at $750 selected by lottery. I don't know what those $2000 tickets are...maybe extras held in reserve for sponsors or something that they ended up not needing.

I'm still not sure about your idea...it just seems to boil down to reducing the incentives while keeping the price high, so of course there is some point where you can adjust that mixture to where you will only sell the number of tickets available.

I agree with the argument that the keynote attracts some people that otherwise don't care (though the WWDC is always super crowded post-keynote), but considering the other conferences that have this problem, the volume of people buying tickets, and the volume of people upset with the process that denied them tickets, I'm not convinced that going keynote-less would be sufficient to erase the issues with ticket buying. And that's really the only knob you have except for raising prices, which certainly does your attendee demographics no favors.

I also really have to agree with saurik that, even if you can reduce demand to have tickets sell out in, say, an hour, simple distractions that morning (kids, forgotten meetings, car problems) still mean you miss it, which will again heavily skew your demographics to the set of people glued to twitter who would never have missed the 30-minute, 15-minute, and 5-minute warnings of impending ticket sales. Some of those people are going to indeed be the true fans, but many will just be seeing those by virtue of attributes that bring no advantage to the conference, and may limit its reach. It takes all types :)

Re: Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

#98

Post by xenophanes »

lutusp wrote: post #62
xenophanes wrote: post #54

They should raise their prices. A lot. So the people who value it the most get tickets. This is not an ideal solution but it's much better than the current one.

> They should raise their prices. A lot. So the people who value it the most get tickets. The problem with raising prices should be obvious -- it preferentially selects wealthier attendees, not necessarily those who "value it the most". > This is not an ideal solution but it's much better than the current one. I don't think you've thought your position through. All raising prices achieves is to limit attendance to th…

You "don't think you've thought your position through" despite me predicting the complaint you made and pre-including an acknowledgement of the problem?

The fact is -- contrary to your claims, compatible with mine -- raising prices does both. It slants things towards people who value it more in dollars. People get a higher score for this both by valuing WWDC more and by valuing dollars less. That is better than random.

Next time leave out the meta discussion insults.

Note also that, "if demand exceeds supply, raise prices" is basic economics and standard advice on HN for many other things. e.g. if you're a freelancer with too many people trying to hire you, patio11 would say to raise prices.

you would not then reply saying he didn't think things through because all that is going to accomplish is having price-insensitive clients rather than good clients.

EDIT and how many people go to WWDC as a hobby? how many are really price insensitive? a lot of them, even if they have money, want to get business value exceeding the ticket price, or they will not go. filtering by who can get the most business value by attending would not please certain people with certain egalitarian mindsets, but would still actually be way better than random.

lots of people look price insensitive because the business value for them attending is $25,000 or whatever -- far more than the ticket price. but that isn't actually price insensitivity and it's a good thing to use a system that makes sure those people get to attend.

Re: Tickets For Apple’s WWDC 2013 Sell Out In Under 2 Minutes

#100

Post by lutusp »

xenophanes wrote: post #98
lutusp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They should raise their prices. A lot. So the people who value it the most get tickets. The problem with raising prices should be obvious -- it preferentially selects wealthier attendees, not necessarily those who "value it the most". > This is not an ideal solution but it's much better than the current one. I don't think you've thought your position through. All raising prices achieves is to limit attendance to th…

You "don't think you've thought your position through" despite me predicting the complaint you made and pre-including an acknowledgement of the problem? The fact is -- contrary to your claims, compatible with mine -- raising prices does both. It slants things towards people who value it more in dollars. People get a higher score for this both by valuing WWDC more and by valuing dollars less. That is better than rando…

> Note also that, "if demand exceeds supply, raise prices" is basic economics and standard advice on HN for many other things.

Yes, if the point is to maximize profit. If you have any other goal in mind, then maybe it's not the best strategy. For example, if you want diverse attendance at a conference, raising the prices to what the market will bear may not be the best approach.

> ... you would not then reply saying he didn't think things through because all that is going to accomplish is having price-insensitive clients rather than good clients.

And? Where's the counterargument?

> and how many people go to WWDC as a hobby?

Feel free to change the topic.

> Next time leave out the meta discussion insults.

It's only insulting if you've thought your position through. Clearly you haven't.

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