[rdl]

I wish they'd take a small number of tickets (10? 100?) and auction them off, with the surplus over retail price going to charity.

In general I think all sold out/exclusive events should do this kind of thing; it raises hype, makes the people who get a ticket for normal price feel like they got a deal, and helps the charity. Anyone willing to spend e.g. $10k of their own or a company's money to attend is likely to have some value at the event as well (investor? lawyer?).

You don't want to do this for all the tickets, or even a large number of tickets, because having all 5k people be from Fortune 500 companies willing to spend $5k/ticket makes it a lot less interesting than an event with mostly independent developers, but 100 out of 5000 isn't going to change things much, either.

[rbanffy]

The best way to make developers go is to lower prices and not give away fancy, unique, unavailable elsewhere hardware.

You can also make passing a small programming test a requirement.

[elithrar]

> You can also make passing a small programming test a requirement.

But you also want a few key journalists, and you want designers and other non-programming types: you can't make exceptions for them re: this hypothetical test, because then it calls into question the purpose of this test.

I think they should just sell the tickets, first-come, first-served. Keep the price reasonable, but high enough to discourage people from buying them "just because".

[rdl]

Journalists are almost always special cased to events in general -- it's assumed they're not participating in the same way as everyone else, are generally poor/without budget, but are key to the event. Taking care of journalists (with a press room, a senior enough contact to help them with things, etc.) is key to making your event a success. The hard part is credentialing journalists -- it's a great hack to say "I'm a blogger" or "I have a YouTube channel" and get into a conference for free and be treated as a VIP. I've had great fun at an arms fair doing that :)

[k-mcgrady]

Although it's good to give money to charity I don't see the point in this. The tickets would most likely go to non-devs. This is an event to help developers learn about new tools and platforms. As many tickets as possible should be going to them.

[rdl]

What non-industry rich person would actually want to attend? (maybe a few non-devs in law or vc, but you already get non-devs from tech companies)

There are plenty of rich tech people. If I were worth >$100mm, and couldn't get in on the drop, I'd probably be ok donating $10k (well, moving another charitable contribution for the year up to this) for a ticket.

I don't think Jay-Z is likely to want to attend.

[k-mcgrady]

That makes sense. But as this is such an important event for developers I don't think anyone should be given preference - especially based on how much money they have to spend. It's great to give money to charity but it's not something anyone should be given preference for.

[rdl]

I suspect sufficiently "important" people can already get a pass, through backdoor requests to Google. This would at least turn it into a positive externality. (although I suppose in the "google gives a pass to Friends of Google, it gives some benefit to Google to be able to confer special access).

[guelo]

This already happens through craigslist and ticket brokers, without the charity piece.

[rdl]

Right -- bring secondary market value to the primary seller. Similar to avoiding underpriced IPOs :)