The Individual Sale for Burning Man tickets started at 12 noon PST yesterday. Just over an hour later, the allotment of 40,000 tickets and 12,000 Vehicle Passes had been purchased.
Nearly 80,000 people registered for the sale and each person could buy up to 2 tickets (and one Vehicle Pass). In the end, roughly 21,500 people purchased the 40,000 available tickets (the average was 1.87 tickets per purchase).
So it makes sense that a lot of people are disappointed that they couldn’t get a ticket — for every one person who purchased a ticket (or two), there are nearly three more who were registered for the sale but didn’t reach the front of the queue before tickets were sold out.
The tough reality is that demand for Burning Man tickets is just way higher than the supply, and not everybody who wants to attend will be able to in any given year.
So, how does the system work?
We wanted to give you a little insight on how the ticketing system works, because while a number of people are understandably upset about having not gotten tickets, the system actually worked. We hope the technologists out there will forgive us, as we’re going to put this in layman’s terms.
The system had to process roughly 80,000 people hitting the server at almost the same time (12:00pm PST). So imagine 80,000 ball bearings being dumped into a funnel at once, all vying for a spot in line to make it through the hole at the small end. Physics (in this case, load-balancing and sorting technology) sorts them into a line (in this case based on the time they clicked the ticket link), and a queue is formed in a matter of milliseconds. Some are going to be in the front, some in the middle, some at the back — but only the first 20,000 are guaranteed to get through to purchase a ticket (40,000 tickets for sale, maximum two per person).
So even if you clicked the link right at 12:00pm PST, you may not have gotten to the front of the line. Is that fair? Inasmuch as everybody’s in the same boat, it’s about as fair as it can be.
What about the fluctuating wait time indicator?
The wait time is an estimate — it fluctuates based on the time it’s taking people to actually make their purchase, which is determined by how fast people click and type, how fast the servers are processing, and how fast the queue is releasing people into the purchasing stage. A few minutes into the sale the queue was intentionally paused for 5 minutes (to allow the system to catch up to all the people hitting it), which is why your time estimate changed.
So what about the rumors of people sneaking to the front of the line?
Unfortunately there is some truth to this. Approximately 200 people created a technical ‘backdoor’ to the sale and made their way to the front of the line. Absolutely no tickets were sold before the sale opened at 12:00 pm, but they were able to purchase the first batch of tickets when the sale started. The good news (for us, not them) is that we can track them down, and we’re going to cancel their orders. The tickets from those orders will be made available in the OMG Sale in August. Of course, steps are being taken to prevent this from happening again in future sales.
Did the servers crash?
No, they never did and the ticket buying process was never stopped — the queue was intentionally paused (briefly) to allow the servers to catch up to the demand — and nobody lost their place in line as a result.
Why were people held in line for so long only to find out tickets had sold out?
The system lets people into the purchasing stage, and then people purchase their tickets. Until they’ve all successfully purchased their tickets, it’s not sold out. If for some reason somebody doesn’t complete their transaction (bad credit card, they bail out, etc.), then their spot is given to the next person in line. So we don’t remove people from the line until all the tickets have been successfully purchased, because technically you still have a chance to get one.
Why was there still an opportunity to donate to Burning Man Project once tickets had sold out?
Honestly, that was a mistake — we didn’t realize that option would still be available once the sale had ended. We totally understand how that came across as adding insult to injury, and we feel badly about it. All transaction pages including the donation page should have been pulled as soon as tickets sold out.
Were people given any advantage if they made a donation?
No, not at all. It was first-come, first-served for everybody.
What about the other reports of glitches in the system?
There have been some additional claims of technical issues with the sale, including a report of an individual bypassing the line by going through Ticketfly’s homepage and one about someone using multiple codes to buy more than two tickets. So far we haven’t found any proof to substantiate these claims, but we are continuing to look into it and committed to its resolution. When we have more information to share, we will certainly do so.
What about all the overpriced tickets being sold on StubHub, eBay, and other reselling sites?
Our community has historically demonstrated its commitment to buying tickets at face value — a very small percentage of participants in the past have paid inflated prices, and we are certain that “scalpers” are not responsible for the high demand for tickets. While our options for preventing this behavior are limited, we do actively weed out known resellers as part of the registration process (that’s one of the reasons we have you register for the sale). But as long as people are willing to buy tickets at exorbitant prices (we wish they wouldn’t, but some apparently do), there will be a market for predatory resellers. It’s antithetical to our community’s ethos, but it’s also the reality of supply and demand (and technically legal). When we’re able to find out the serial numbers of these tickets (see below for how to report them), we void them. We’ll publish a list of voided ticket numbers on tickets.burningman.org this summer (so you can double check the number if you are buying a ticket on the secondary market).
Here’s how to report marked-up tickets on different sites:
eBay
See this.
StubHub
Send an email directly to yourfeedbackmatters@stubhub.com containing the name of the event (2015 Burning Man Festival and 2015 Burning Man Festival Vehicle Pass), the dates of the event, and if you want to get super detailed you can also list exact URLs for each ticket you want to report. IMPORTANT: Include your contact number so they can reach you if they have further questions — they’re far more likely to take the complaint seriously if they can actually reach someone to respond. They want to help, so don’t abuse the StubHub folks, they’re not the ones who listed the tickets.
CraigsList
Offer the buyer face value plus fees. If that doesn’t work, flag the post and it’ll be taken down … do it often enough and maybe the seller will be more willing to listen to reasonable offers.
Anywhere Else
If you see marked-up tickets being offered anywhere else, contact ticketsupport@burningman.com so we can pursue it (and yes we really do). The more information you can provide us, the better, including screenshots since people often pull down posts if they think they are being flagged.
Well done.
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Yeah I concur. Well done lads. Nice explanation on how the tickets system works as well. See ya’s September! yeoorw!
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Just FYI Nimbus and Lulu who look after ticketing are ladies not lads
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Good post, but not at all accurate. Many people logged on ten, 12, even 15 minutes into the sale and got tickets. I clicked the the green button in the nanosecond it appeared and had no chance. There is no way the queue worked as you described.
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“…sorts them [ticket buyers] into a line (in this case based on the time they clicked the ticket link), and a queue is formed in a matter of milliseconds. ”
This is a terrible way to form line for a high-demand ticket. Internet speed, location to server, clocks, and even human click speeds are too variable. Plus, there is an easy solution…
Of the 80K who registered – have a pre-lottery that puts them into groups of 5-10K. Then in 30min increments those groups are allowed to enter the queue until tickets are gone.
The lottery is a far more reliable way to ensure click speed is not the determining factor of getting tickets… which should be one of the goals of the ticketing process.
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I had this thought too . First come first sale isn’t a lottery. I like the idea of letting people in through groups or a random number generator. Why put so much value on promptness? Especially since we’re talking milliseconds here.
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A lottery based system still will have people shouting and complaining.
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Good point. This click race makes no sense: it’s stressful, potentially unfair to people lacking in tech resources, and has no apparent benefit over the alternative. People have already registered and so just have a lottery. That’s the way the World Cup “worked.” When FIFA does something better than Burning Man, there’s a problem.
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Hello! Exactly my thoughts….
They complain about all these “techies” taking over their event and then they serve the tickets up for them on a silver platter!!
Dumb, just dumb. I think they should have a lot of tickets available for locals at a record store like the old days.
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Don’t you remember the lottery. Doesn’t work well for camps that plan stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhsePT97aIs
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There was a lottery in 2012 and it was a shit show. That’s why they didn’t do it again.
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But the lottery in 2012 was an ill conceived and terribly executed lottery. The goal of that lottery was to give everyone an equal chance.
The goal of this lottery would be to mitigate the idea that millisec differences in click times determined your spot in line to get tickets.
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I’m with you….this reliance on technology to make the system fair is a fallacy. As we all know, technology isn’t equal. Location, speed, systems, server jams, and more make this a poor system for equality. Since everyone has a registration number, it would be easy to order registered burners into batches which would cut down on server issues and the example of balls into a funnel. I have tried for 3 years to get tickets and have not succeeded and I was in at 12:00:36 (I have the print out showing the time I entered!), yet I did not get tickets but some people who came in 10 – 15 minutes later did get tickets. How did that work based on the above explanations?
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This methodology of selling tickets so incredibly juvenile. It’s brute-force logic at best. Where’s the creativity with which Burning Man prides itself. Their concept of fairness is delusional. I could barely finish the article. I do have a solution though…
I propose a system to prevent scalping but not inhibit sharing burning man tickets and parking passes and still allow you to buy two tickets and resell them to friends only). Unfortunately, this system may require any re-sold tickets to be passed back through Ticketfly, even if resold to friends.
1) During pre-purchase sign-up, request that ticket buyer list 10 of their friends who also want to go and are trying to purchase tickets. If ticket needs to be resold, it can only be submitted for a refund if one of their friends didn’t get a ticket and wants one. Otherwise the ticket can be submitted to Ticketfly for possible re-sale, firstly, to the general waiting list and, secondly, to the general public, and a refund will only occur if ticket is sold to one of those party’s at a subsequent time.
2) Parking-passes should be sold only as a supplement to the existing ticket-holders (a few months later) or the parking-pass can be acquired if (2 or more) names are pooled to request shared pass (within 1 week of original sale). The total number of parking passes would be allocated based on a percentage of total ticket sales (for example, 2.3 tickets per vehicle).
If ticket-holder wishes to resell either ticket or parking pass, it must be offered to other party in friend group or to non-friend ticket holders (only after friends decline). If these two groups decline then it would be re-offered to general public (this assumes less than 100% tickets sold). No refund if tickets are oversold initially and no demand exists after initial lottery and before BM starts.
DOWNSIDE: This would require tracking ticket #, purchaser’s name (ID required), and list of 4-5 possible vehicles they might attend event in. If you breakdown, bring a copy of your vehicle registration if arriving in different vehicle that has no pass. (New vehicle will have to park in Satellite parking and walk of take shuttle into grounds.
This would severely limit scalping, abuse and give people options if they were willing to share responsibility for friends and community members.
Note: I don’t know if satellite parking exists but you could charge a prohibitive amount if required to encourage vehicle sharing.
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thanks George, I think you have good points how to improve! I like the idea of friend list.
But when it comes to Car passes there is a huge issue if you travel from overseas to the event:
1) you rent a car (what number plate???)
2) planning is more intense/not foreseenable (not an easy thing to rent car & trailer to put enough stuff for 2+ people in a single car… (we were a bunch of 4 in 2013, rented 1 largest SUV & 1midsize car. Filled it to the top with our stuff… no space for 5th or 6th person and gear…
this year we are ok so far on ticketa (8 of 9 needed), but short on car passes (2 out of 4-5 needed) – looking forward to STEP/OMG or someone who has spare ones (1 ticket / 2-3 car passes needed)
see you on the Playa!!
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It seems clear to me that a lottery is the only truly fair way to do this. Pre-register, random drawing, offers to buy go out, 72 hours to respond. Simple. This cyber-crush high noon thing is a bit like the ’79 Who concert in Cincinatti. What’s the sense of it? I attended 7 straight Burns and have now been shut out 2 years running… discouraging.
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I think a little consideration should be taken for the Burner who are constant.. I have been 8 years in a row, and now find myself without tickets… On line and hit the green button at 12 noon., stayed there constantly watching the time till next step change back and forth.. only to get to the next step and find myself without tickets——-AGAIN.. The lottery didn’t work and you lost a lot of hard core Burner that time…. keep it up and you will lose a lot more… Take care of your own first…………… Papagren
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What happenned to radical inclusion ? You don’t “deserve” more than anyone else to go because you’ve been 8 years. I understand you are disappointed, but you should know better than anyone that you have plenty of others shots at getting a ticket, in particular if you know a lot of burners and are plugged in the community.
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@Rory aka Hook
rules 1 & 2
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How is that radical inclusion?
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It’s called the directed sale.
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dave grennger: What makes you more deserving of a ticket than someone who’s never been before? Why doesn’t a first, second, or third timer deserve to be there every bit as much as you do?
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Agree. Years attending is a terrible heuristic for how much somebody contributes to the burn. If you’ve been going for 8 years, and you don’t know how to get into the directed sale, you’re probably ripe to evaluate your perceived versus actual participation-contribution.
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Well mike, because the newer people want to go based on the work done by those that came before. What others have created makes it desirable. I have season tix to la kings, had them through all the lean years, a true fan. Shouldn’t I have priority to renew my tickets based on my loyalty and what I have supported in the past? Or should someone be able to get my seats because they clicked faster? I have also played in some vb beach tourneys that only let new people in when the old timers want out. This is fair and people understand. People build equity and this has value. It’s hard to measure who has Given more to bman and decide that way it’s so subjective but doable with a huge staff assigning values. That person who says 8 years out there could have been some frat boy spectator, so years alone are only a contributing factor. Participation is way more important than simple attendance. It’s tough to say who deserves the tix. But I was insulted that after all I gave – theme camp Eco, art projects, volunteer – to build what others want to be a part of (since97) that I didn’t get a ticket. Not me personally but people who gave much to create this event and a newbie gets one. So weighing prior contributions is absolutely a fair way to do things. Yes lottery is fair too, but it assigns no value to sweat equity. And participation carries much weight. A tough call, but absolutely no way a veteran burner who has given much should be given the same access to tix as some first timer.
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Wow, the Madam hit the nail on the head here.
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Well, that sucks, I admit. And it sucks that I didn’t get a ticket too. I’ve been going since 1996. About 2x as long as you report going. I was trying to get a ticket for me and for Brad, who was a Baker Beach Burner. He has a brain tumor (inoperable) and going back is on his bucket list.
I’ve volunteered for 3 different departments over that time, and helped found hat was once Burningman’s oldest village and several theme camps.
But would it be OK with you if I took the ticket opportunity from your hands and said I had seniority and I deserved the ticket more?
I suppose after some thought the conclusion I came to was that maybe I’d get a ticket through the next sales, or through a friend, or whatever. If I only get one, I’ll give it to Brad. I’ve got more years left.
Maybe in the future, and maybe not.
Best of luck to all, and I mean that sincerely.
-Tony
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Thanks for perspective Tony. Hugs
Maybe the desire out paces the size available. What if burning man were exponentially inclusive and the values encompassed the ‘default word’? Could we expand the time, space or frequency of events to include all who wish to participate?
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Tony can you somehow stay in touch with me in case if I can’t go? I’m coming from UK but I’m Polish and am not sure if I will get a visa. My burners profile is aggiemac
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Tony,
You are the man!
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*cough* radical inclusion? *cough*
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This mentality perplexes me. Why is it that people feel some sort of entitlement to special treatment because they’ve been burning for x amount of years? How does frequent attendance translate into providing an unfair advantage to newcomers? Does that mean the burners who have been burning before 2007 should have an unfair advantage over your attendance? Does the group sale not cater to a large number of veteran camps already?
The burn isn’t awesome every year solely due to veterans; it’s the renewed inspirations of the newcomers that follow, that contributes equally to BRCs ever changing landscape.
I get it, growing pains are unpleasant, but that’s probably why they aren’t called the ‘growing warm n fuzzies’.
Something, something, radical self reliance.
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Agreed…I have brought a major art car out and was mid build for this year but nope, no ticket means my art is not good enough to be on playa this year…keep it up and all the art will leave too…Last year is an example of the art suffering…now this year i know of 4 art cars NOT attending thios year.
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I have worked DMV for the past five years and honestly, although I sympathize with anyone who wants to go and can’t because of no ticket, I also understand the desire of first-timers to attend. If the system weighted the likelihood of getting a ticket by length of attendance (if such could even be proven which I doubt it can – even if you bought tickets in previous years how would anyone be able to prove they actually went – maybe you were a scalper all those years selling off your tickets to people for a profit? – I am not saying you did this, just how else would BM know?) then there wouldn’t be anyone who was coming for the first time, and I think as several other people have noted, that the number of “burgins” at the burn is JUST as important to the “success” of the event and its “awesomeness” as the number of veterans. And as for art and particularly mutant vehicles (why do people still call them art cars?) I completely disagree that the “level of art” has gone down. Far from it. Every year I see many of the same old cars coming back with nothing new done which can get old, and I see amazing new vehicles that have never been that blow us away. So please, I share your pain, but don’t use that to justify dumb arguments for why you deserve favoritism. Again, as others have said, if you are that much of a REAL veteran, you will know how to find a ticket if you really want one or need one (yes, even without having to pay inflated prices).
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Burning Man needs to remain radically inclusive. At the same time it’s always had those people who consider themselves “insiders” for one reason or another.
I think it should be official policy that there should be no insiders and that every burner is as valuable as the next.
The event existed before you, it was cool before you came, and it will be cool even when you’re not coming. I don’t even think there should be tickets for established camps aka group sale. Change is good.
8 year burner, do not want privileges.
Ps: also each year treat the group sale as if that was it, all tickets gone now. Thats far from the truth – those who really want to go, will go. They will get a ticket from a friend or via step or at the gate from somebody who arrives with an extra…
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There IS a way that devoted burners can guarantee that they get tickets every year: Volunteer, contribute and work to make the event run smoothly! Most volunteer departments will offer free or discounted tickets to people who contribute their time on and/or off of the playa.
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Just not into a working vacation, I go to BM to escape the default world and responsibilitys. If I make it, I make it, if not…oh well, party somewhere else. (9 year burner)
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This isn’t necessarily true.
I have tried to volunteer and have found this a tough nut to crack. There are some groups that are very difficult to sign up with and their selection methods seem subjective and less than fair.
If I can find a ticket I’ll try again.
I did not go last year which would have been my 10th. Could not get a ticket in the sale. I still planned to come, but could not get the time of day from the group I want to volunteer with. Was gifted a ticket at the last minute but could not make it due to planning.
I now live 2500 miles away, and store my RV and art vehicle in empire, which is expensive.
I’m partied out and still want to come home but I need a job in BRC to continue my participation.
I do not think that anyone in the Borg or any volunteers with a spot and a ticket can appreciate what it feels like to be so homesick and not be able to come home.
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I don’t believe departments get free or discounted tickets any longer.
To volunteer complete your burner profile and then click to volunteer. Right now everyone is just ramping up so they are quick to respond. Also most volunteer depdepartments have email blast lists. Find them and sign on.
Want to work for the BORG. They just had an opening to do with logistics about a month ago and I think an accounting position recently. They offer first right of application to their volunteers so get on those lists and read them – don’t just trash them.
No working vacation, hmm, is that the same as no participation? This is a participant created event. Lack of participation + lack of ticket = karmic?
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That is unfair…radical inclusion, I’m sorry you didn’t get a ticket it sucks, I know. I am a veteran burner and I didn’t get a ticket last year. I was sad but that is what happen when more people what to participate in an amazing event. You have no more entitlement to tickets as anyone else. I am saddened to see such anger, judgment and hatred in online burning man communities. That is not what burning man is about.
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I am totally with you Maddy! I have tried for two years to get a ticket and finally got one this year for my FIRST time to go to Burning Man! My son has gone for about 5 years. I thought, if I got a ticket this year, I would be so excited…if I didn’t then it wasn’t meant to be! (as I have said in the last two years…) I think this is my year…its a bucket list thing…I’m not on death’s door, but its all about the rare experience and incredible time I can envision…though I know its more exciting than I could ever imagine! I am bummed about the negativity on the blogs about the sales…it is what it is…and I am sorry for those who cannot attend, but there are more sales ahead and people who change their mind through the summer…
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No offense, but bucket listers are a major reason tickets aren’t available to people that have already made it a part of their lives. The more people talk and post pictures on Facebook the more it continues to cause problems.
Sucks but that is the new reality.
This is the 4th year out of 5 I haven’t been able to buy a ticket. I’ve been gifted tickets from some friends that volunteer but they are weary of this situation. I’ve tried to volunteer but have been turned down which is frustrating.
I don’t know what my future looks like…. Making a yearly part of life seems it may be over….
Have fun those that attend this year, don’t waste it, and know that your attendance is probably happening in place of a veteran participant. If you go and spectate you suck. Don’t do it.
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“No offense, but bucket listers are a major reason tickets aren’t available to people that have already made it part of their lives”??? Are you serious?! Can you hear yourself blaming a woman who gets to go to Burning Man with her son for your inability to get yourself into a theme camp. I’m sorry, but that’s pathetic! And as the Madam said in a comment above this one, if you’re a veteran burner and you don’t know how to get yourself in the directed sale, you are seriously not paying attention. Laura, enjoy going to the Burn with your son; you didn’t do anything wrong by buying a ticket. Having my mom come to the Burn with me was one of the most memorable experiences of my life!
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@Chaos: I don’t know which Volunteer group(s) you’re talking about, but my first burn last year I had no issues signing on with either Earth Guardians or Temple Guardians.
If you’re looking for that group to make a ticket available to you, some DO pay attention to whether you follow through (i.e. that once on playa you actually show up for the shifts you sign up for, and to some extent, whether you work multiple shifts.)
Pure speculation on my part, but if you’ve been to 9 burns, and haven’t yet done any volunteer work for any group (even as a Walk Up, since many take sign ups on playa), the group you speak of might be looking at you with skepticism as to your motives. I realize you’ve contributed with your art car, but that’s quite different than “sacrificing” partying time to go eat dust in the hot sun working on an Earth Guardians LNT team, for instance.
As for dissing “bucket list” Burners, who are you to judge who “belongs” at Burning Man? Hardly a mindset of radical inclusion for such a seasoned Burner.
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If you have been more than once be thankful. Try not too be a Greedy Gus or Gwen, it is very unbecoming of a true burner. If you are committed to the ideology of Burning Man create a party with your other Burners without tickets and have a good time. True Burners are just that on and off the playa. Party on Burners.
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Dave, wow, an 8 year burner. I feel like I should be bowing or something. The metric you are using is so flawed I hate to waste my time replying since the Burn is clearly only about you. I’ve seen “veteran” burners sitting on lawn chairs watching the festivities go by, & I’ve seen “Virgins” just rocking it their first year volunteering & participating. Just because you have been lucky enough to go 8 times in a row doesn’t mean you deserve to go more than anyone else. It sure would be sad if we had a year where no-one rang the bell. Personally I love sharing the experience with virgins. It adds to the magic.
You failed to mention what it is that you DO that makes you so indispensable to the event (other than 8 years of attendance). If you are such an experienced burner then perhaps you should embrace the 1st, 2nd, 4th principals.
Radicle Inclusion: I would think this means welcoming both veteran & virgin alike. You obviously feel otherwise. “take care of your own first” I won’t even say what that sounds like.
Gifting: Hey, since you have gone 8 times, why not sit out a year? It’s like gifting your ticket without even spending any money. Wow, that’s a win-win. Don’t be greedy.
Radicle self-reliance: Since you are an 8 year burner you must have many burner friends that either have or know of 1 extra ticket. Use your connections & find one outside of the main sale.
Maybe we have different levels of commitment to Burning Man but I volunteer at the event, attend & volunteer with my regional burn, & camp with an established village that contributes to everyone’s experience. I was lucky enough to get a ticket, but I am also confident that I would be able to find one elsewhere if I missed out.
After reading your post I was left wondering why an 8 year veteran who seems so crucial to the event didn’t get an invite to the DGS? Maybe you should work for large camp that gets DGS tickets & make yourself a core member that they just can’t operate without.
Since you are such an experienced burner you undoubtedly know that demand has greatly outstripped supply and your best chance is probably buying in the pre-sale. You have a whole year to save & the extra money goes to make the event affordable for others.
Your proposed solution would have the same people going year after year which is not good. Randomness is the only way to make it fair to everyone. But knowledge of how ticketing works & having burner connections will greatly increase your odds of getting a ticket.
I do agree that people who go year after year & truly contribute to the community should have a better chance, but that is what DGS tickets are for & I think it makes a difference. It would be nice if somehow volunteerism got you credit or increased your odds but thats not why we do it.
I am going to try to go to Burning Man each year, but realistically I know that may not happen. I am Ok with that. I do not feel any less enthusiasm for the burn after missing a year (and I have). But most importantly, I do not feel any sense of entitlement no matter how often I volunteer or how many years I have attended.
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Plus one thumbs up. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Number of burns has NOTHING to do with how much someone contributes. Slaving for a month before burn or a month after in the hot sun on the Playa earns you a ticket.
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“Hey, since you have gone 8 times, why not sit out a year? It’s like gifting your ticket without even spending any money.” <– this is a winning attitude! I love it, I'll adopt it. 16year burner here, happy to be gifting. see you off-playa!
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Nice job. Well written and timely article.
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I agree, very well written.
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What happenned to radical inclusion ? You don’t “deserve” more than anyone else to go because you’ve been 8 years. I understand you are disappointed, but you should know better than anyone that you have plenty of others shots at getting a ticket, in particular if you know a lot of burners and are plugged in the community.
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Personally I’m comforted to know that only 80,000 people were registered. The demand this summer promises to be high, but the ratios aren’t completely insurmountable yet!
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thanks for your positivism!
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I wonder how many bought tickets “waiting for the green button” (I never saw a green button or a moon-walking man) and how many bought them by cutting and pasting the email link? I did the latter and never went into a queue.
I swear that for a few seconds I was at the ticket page (maybe I was first one in?) but then a new screen went up saying my promo code was accepted and: “Ticketfly ticket buying service for this event is currently down. “We’re working quickly to get this back up.” That screen remained until I opened a new window and pasted the email link in minus the promo code. (The reason I opened a new window was I was told not to refresh the screen or I’d lose my place in line.) Note also that before 12PST I had signed into Ticketfly.
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I got this too, wouldn’t that count as crashed? If it’s not up…it’s down! Not the paused sale….. but the actual “advancing you to purchase” 404 page not found – working to get the servers up. That was heartbreaking…and by the second I realized what was happening and pasted the link. It was too late. Not sure how that doesn’t count as a crash.
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I got the same message from TicketFly. Then I had about 15 credit card charges and an equal amount of refunds from Burning Man. Yet I never got a confirmation. Thus I have no ticket.
I will do the STEP and stay confident I will get a golden ticket as I usually do later in summer. Good luck to all and see you on the playa!
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Peace&Love,
Same thing happened to me. Out of fear of losing my place in line, I just let everything sit. 5 minutes or so later I got a message that my session had timed out. I redirected back to the previous screen (which had all my info except my email address erased). I re entered everything, and the sale went through. I hope this helps for anyone this happens to next year.
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Thank you for the informative breakdown. Can you please share approximately the latest that someone could have joined the queue, and still gotten a ticket? I think that’s worthwhile info for people to have for future reference. For example, did people who joined at 12:02 have a chance? How about 12:10? Thanks again.
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I can tell you that 3 of my family members all logged in right at noon and only 1 of us was able to purchase tickets. So I’d say that if you weren’t online promptly at 12:00, you didn’t have a chance.
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Agreed. I logged in at noon and never got to the “front of the line”. Frustrating but I understand the mechanics and unless I want to believe that there is something intentionally seditious going on (which I do not, I think this is just the mechanics of an electronic process trying to process too many requests for too few items – this happens all the time, for instance during holiday season many promos for special purchases on Amazon and Best Buy sold out in minutes and people who had tried to purchase found themselves being told “sorry there are no more items to buy” after they had entered all their sales data even… One thing people need to do is to learn to type faster when they DO get to the end of the line LOL! This is just the electronic era equivalent of lining up to buy tickets at Ticketmasters and being one (or one hundred) past the last person who actually gets to buy a ticket. It sucks but it really isn’t anyone’s “fault”.
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I think you had about 10 seconds after they opened the floodgates to get in. My buddy signed on at 12:00:10 (his watch) and managed to get tix for both of us, (but no vehicle pass). I was in at 12:00:20 (my watch) and my green man got through about half the boxes before I got the “sold out” message.
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Bret Ebey posted to the Burning Man facebook group that he got tickets after clicking in at 12 minutes after, along with screenshot of his confirmation. Doesn’t sound like everything went exactly the way it was supposed to to me. Here’s his post:
Hmmm, okay, I guess that was my surprise of the day. I wasn’t going to play the game this year, but decided ‘oh what the hell’. So at 12 minutes after, I got in thinking I had zero chance since I know everyone else starts within seconds after the hour. Guess what? Tickets baby!
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Kevin McAllister reported on a thread on the burning man facebook group page asking people what time they clicked in and whether they got tickets that he clicked in at 12:47 and got 2 tickets and a vehicle pass after waiting 12 minutes! I guess I clicked in 47 minutes too early.
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Well, if they were queuing folks by milliseconds, that means 20,000 individuals who were able to get tickets were the ones who clicked in the first 20 seconds.
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Two of us were sitting side by side at my home in Anchorage, AK. Two computers wired to same broadband router. Both watching computer clocks turn over on the hour. Both clicked our email link within the first second. We both went through the same experience of getting the fluctuating wait times to next step calculations, but her wait time projection was usually a few minutes less than mine. In the end, she had the opportunity to purchase at about 50 minutes, and bought two tickets, vehicle passes sold out. At about 1 hour 5 minutes my turn came up, but all sold out. I had hoped there would be a vehicle pass available. But we have located one from another source. This will be our 2nd year attending. Last year we bought in the STEP.
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I clicked the link about 10 minutes before 12 and got the message about not available yet. I clicked in at about 2 minutes til noon and got he message to wait for the green button (no need to refresh). The green button showed up a few seconds after 12. When I clicked on it, it had a time stamp of 12:00:07. I got my tickets at about 27 minutes after 12.
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I wonder if an additional sale could be done before the main sale, valid for only a single ticket tagged with the buyer’s name.
That would allow people to attempt to get a personal ticket and it would be non-scalpable as such.
The current multi-tiered series of sales seems to reduce the panic factor, which is nice. It’s nice to know STEP and OMG are still out there. Maybe a named single ticket sale could complement that.
My personal experience thus far has been very smooth, but I’ll admit to quite the elevated heart rate every time zero hour approaches!
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Great idea!!!! A non-refundable, non-tranferrable ticket. That’ll separate the Burners from the scalpers. Love it!!!
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This is a great idea! Yes, to single sales tickets with printed names!
Thanks Sarge.
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Selling 2 of those rare tickets per person does not make any sense to me. That violates self-reliance, halves the chances of honest buyers and doubles the chances for scalpers.
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I like this idea!
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For a lot of us, we’re either going with our significant other, or not at all. Also, allowing the purchase of more than one ticket per person is the only way to handle situations where a ticket is being gifted, someone doesn’t have a VIsa or Mastercard credit card, someone doesn’t have the cash for a ticket when the sale starts, and all sorts of other potential issues.
So having 2 tickets go in one transaction makes a lot of sense.
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Excellent, excellent concept.
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That pre-sale is called…The pre-sale. The tickets cannot go into STEP…sooo…
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Great for single burners…unfortunately almost everyone I know is coming as a couple and can not commit (like me) to a 5,000km 2 week journey without my other half. If only one of us got a ticket, we couldn’t go and the the other would be stuck with a non-refundable, non-transferable ticket.
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Is there any possibility of moving the omg sale earlier in the summer? I know that sounds ridiculous but on the tiny chance someone can actually get ahold of a ticket, that gives those people no time to book a flight, try to get time off of work, etc. most people live far away and can’t organize everything to get there in one month:(
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I would be surprised if a) Bmorg read all the comments here (like, your request), b) that it’s easy to change the OMG sale date (presumably the pre-publication done already & other dependencies make it really hard), and c) other burners wouldn’t cry foul at this, too (crying foul at Bmorg is part of the way we exist, eh?).
But, I agree. It’s really tough to plan so late in the game if you’re not from the west coast. 60 days before the burn would make it much easier.
+1 to your request.
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Even tougher if you’re coming in from abroad & want to book cheaper flights & hire vehicles etc not to mention getting all the gear you need organised!!
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Bravo! This is THE best official response to an issue BM has ever put out. You answered all the questions and I thought the answers made total sense. The biggest thing I would have done was when the line was paused, the message should have said it was intentional and why.
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I’m with Dave. They don’t provide enough tickets in the DGS for all long time members of a camp to get tickets, only a portion of the camp. So some of the camp still has to find tickets other ways. The census has shown that the last few years have had about 40% virgins. And I for one have noticed a lot more trash being dumped the last few years. Give some weight to vets and cut the virgin population down to 20%. I’m not saying get rid of virgins all together. Those additional tickets could go into the DGS, or the individual sale if it was weighted towards allowing more vets, who actually respect the principles.
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Good idea Celeste! I’d suggest a maximum 25% virgins.
BM is steadily losing all of the independent Burners who prefer not to be part of the large camps.
The result will be an increasingly Disneyfied experience on the playa… big showy performance camps and 40,000 virgins/voyeurs just observing…
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This is a cogent comment although I am not sure what the correct “solution” is. You are right that the DS targets big definable theme camps and villages (although smaller theme camps with good reputations get some too so its not ALL “large” camps). And you are right, this completely ignores those who choose to wild camp every year but still come to BM and create part of that “accidental community” experience which is just as much a part of BM as Fandango or Death Guild are. But I think the odds are still pretty good, if you are an experienced burner, that you can get a ticket if you want one somehow during the six months before you need to really know to go. Last year there were hundreds of tickets available through all sorts of open channels (existing camps, local burner groups, craigslist, etc.) all of which were sold at face value or in some cases even less. The people who complained mostly weren’t all that interested in trying to hard to get a ticket. They waited and assumed one would drop in on them from the heavens and that is less and less likely to happen now (unlike 2000-20010 when there were always tickets available on the open market right up until the time the gates opened – those days are now gone, we are in a new era – sorry for that, but times change and there just are more people who want to go now than there are spaces for them.)
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And as for the Disneyfied experience, well, that’s pretty much they way things have been moving for years. Don’t be shocked or appalled. If people didn’t want that experience, they would stay away. If you don’t like that experience, why do you want to go? Chef Juke (from DMV) and I have had this discussion for several years: “is Burning Man too big or too showy today to be interesting?” Well to some, probably. To others, no. Its different each year and that is just the way things are. As for size, some people complain “you can’t see it all anymore” but you can’t see all of Paris either, but I still go there and love it. I see what I see and what I don’t see, I don’t. C’est la vie! :-) Ditto for Burning man. What I see, I love and the rest, well that just isn’t part of MY experience. And some of the best fun is discussing (sometimes even arguing) about which things were best to see and which things I missed that I wish I hadn’t. I enjoy that. Your mileage may vary.
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What makes a veteran? One Burn? Two? Ten? Realistically, how is a one or two year ‘vet’ going to contribute more than a super keen first timer?
What about someone who has been active in the local Burner community for years, but can’t get the time off to make it to TTITD or has had ‘life’ happen and crashed their plans repeatedly?
This is my 3rd time obtaining tickets, but will be my first Burn. I have been to 4 regionals, and am active in my local community. Am I somehow less worthy?
Next, if you throttle new blood too much you will hit a situation where you don’t have enough new blood to fill in when attrition takes vets out of the mix.
That’s on top of “vets first” being very exclusionary. If a vets contribution is soooo awesome, what kept them from getting DGS tickets?
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Overall, well done, technically. I appreciate the challenge you guys are up against.
I did have a glitch at the very end of the process – I got to the front of the line, and suddenly got a message saying “Old Number in Line” and asking me to re-queue. But social media was already reporting the sellout moments before, so I just quit trying. I’m assuming that the purchase page was getting shut down at the moment I was redirected, and the queue didn’t know what to do with me.
I have screenshots before and after if it’ll help smooth out that wrinkle in the future.
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Here’s a question for the BMOrg. You know that 80,000 people registered, so all of those people have a burner profile that specifically asks if you have attended before and how many times you have been. Of the 80,000 people registered, I want to know how many are veteran burners and how many would be virgins? That seems like a pretty simple question to ask. And if this data isn’t important, why is it a required question in the profile?
And who wants to bet this question isn’t answered? Because my money is on me not getting any official response to this, and if I do get a response, I doubt it will involve any numbers or explanation of why the data matters if it isn’t being used.
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Virgins are less of a headache to BMorg. They do what they’re told and don’t ask questions. I’m sure BMorg would be happier with 60-70% virgins, but theres always next year.
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The data about past Burn experience is of interest to at least some voices within the Borg, including CEO Maid Marian. I saw her speak at Camp Soft Landing in 2014 and she briefly addressed the issue of discontinuity caused by the unavailability of tickets. She speculated on a possible future incarnation of Burner Profiles which would somehow allow preference to be granted to Burners with a history of contributing.
She mentioned past involvement in theme camps, departments, and art projects as reasons someone might have a better chance of getting a ticket. She also included geography as a possible factor, with people traveling from further away getting higher preference.
Psychedelic Salon recently made available a recording of the talk in episode 436-Goodell: “Behind the Scenes at Burning Man”, the relevant part starts around 22 minutes in.
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Well that actually doesn’t sit so well with me. I would rather depend on the vagaries of the marketplace and chance than to start having Burning Man tinker with the profiles people post (which aren’t provable anyway – what if I file a profile and say I went for 20 years – how will they know if that is true or not, especially when records for tickets sales prior to 2011 are completley nondeterministic – maybe I bought ALL of my tickets from friends or at the gate with cash – you could do that for the longest time you know – up until the sellout years ).
This sounds a lot like genetically engineered food processes. “Let’s tinker with the algorithm, give the Europeans a slightly higher probability to make sure we have pretty close to a nice “geographic bell curve” of attendance, and ditto for people who work with big theme camps (although they already do that to a certain degree with the directed sale). Just let chance to its work and people should stop whining so much (except its so much fun to whine LOL!)
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I’ll take that bet. The answer is that we don’t know for sure how many are vets and how many are first-timers. The data we get on that question is dubious at best, because we can’t be sure people are necessarily answering it truthfully or not.
And since *certain* online sources enjoy propagating the myth that one’s newbieness somehow impacts one’s ability to get a ticket (hint: it doesn’t, at all), the data is even LESS reliable. But the running average we’ve seen, based on the Black Rock City Census, is that it’s around 40% first-timers on average.
We’d of course love to have accurate information about it, so we can get a better idea of our community’s demographic and how it’s changing over time, so we can make smarter policy decisions. That’s why the data matters.
So … about that bet …?
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“Of the 80,000 people registered, I want to know how many are veteran burners and how many would be virgins? That seems like a pretty simple question to ask.”
If you want to win the bet, answer the question. You know from the Burner profiles.
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Any chance of getting the highway extended to 4 lanes, with a real shoulder? Ya, thats a pipe dream that would cost millions, but that’s the bottleneck that keeps us from expanding in size.
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Four lanes would not be practical. (it is only needed for two weeks a year)
Adding a suicide turn lane, which can be repurpose as a usable lane for the direction of mass traffic flow…
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That’s an excellent idea, but man, I wouldn’t want to be the guy laying down 90 miles worth of cones.
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One other option would be to add an “east side” entrance from Jungo Road. That would definitely improve the vehicle ingress and egress but Jungo Road needs a lot of improvement that again is only necessary for two weeks out of the year.
I would love to see a second Burning Man event although timing is tricky because of weather (there is only a narrow window when the playa is really usable most years because of wet land which sucks cars in, and causes lots of destruction to the playa if there are thousands of cars allowed). All of this will require a lot of very tricky negotiations with the Fed BLM which still is trying to “protect” the playa (as it should).
It could be an either/or proposition. You could only attend one of the events… It would be fun to see which people would go in which direction… traditional BM or new BM? :-)
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You answered your own question accurately.
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Adding a third lane to 447 which could be made directional during the times of year needed would require approximately 42 million dollars using extremely rough and totally inaccurate estimates from: http://capitolfax.com/summary.pdf
The reality is Nevada construction costs (labor and equipment) are actually higher than most states and the geography is favorable in some ways but isn’t flat for all of it so could cost quite a bit more.
But perhaps not completely out of the scale of feasibility. That’s what, $600 each if you split it 70,000 ways? I wonder how many tickets the event could sell these days without a pop cap.
The Jungo road option is less favorable purely from a cost perspective but if the local community needed that route for some reason during the rest of the year, might be easier to fund.
Also from what I understand the road is not the only thing producing the cap, so that infrastructure investment would need to happen at the same time as clearing whatever other hurdles are involved with radically expanding the cap to make the numbers work.
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Appreciate the communication. Thank you!
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The frustration and anxiety of having an indicator (time left to front of queue) that doesn’t mean anything (how could it, when it fluctuates so madly?) is wrong. Next time, I STRONGLY suggest a more stable, more informative indicator, and guess what? It’s EASY. Replace the “time left” with two simple numbers: how many people are ahead of me in line, and how many tickets are left.
I don’t expect this suggestion will be taken up, because the developers know that the queuing system is just as random as the time indicator.
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Actually that is a GREAT suggestion that I hope the BMorg listens too. You are correct, having accurate “number in line” and “tickets available” stats would make it much more obvious to everyone what is happening. That is relatively simple to do with modern web and ticket sales technology. Hell, traffic updates are to the second these days and can show you exactly how long it will take to get through a particular place on a map and it is dynamic and changing all the time (just like the ticket line) and for the most part those feedbacks are almost always accurate. This is just two numbers to display on 80,000 or so screens, that is “easy peasy” as the saying goes in web page technology terms (just a little ajax feedback that is refreshed every minute – it wouldn’t even cost much in terms of bandwidth!)
I do hope someone pays attention to this suggestion, it is a very good one.
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This is actually how the system used to work (with our previous ticketing provider), but it was decided that telling people how long they had to wait was more valuable information than how many people were in front of you, which doesn’t tell you anything about how long it will all take.
We do want to give people as accurate a representation of their situation as possible, within the constraints of a heavily-loaded system and a relatively short time-frame.
Perhaps BOTH time remaining and queue length could be reported, though (that’s not for me to say)? I’ll ask that they take it into consideration.
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Time remaining is only a useful figure to report if it’s at least somewhat accurate. If the number is jumping wildly from a few minutes to the highly specific “more than an hour” (what, computers can’t count higher than 60 these days?), it really doesn’t serve much purpose. That’s especially true given the fact that it kept counting down even when tickets were sold out.
When I went into the sale, I knew that it would probably take up to two hours or so to all shake out, and I budgeted time accordingly. What I didn’t know is if I’d ever make it to the front of the line (I didn’t). Length of the queue and remaining tickets available are far more important numbers to me, and watching them shrink as ticket orders are processed would have been a much better timer.
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Out of nine camp mates from last year, I was the only one who got tickets. It will be sad for me to burn without the camp mates who made my virgin burn last year the most amazing experience of my life.
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I get what you’re saying, it cost us our 100+ camp that was usually an Esplanade or Center Camp Theme camp. More than half our camp did not get tickets and as a Theme camp caused us to not be able to return as such and present the interactive art we were known for that was a huge blow to Many of us. Also many of us were volunteers in various places bon the playa. I was with ARCTICA for years and it really hurt not being able to return. But. I am a 19yr Playa Burner and perhaps its just time for some VIRGINS or other people to get to go more than my need to go or be there. Doesn’t. Feel good but reality is there are others that have never been or haven’t been as much and perhaps its just time for me to pass the torch.., KUDOS to the Ticket Team for handling this in this way it helps to know how the process works. Takes the sting out of losing our entire camp because we didn’t have enough people to set it up. And perhaps at some point there will be room for some old burners to return if some of the newbies don’t… Facts are word got around and there’s just not enough tickets for all of us to go. To those going have a GREAT Burn and be sure to post your experience that way many of us can live vicariously through your experience.
BARE
ARCTICA ICE MISTRESS
Retired
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It’s good to know that it was only a 2-to-1 ratio. However, I think there needs to be a technical revue of who got their tickets, from what links, and how long did it take. I know of numerous people who found a loophole in the system.
– If you clicked on the link in your email, you got stuck in a long line. Most people I know in that line did NOT get tickets
– If you logged into Ticketfly, found the BM ticket sale and then entered your code, you got your tickets immediately. I know several camps that cleaned up doing this.
Here’s a link to the screenshot of the tip that was sent out. People who used it got tickets and bypassed the line. http:// i.imgur .com/Ea9WUqx.jpg
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Thank you! Here on the east coast, at 3:30 Wednesday (12:30 PST), people were posting on a local Burner list that they had logged in at 3:05 or 3:15 and gotten tickets instantly while I was still on the line with the “You have more than an hour wait” message from 3:00. It’s nice to actually know at least one of the ways the system was broken.
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Actually, it’s more than 2 to 1, each registrant can buy 2 tickets or as it turned out 1.87 (from the blog) so closer to 4 to 1. What it meant in our community was people pairing up in an attempt to “cover each other’s back”, this could mean more tickets available in STEP or directly to people who stay active in their local community. Don’t give up hope
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Exactly! I know many people that do that. They log on to cover one another. I see nothing wrong with that. Even so THAT practice didn’t work for many I know including US. So we won’t be on the playa this year and perhaps its just time to move on who knows…. If we are meant to return at some point tickets will manifest in some way. There is just no way to cover all the people wanting tickets. Sad fact. But the Ticket Team is doing their best to find and solve the issues and glitches… Burn On, have a great time
Barbara BARE Moebius
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This is a common example of where radical self-reliance really means make sure to get yours.
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Is there anyway that you can do a late arrival ticket? Over the years I have seen loads of people packed up, and leaving the Playa days before the burn.
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That would appeal to tourists more than anybody else – not gonna happen
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DAYS before the burn? No. Hours before. No lets not do a day pass so everyone comes friday-saturday.
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Great job burning man for trying to get in front of this one. Your best yet. However I agree with Greg. We have given years of our lives (15) to you. All of our extra cash and art projects throughout the years which return with the worst loyality program of any company ever. You have nothing for us loyal customers. Can you imagine paying top dollar to a company year after year, promoting them as the best thing ever to all your friends and then not be given any preferential ( I know that word will spark all kinds of haters but that’s only word that comes to mind) treatment. ALL companies take care of their best and loyal customers. I run a company (you have even purchased from me) and if this is how I treated you or my customers you would never come back. Is that what your telling us in a weird way? We want *new* customers? Or we don’t need to take care of our loyal customers because we have a line out the door after you?
People- My comments have nothing to do radical inclusion. This ticket thing year after year has nothing to do with radical inclusion. This is business making business decisions which for the life of me I don’t agree with.
Chip- Please help the rest of the org understand this, to give back to the loyal customers just like you did so perfectly at JDV.
Disappointed? Yes. But more just tired of this ticket game year after year.
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Why would as big a contributor as you not have access to the directed sale? (Part snark, part curiosity – of course I realize that there are plenty of ways to contribute without being involved in a big camp, an art project, or a volunteer department.
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There are ways to contribute without being in a theme camp, an art project, or a department. Like what exactly? You mean just showing up and volunteering? Like everyone else does? I don’t believe only BIG camps get directed tickets. There aren’t that many big camps. The average camp size is around 25.
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I empathize, 19 yr Burner here and part of a 100+ person Theme camp that was an Esplanade and Center Camp Theme camp for years, it cost us our camp, less that half our people were able to get tickets and I was with Arctica for years.. Sad not to return but fact is we have to give others an opportunity to experience what we did through so many years. Doesn’t make it feel better to not be able to go but there are just so many tickets and far more people requesting. If you scored one then be happy and go and find your purpose, volunteer, do something to receive the full Playa experience…
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Of those 100 , 20-30 did most of the work. They (should have) got tickets. Whats the problem?
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I empathize, 19 yr Burner here and part of a 100+ person Theme camp that was an Esplanade and Center Camp Theme camp for years, it cost us our camp, less that half our people were able to get tickets and I was with Arctica for years.. The stress of trying to get that golden ticket just is not worth it. Though I love the playa, the people, the experience.. I just am not in such a place where the stress makes it worth it. And its only going to get worse… The word is out and people want to go. We went for 19 yrs, we helped run a large Esplanade/ Center Camp Theme camp plus volunteered/worked ARCTICA for years. I look at it as other peoples turn now to experience what we did. We brought MANY Virgins to the playa. And feel good that even off the playa we practice the Burner ethics…. We didn’t get tickets and that’s sad but we know that there will be the wide eyed wonder and playadipity epiphanies that we experienced and that makes me happy… If we ever return it will be wonderful but for now it seems its other peoples turn to experience their own moments on the playa, in the dust
Burn On
Barb BARE Moebius
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So the principles and ethos of Burning man, the very things that were intended to make this such a unique and special experience, should be curtailed to benefit those that that feel entitled to special treatment because of their choices to participate?
Aren’t Loyalty programs just another form of commidification? Wasn’t the whole point of this thing to be different than the default world and promote a classless community, yet you are requesting more of the things that create class differences?
it seems to me that you have lost sight of the real values that you claim to embrace.
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Why not move Burning Man to a location that can ‘inclusively’ accommodate everyone that wants to go? Sounds fun to revitalize it.
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I think that’s what they are trying to do with promoting regionals. However, I have not yet found any one of them that had enough participants (which I think is crucial to the experience) . Also, the environment (flat playa) and the layout of the city doesn’t seem to be taken into consideration at any of the other events, which I think is just as important as attendance numbers for the whole experience. I really hope that some day (soon) a regional will be conceived in another part of the US that will rival the size and offers a similar environment.
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Sadly the people on the inside have made private investments in real estate around the BRC location. Easier to play the ticketing game than to find a new venue and lose all those investments.
Heck, they could shop the venue like the Olympics, and find locations who would love to have the economic stimulus, instead of the locals taking advantage of the NV Burn as a constant to be exploited with fees and fines. Imagine finding a location with the highway infrastructure, space for 100,000+ burners, and locals who want you there, and know that if they piss off too many people they would lose their venue.
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Where EXACTLY would you suggest that be? That would meet all the requirements of Burning Man and be remote and desolate so it could happen the way it happens now? Are the owners of that spot up for it? They tried it on private land once and it failed.
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The org has and does contemplate other locations. But realize that moving would be a huge challenge. Everything from government permitting, finding a site that would allow the large fires, starting a new relationship with local law enforcement, lining up new vendors and being sure they can handle the scale of the event (don’t want to see another porta-potty nightmare), to managing the transport of all the containers that have to be shipped to the playa each year. I don’t think we’re likely to see a change in location anytime soon.
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2/10 camp mates got tickets which was disappointing, but simply put demand has way outgrown capacity. Isn’t there some way of addressing scalping, as demand gets higher, they can get even more money for tickets. Can/should BMorg explore options to secure tickets and only allow transfers through STEP?
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So – we still don’t have a the answer to “Why aren’t tickets NON TRANSFERABLE?” This would eliminate scalpers and there would not be thousands of tickets “floating” out there in “Got an extra ticket for one of my friends in case I make a new friend that doesn’t have a ticket to Burning Man land.”
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Thanx! I think the explanation was good & I’m glad to know that feedback is noted by Borg. It was gutting not get tickets this year, as coming from NZ/London & camping in a ‘local’ camp, we have a long & expensive path to BM! Not knowing if you’ve got tix makes time off work, booking flights, an RV (first time trying the RV thing) etc all that much more stressful as we loose our RV deposit if we cancel & we’ll be fucked with the flights. But hey – when you’re plugged into a camp & part of a team – I just have to believe we’ll get tix. People whining & whinging that they didn’t get something they feel ‘entitled’ to is default world thinking: Spoilt first world nation chatter & it’s very irritating. Remember: it’s a privilege to have such a free thinking event, and live in a country where that is possible. Be grateful & keep your knees crossed for STEP! Good Luck! PS. If tix were non transferable – wouldn’t that kill STEP? But I do agree Quemador: a scarcity mentality/ & an I MIGHT go attitude does nothing to help!
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KUDOS for your reality check post. A reminder to not take things for granted is needed sometimes… Hope you get your tickets…
Barb Bare Moebius
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Well non-transferability and STEP aren’t necessarily “mutually exclusive” as the non-transferable part would presumably only apply to transfers OUTSIDE the realm of the Burning Man community (StubHub, etc.) You could make tickets only transferable through the BMorg just as easily and that would continue to empower STEP which is totally managed by them without permitting wildcatting in tickets on various other sites. I have always been a non-transferable advocate (except for controlled transfers via BM) but I also understand the historical reasons for not wanting to impose that baggage on ticket buyers… You pay for your ticket and to some degree you want to assert the right to use it (or dispose of it) as you choose. I’d prefer everyone to pay face value for a ticket, but not all do. Hey even BMorg sells “high price tickets” to people who want to (and can afford to) sign up early so the “anti-commodification” thing is mostly wispy smoke to me. BM has some aspects of decommodification, but I think getting overly religious about that is stupid. BM also does a lot of its own commodification and show get off the high horse on that one. Its not such a big deal. I like that we don’t let unlimited vendors sell hot dogs and schwag openly on the streets of the city, but I am all for ice vendors, coffee at center camp (for those who drink coffee), private water vendors and santitaion vendors who clean out our local private porta-potties, etc. Getting ready for BM if you are flying from NZ or London must be a hell of a job, I do NOT envy you. I live in the Bay area and can literally just decide on Wednesday before opening to go and if I can get a ticket (or alreayd have one) I can just up and go (and indeed I have on a few occasions done exactly that with little or no advance prep at all – I’ve got it down pretty much after 9 years in the dust). So nowadays I take it more or less as something I’d like to do but if I end up not doing it, it is like missing a movie. I’ll catch it when it comes around next time.
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Here’s your answer, from Larry Harvey: http://blog.burningman.com/2012/12/tenprinciples/why-not-implement-identity-based-ticketing/
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Why can’t there be a way to transfer tickets to a different person for gifting purposes through authorized channels? Doesn’t seem that difficult.
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LOL….It’s essential to have scalpers. Many of the 1% need to have these tickets available to enable and insure that their pilots, chefs, motor home drivers, camp erectors (service people) have access to the event. Them as well. This is America right? Money talks and thousands stay home.
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5 seconds of Googling will explain it to you. Laziness means no ticket for you.
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A well crafted explanation of how the process worked. My hat’s off to the BORG for this timely information…… as for the simpering, whining, self entitled, I’ve been to the burn xx years, why didn’t I get a ticket?
waaanhhh…
Have you all forgotten the day long waits for tickets in years past, when the servers would crash, and you’d have to start all over again? Or how about the lottery system?
Learn to appreciate the improvements they’ve made, and don’t forget to register for STEP
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We haven’t forgotten those days, believe me.
Thanks for the kudos.
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Last year, I noticed a lot of VIP non-art mobiles, being driven by folks who were simply observing, not participating. I think the turnkey, VIP approach is inappropriate, not in tune with the principles of BM. I don’t know how these tourists get tickets, and why they are allowed to drive non-art-carts, but I wish they had to play by the same rules as everyone else. I followed one golf cart out to the Temple Burn, and I stopped to pick up the trash they flung onto the playa. When I caught up with them, and returned their property, they threw it on the ground again! (I picked it up, again, and they laughed at me) Being “special” must be wonderful! But it’s discouraging that these important bums get tickets, when real, respectful, participating artists can’t. Also, it’s hard to prepare for the trip when you don’t know whether you’re even going until the last minute! I’ve been working on my next handi-cart cart since I got home from BRC last September, (it will be a tree-house) and it will all be wasted if I can’t go.
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Got two tickets thru the Individual sale… Within 59 minutes on the system….. However the Vehicle passes were not available? I still feel lucky!
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Unfortunately, I’ve heard from multiple sources that once into the final sale portal you were able to enter other peoples confirmation codes and buy additional tickets. Friends got 20+ that way.
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Nice try at an explanation. But this cannot possibly be the full story. By your own numbers, 21,500 purchases were completed in just over an hour. I was lucky enough to get to the final purchase page, but when I asked for two tickets, it said there weren’t enough left. So I reduced my request to 1 and got 1 ticket. My confirmation from ticketfly was emailed at 12:57. This means EITHER I was the person who got the very last ticket (!!) OR allocations were reduced to one per person when ticket supplies started running low.
This further implies that the end of all the successful 21,500 sales probably occurred around 64.5 minutes after noon, i.e. the AVERAGE rate of processing of successful transactions was about 1,000 every three minutes, or FIVE PER SECOND.
This further implies that TRANSACTIONS WERE PROCESSED IN PARALLEL. i.e. there were MULTIPLE SERVERS (or AT LEAST multiple threads within a single server) processing the eventually successful transactions at any given time. We can estimate that the fastest an average individual could possibly complete the final purchase with confirmations of credit card, mailing address, etc would be 10 seconds, and a more likely upper average transaction time for an individual final purchase completion would be about 60 seconds. Since the eventual average processing rate was 5 purchases per second, this means that there must have been somewhere between 50 and 300 processes (threads within servers) handling eventually successful transactions ON AVERAGE throughout the sale.
But given the EXTREME variations in expected wait times that I saw during my 57-minute wait to get to the final purchase page, IT CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE that there was no variation in server resources (e.g. due to server or thread crashes/hangs) during the first hour of the sale process, EVEN WHEN YOU ACCOUNT FOR THE “PAUSE” of the line (unless you assume that the algorithm to calculate the remaining wait time was complete bullshit :-)
Because IF the allocation of server resources had remained constant (apart from the pause), and the average time taken by an individual to buy ticket(s) when they got to the final page remained constant, AND the remaining wait time algorithm WASN’T complete BS, then we should have seen expected remaining times decreasing monotonically throughout each successful purchasor’s sale process.
Because IF the position in the queue was determined by the server arrival times of the clicks on each user’s green button (in my case at about two SECONDS past noon), then effectively every eventually successful person’s position in the queue was determined WITHIN THE FIRST FEW SECONDS AFTER NOON of the sale, since on the basis of my experience clicking two seconds after noon (I synced my computer’s clock with the nist.gov atomic clock and had a display of that running during my purchase) and being probably one of the last people to get a ticket, there must have been over 20,000 green button clicks received at the servers within the first few seconds….
The thing that gets me (and probably most other people) emotionally wound up, is when we see (as I did), for over half an hour, that each minute my expected wait time is going down by a minute (so we believe all is going along nicely and we just have to wait) and then suddenly it goes up (as it did in my case) from 9 minutes to OVER AN HOUR, when we are MORE THAN HALF AN HOUR into the wait process. Changes like that CANNOT POSSIBLY be due to changes in the AVERAGE time taken by an individual user behavior in completing their purchase once they are on the final page, which probability theory tells us is EXTREMELY unlikely to change by a factor of two over many thousands of presumably similar buyers. It MUST be due to changes in the allocation of resources on the sever side (e.g. crashes).
So if the sale had proceeded per the theoretical “stable” model, by 30 minutes into it there should have been approximately 10,000 eventually successful purchases left to process. But my remaining wait time after waiting more than 30 minutes was shown to be 9 minutes (which would imply an estimated average sale completion of more than 1,000 per minute i.e. three times the final “official” average). But then it went up to “over an hour”, a change by more than a factor of six, which cannot be reasonably accounted for by changes in average user purchase time behavior.
On a technical note, there is really no need for the process to be as incomprehensible as it currently is. Since there is a pre-reg, it is trivial to load-balance ahead of time. In principle, if we expect 80,000 attempts to purchase, we can pre-allocate users to 80 servers, each of which only needs to process 1,000 requests (or equivalent architectures with multiple threads per server). The ONLY technical challenge is in fairly synchronizing across server queues, but if the clocks of the servers are synchronized, and arrival times of each user “green button click” are noted at each server down to the millisecond, then there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER not to make it totally transparent to everyone within the first few minutes of the sale EXACTLY what position they are at in the queue, EXACTLY what the average purchase processing time has been so far, and to show a REALISTIC view of how likely it is for their purchase to be successful given the current average number of tickets sold per customer, plus a REALISTIC and relatively predictably changing estimate of how long it will take to either get to the purchase page or find out that they have not been successful….
I’m a “glass half full” kind of guy, so I celebrate the fact that I was able to buy one ticket, but I still do think it was weird that I wasn’t able to buy two, and I strongly believe that the whole process could be dramatically improved…
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It could have been dramatically improved by in the first place NOT offering a second, just in case ticket like you were aspiring.
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“I was lucky enough to get to the final purchase page, but when I asked for two tickets, it said there weren’t enough left. So I reduced my request to 1 and got 1 ticket.”
Same thing happened to me, but I unchecked the Vehicle Pass box and was able to get my 2 tickets. The “not enough tickets” notice in your and my cases referred most likely to Vehicle Passes. The wording from Ticketfly could have been more specific.
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I agree it can be improved. Someone else here suggested one good improvement… Instead of an approximate “time”, since it is clear that from the moment you press the button, you are sequenced in a queue, then the system should know EXACTLY how many people are ahead of you in the queue at any one time and also how many tickets are LEFT (and vehicle passes – the explanation given by someone about the vehicle pass maybe being the problem of “not enough tickets” as there were fewer of those sold than regular tickets). That way every few minutes (or whatever the “poll time” would be, you see an exact status of your predicament. You are the 14,159th person in line and there are 37,000 tickets. Huzzah, you are almost assuredly getting yours if you stay in line and be patient. You are 25,234th in line and there are 31,500 tickets left. Now its touchy. You MIGHT get a ticket, but you might not. You still have to be patient. You are 31,954th in line and there are 14,000 tickets left. Well, unless everyone else’s credit cards are maxxed out, you aren’t getting a ticket today. Good bye… That makes a LOT of sense and should be easy to implement (part of my career has been spent working on and QAing major e-commerce websites including the one that most of us patronize on our way to the playa, the BIG box store LOL so I know from scaling website stuff).
The fact is that this is just as much a “lottery” as the screwed up thing a few years ago, its just that the lottery all happens in one instant. What I think they should do which would be better is to take all the registrants and at Noon, send out an email with your placement number and an approximate time you will/may get an email. THEN they should send out emails to a group of people, say the first 1000 in line and give them 4 hours to complete their purchase. Then after that is done, send out the next 1000. It may take a few days, but it is much more orderly and has exactly the same effect. all this stuff depending on pushing the button at the right time is silly and unnecessary. Just randomize the codes and give assign people to the line in order. Why is that so difficult to do or to understand?
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…
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I wish y’all would move to a Dutch Auction system. Dutch auctions (1) have the following advantages:
1) Everyone pays the same price.
2) Everyone has an incentive to reveal how much they’re willing and able to pay for a ticket.
3) It’s simple: you just enter in the price you’re willing to pay/ticket, and how many tickets you want.
4) Everyone knows whether they will have a ticket as soon as the auction ends (so that they can start planning).
5) It’s resistant to scalping. (Although, personally, I have no objection to scalping).
6) People don’t waste time waiting in line; people can bid at their leisure (which is helpful for people who are working, and can’t be at their computers when the ticket sales start).
7 You can spread the load out over a longer period of time.
How a dutch auction works:
Tickets are filled from highest bid to lowest bid, until all the tickets are claimed. Then everyone pays the price of the lowest winning bid. So bidding higher increases your chances of getting tickets because you’re more likely to place a bid that’s above the threshold bid.
The optimal strategy is to bid the amount that you value the ticket.
So, for example, if a ticket is worth $500 to you, you should bid that much.
If the lowest winning bid (threshold bid) turns out to be $300, then you will only pay $300 (and be happy doing so, as you valued the ticket at $500).
If the threshold is $700, you won’t get a ticket, but that’s okay, because the ticket was only worth $500 to you, and enough people valued the tickets at $700 and above that they consumed the available supply before your bid was filled.
If the threshold turns out to be $500, then you’re right on the cusp, and you were among the lowest winning bidders to get tickets. You just beat out those who only valued the tickets at $499.
If BMORG must make a certain ticket price to be profitable, they can set a reserve price, below which the threshold price can’t fall.
Poor people who can’t pay the threshold price could be handled by a scholarship program (either formally through BMORG, or informally within camps).
When you bid doesn’t matter, so you could spread the bidding over say, a week. People who are working when the sale goes on won’t be excluded because they can’t be at their desk when the sale goes on.
Here’s a sampling of historical uses of Dutch auctions to allocate goods (including tickets):
Google IPO shares:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/business/for-google-going-dutch-has-its-rewards-and-its-risks.html?scp=3&sq=dutch+auction&st=nyt
Randal Monroe (of xkcd.com fame) sold his book tour event tickets via a dutch auction:
http://auction-bot.appspot.com/
Bruce Springsteen benefit concert tickets:
http://www.pricingforprofit.com/pricing-strategy-blog/what-do-prices-for-rock-concerts-initial-public.htm
David Friedman has an interesting article about why Dutch auctions
aren’t used to price goods more often:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/econ_and_evol_psych/economics_and_evol_psych.html
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I agree that Dutch auctions are an efficient (in the economics sense) pricing mechanism. But the price one is willing to pay for something is somewhat related to how much wealth you have. And I think many people in the community would object to a ticketing system that had an inherent bias for the wealthier members of the community. Even with the current system you hear complaints about the early bird sale.
I’m very lucky, and make a lot of money. I’d probably be willing to pay $2000 for a ticket. But I have many lovely burner friends for whom $2k is a substantial fraction of their annual income, and I’d hate to lose all those people from the playa experience.
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Is Entitlement one of the 10 Principals? I think the BMorg should sponsor the best Burners, the ones who’ve been going the longest or have the best camps… Maybe give them special kilts to wear, so we all know how hardcore and cool they are. They can wear logos and their art cars could be like NASCAR cars with all the stickers. But only cool stickers, for stuff that we like, because we’re not of the default world. Because that’s what’s important, getting the real, true, hardcore Burners out there. Oh! Why not rank them? Like professional sports? You have to make the cut or you’re sent to Coachella…
For fuck’s sake, get over yourselves…
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Ooh special kilts for long-timers! That is WAY cool! And can we get special stickers that say “Larry Harvey Rocks!”? And maybe a logo of the rubber ducky… or even Pepe’s Fire Lingam! That is such an awesome idea, BBJ! I love it! :-)
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I know Larry’s not wearing his signature hat as often these days. Regardless, I think it’s clear that a commemorative Larry hat attached to a butt plug would be a much better identifier than a special kilt.
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^^ That’s funny that Zorg said “on a technical note” after an entirely technical post :) … but anyway I feel blessed to have my tickets and so sad for those of you that did not get through – I know that anguish from last year. I was able to finally get tickets through the community for myself last year but two of our camp members did not after exhausting every means. I wish everyone the opportunity to make it home without worry or exclusion. Best wishes
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First I’d like to say, being a long time burner “1996” and a builder of over 10 art cars, and finally getting invited to the directed group sales this year, I would like to give my opinion in this matter.
Obviously supply and demand is the issue. BLM will not allow more attendance with the current situation of highways getting to the event. And really, they probably wouldn’t want to increase attendance even if an additional 2 lanes were constructed from Fernly to the Playa entrance. But that would probably allow for a negotiation of an allotted increase per how much highway widening occurred.
It would take approximately $1,000,000 per lane, per mile to construct additional lanes. That works out to about $200,000,000 to add 2 additional lanes. I don’t believe that NDOT is going to want to foot any part of that bill, since there is only a couple of hundred people living out there. So I don’t think widening of the road at this time is feasible.
But how about if BM can find a way to get BLM to increase its population to 100,000 in the next few years, and a way to pay for the widening of the highway? Of course this is going to require an increase in ticket price to pay for the road work. Once the population is increased to 100,000 burners, it would take a ticket increase of $200 per burner for 10 years to pay for the highway widening. Is this a price increase that people would pay in order to get everyone to the event that wants to go?
When I started going to BM there were no tickets. I think we paid someone $35 at the highway entrance.
And Burning Man was only 5 days back then. It started on Wednesday before Labor Day, and they Burned the Man on Sunday, and everyone left on Monday. Once the population grew to about 25,000, they began to have a mass exudus problem. Then with the addition of David Bests Temple of Remembrance “my favorite by the way” they increased the length of the event to seven days, started on Monday, burned the Man on Saturday, and the Temple on Sunday, splitting the mass exudus in half. And it worked until a few years ago, when the population grew to 60,000 and now there is 2 mass exudus’s instead of one.
BM has been trying to eleviate that problem again with lengthening of the event again. Now the event starts on Sunday and ends on Tuesday.
With the Demand of the event, Burning Man needs to try to get approval for a Month Long Event. It can start 3 weeks before the Man burns, and last for a week after the Temple burns. As a early arrival team leader for the past 5 years, I know that there is already 20,000 of us out there days before the event even starts. And I know a lot of burners going in early would go in even earlier if they could. Some projects would start earlier and end earlier. Some projects would start later and end later.
I believe the only solution to the supply and demand would come after the event lasts much longer than it already does. When the event is lengthened, and the population is increased, then implement the additional ticket $ increase for highway construction to allow for even more fine burners that would like to come but just can’t in the current situation.
LV #7
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I don’t understand how the highway is a problem except for exodus and last year exiting was no problem, seems like many people waited to leave Tuesday like I did. The bottleneck is at the gate.
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Both the BLM and the BMOrg attribute the problem to the roads. Why would they lie about it when the org would clearly like to grow the event as much as possible? Capacity at the Gate can be easily and cheaply increased by adding more lanes and more staff.
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I’m in the same boat… I have sunk an enormous amount of time and money into my art car (its a rotating stellated dodecahedron). Pretty cool machine that I was incredibly excited to share with other people.
The “its ok – you can still go to a regional” BM.org PR line does not work for me. There are very few regionals that are multiday events, even fewer events that last longer than a weekend (it takes about 6 hours to assemble my art car so putting it together for a one or two day event just is not worth my time). Even fewer still regional event that allow art cars to drive around; I can think of two Apogea and Flipside (Apo is no longer accepting applications for new art cars).
Ticket wise Apo and Flipside are in the same boat as burning man – both events sell out in a matter of minutes.
My heart goes out theme camps and fire artists in this sinking boat. Local state laws and terrain needed to facilitate this type of event are found in very few places. For example California ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) prohibits gifting alcohol – too bad theme camps. Large scale fire art is near impossible in Colorado due to the almost consistent fire danger. Lets not even discuss nudity laws.
BM.org or non-profit or whoever the heck you are now – I am disappointment in my decision to support your organization with my energy, time and money. Good luck in your quest for world domination, you have lost one more follower.
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Only one additional lane would do just fine, rather than two. Use it northbound until Thursday, then southbound after that.
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Thanks for the post, folks. Good stuff!
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It wasn’t just about who could click the fastest. my wife’s green button didn’t appear until roughly 12 seconds after mine appeared.
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Lets get real,everybody that came to the bar was 90% first time burners,look what has happened to our camp.Our people could not get tickets. no gifting at all.BM has put the burden of the new on the old,and the the new dont care.I have built for 19 years for you, i did care with all my heart.I miss the hay bails ,and things like frozen in time.
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Well only 4/12 people in my camp got tickets, and none of those went to newbies. Sure there are tons of veterans who didn’t get tickets in the sale, but same with newbies. In fact, the system favours veterans because they understand how crucial it is to log in exactly at noon. I’ve actually asked around my circle of burners out of curiosity, and there is a clear pattern: the people who logged in within 4-5 seconds after 12 all got tickets; 5-10 seconds, hit or miss; after 10 seconds, forget about it.
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WE were sitting laptops on knees, 10 mins early, next to our router, ready for the starter’s gun, but Our green buttons didn’t come up till AFTER 8.01pm – which is 12.01 for you. We wondered if being further away for the servers makes it harder for long distance buyers? ? C’est la vie..
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Flying Kiwi Chick:
I don’t think being further away from the servers makes it harder for long distance buyer. I was lucky to have bought my tickets from Singapore (which is even further from you or the server). Although it did occur to me if internet connection actually plays a major factor in buying tickets.
I also realised that the green button didn’t appear on my Chrome like they said it will when ticket goes on sale at 12PM PST and I decided to refresh the page instead of waiting for it to appear (though they said you do not have to refresh). The button appeared, clicked on it and was immediately put in line for the waiting game.
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I logged in from Auckland NZ and got two tickets but no vehicle pass! Not sure what difference distance makes!
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Kiwi Chick,
I don’t believe being further away made a difference. I happened to be logged into shotty internet connection on a small island in the Bahamas. I had no problems with tickets or a vehicle pass.
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oh man, not me. I logged in at 12:00 + 1 sec, got the 404 page, relogged in at 12:00 plus 17 sec.
As far as DGS, our camp, which although on the small side, has been green at moop, presented a nice street front, been good neighbors and had participatory activities (sub urban slippage, for one), was awarded six (6!) DGS spots. Last year it was 10! We’ve volunteered at Man, at Temple and at Greeters (yep, dust covered mid day enthusiasm, at your service), so this feels really hard.
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Take a deep breath buddy. You’re only making yourself look foolish by posting a rant here, and you admitted to trying to access the system early (yes, 3 whole seconds early). Sucks that your friends didn’t get tickets, only 4/12 people in my camp got them in the sale. We all understand though that with 1/4 registered people getting tickets the odds were against us. Keep calm and tell your friends about all the other ways to get tickets.
Regarding your suggestion, it’s an idea I’ve also thought about, but there is a major flaw: If I didn’t get a ticket in the block I was assigned to, what’s to stop me from using a backup account I made and trying again in another block, or asking a friend in another block to get a second ticket for me? The solution to that is to do all the blocks simultaneously on different servers, but that opens up a whole other can of worms…
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Thanks for the reply, Tim. I disagree that ranting (AKA: not pulling punches or making shit fake-polite) is foolish. I am the first to admit that this (just like the well-versed letters that the others will write) will have no response or effect – as BMORG obviously does not desire to fix this issue. However, this does voice frustrations – which add to the visible Karma that this approach by BMORG generates. Maybe that’ll add up to something useful. Someday.
This has always been an elementary, easy to prepare for, testable, testable, testable again situation that a multi-million dollar organization should have fixed 4 f*cking years ago. They knew the # of people registered for the sale, they knew that 50% of them would press the button right away, all of this is a problem that could’ve been solved by renting enough computer power for one day so that there’s f*cking one computer* per person, for Christ’s sake.
This shouldn’t have happened. If some money was invested and heads made roll in time, none of this would’ve been. And because BM seems to have their conceited heads stuck really far up their asses, it won’t happen this year either.
Facts: 1. The computer system had backdoors that were exploited by ppl. 2. The computer system crashed/didn’t put the right picture up/mis-directed folks/didn’t respond quickly enough/required reloading pages. 3. There are claims of the system allowing people to use the ‘logged in account’ to buy tix for other people – this is still being investigated, but there’s a decent amount of heresay up that alley.
How is any of this representative of functioning of a responsible organization? This whole “Radical Self-reliance/Civic Responsibility” thing – it’d be awesome if BM not only talked the talk but walked the walk. “Self-reliance” means “not fucking up and doing the job you promised” instead of them every year abdicating responsibility and passing the buck to STEP/OMG/whatever. Again – this isn’t a first time thing – this has happened year after year after year after year. Maybe it’s time for some radical…change? Like someone getting fired?
I ain’t overly angry about the ticket situation. I have mine, and if the people I was helping out had their own backs, maybe things woulda gone different for them. Oh, also if “clicking early” were to have presented me with ‘you clicked too early, bitch’ instead of a soothing ‘just wait, babaaay…sike!’ response, the one-two second additional difference would’ve been fine. I know of people that clicked at 12:00:15 that got tix. In any case, STEP, OMG, ETC will solve the problem. But these soothing futures are missing the main point. The continual fuckups of the BMORG computing are rewarding luck, not commitment and preparation – even preparation expressed as simply as being at the right place at the right time.
Regarding that friend’s suggestion – well, I suppose you’re right. I mean, assuming that alternate names/alternate credit cards were allowed. But yeah, you have a great point. I guess a working sales system designed for 80k*.5=40k clicks at 12:00:00 in 2016 miiiiiight be the only solution.
Power corrupts – and BM (both the org and the community) is riddled with examples of people who chose their ‘holy playa mission’ above accepting advice, admitting guilt and working to actually fix things for public good. Nothing new here.
*joke, joke… one computer per 5 people, how about that?
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Could you also provide data on how many of the 80K registered, actually hit the green button at noon. I would image not everyone registered did hit the green button.
Also I assume a number of people registered multiple accounts (I didn’t), so unique visitors/buyers, if at all possible to determine, would be interesting.
Third, how many tickets did the 200 backdoor people actually buy ?
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SubHub not good?
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Thanks for explaining. Nevertheless annoying. At one point I was 18 minutes away from purchase and then suddenly back to over an hour where I stayed 10 minutes. You must admit it’s very frustrating. 7 guys from Oz and 2 tickets… Let’s hope we can get some in March… We so want to come back.
Love you guys.
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The ticket servers did crash at the beginning of the sale!!
I was fortunate enough to get through after a couple of minutes using the link in my registration email. The system told me at least 3 times that my code wasn’t valid & then the system crashed. Luckily it came up within 30 secs & allowed me to re-enter my code (again!) & carry on with my purchase.
Link to screenshots here – https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xj1hsr97bfvhm0v/AAAsPHMGGVCAsbUNC-LKKTuBa?dl=0
If you need my code I’m happy to forward it
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Thanks for letting us know what happened. Makes me feel better !
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Glastonbury Festival has non-transferrable tickets with photo ID this year. Re-selling tickets is prohibited and will result in cancellation of the order.
This is a fair system that Burning Man could adopt as well.
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/information/tickets/ticket-info/#WHYREGISTER
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IMO The Gladtonbury ticket system is best in class. It totally eradicates touting (scalping). Your ticket has your name & photo & the only way you can resell it is through their own version STEP & it goes to the next person in line , not a person of your choice. Not only is this much fairer it also stops people buying more tickets than they actually need at its totally pointless!!
Also, all international tickets are sent out via post which is way better as there’s no need to spend hours queueing for Will Call!!
I’ve no idea why BMorg don’t implement a similar system, why keep trying to reinvent the wheel??
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I commend you for trying to do what’s fair. There seem to be two places where you definition of “fair” and mine drastically differ:
1) You imply that everyone was in the same boat in having to click “Buy” at noon. That’s simply untrue. Depending on internet connections, server locations, etc., people in different places in the network will click “buy” at the same time but their clicks will reach the server at different times. (And you also say that the queue filled in milliseconds, so this effect is relevant here.)
2) I don’t know why “being able to click at exactly noon PST” is defined as “fair.” How about, “has equal opportunity and equal chance to obtain a ticket.” That’s a very different definition. I’m self-employed. I rearranged client meetings and structured my entire day around clicking at noon PST (didn’t get a ticket, would have been my first burn). Others may not have that flexibility and may be in a meeting, or work retail and be with a customer.
FireFly in Boston has spent a great deal of time and thought developing a ticketing system which gives both equal opportunity and equal chance to obtain a ticket. It even makes it possible for entire camps to apply and either all-get-in or none-get-in, but without changing the odds. It’s really a cool system. You might want to check it out.
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Obviously burning man is getting to popular to commentate everyone, when this happened with EDC they extended their event over 2 days instead of just 1… Why doesn’t burning man create a two week event, half the burners show up the first week, and the other half show up the second week.
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That is still not going to be a solution. Think of all the people who bring art for you to look at, or art cars for you to ride on. Are we supposed to stay out there the entire time? I was out there for 16 days last year, and I have a job and a life that took the burden that. What about the actual burning of the things? Build two temples? Two Men? So each week gets the “full experience”… That is not feasible. So, if what you are proposing was even doable, I would only want to bring my stuff for the week that would have the burning of the things, and forget about the other week altogether. I bet I’m not the only art lead (or art car owner) that feels that way. But hey, it’s cool. We can make sacrifices for your party, right?
Speaking of, what about DPW? I’m sure they would love yet another week of moop to clean up (especially after it’s mushed down under a previous week of moop), another week of building the city, another month of playa restoration. It’s cool, they already sacrifice for your party, what’s another month?
Anyone who is suggesting that the event become two weeks hasn’t thought about the logistics of making it a reality… and it’s likely they are only there for the pparty. Keep dreaming, dirt-wizards!
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No actually this is not a terrible idea, although it does need some refinement. All your objections are based on the idea that it should be two weeks long BUT be “exactly like the one week event”. That obviously isn’t possible. It will be different, but it could be just as interesting and exciting. And again the argument along the lines “I have to stay out there both weeks to see everything?” So what? you don’t HAVE to see everything. You probably don’t see it all now (its way to big to see in one week for most people. Some people will bring their art cars week 1 and others week 2 and some will stay the entire time. Maybe the time you stay can be adjusted by ticket price (that is something that I know BM hasn’t done in the past to keep away weekend warriors, but having a week one ticket and a week two ticket and maybe a crossover in between ticket would be possible. That would still remove most of the weekend warrior phenomenon (most don’t want to pay $400 to spend 2 days on the playa). And you see what you see, or you bring what you can for as long as you can. As for DPW and other volunteers, its not that big a deal I think… BM has plenty of volunteers, they might need to offer a little more incentives to some but with a two week long event that might not be too hard. And the attendance could soar to maybe 100,000 almost immediately and in actuality, the event would shrink somewhat on an average basis.
The biggest question you raise is what about the burn. That is a bit of a tricky question, but one thing could be to put the burn of the man on Saturday of the first week and the burn of the temple on Saturday of the second week. Two big burns. you can choose which one you want to see (or buy a two week ticket and see both if you can be away from work for that long and want to). if the big issue is highways, this will help a LOT. If the issue is playa impact, it may help although it might still increase the footprint, particularly in the middle of the two weeks when total attendance is likely to be the highest.
But its something to think about and I expect BM is already thinking about it.
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Just have it be 2 separate events months apart. Different art, different people, different camps, different man. It will still be just as good no matter what week you go. Coordinate with your camp and friends and pick the week.
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How do you make sure people leave when they’re meant too?? Easy to do at a day festival when everyone goes home at the end of the night. Totally impossible at burning man!!
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When the chance of being in front of the line is small, the lottery makes much more sense. For Wednesday’s sale, a lot of people went to extraordinary effort to try an buy tickets, taking off work, diligently sitting in front of the computer and clicking at exactly 12:00 Noon, all for nothing.
I didn’t get tickets in Wednesday’s sale, I didn’t get them when they had the lottery either. But the lottery was less disruptive to my schedule on the day of the sale.
Asking so many people put forth the time and effort to be in-front of their computer at a precise moment and the reward is reduced to being lucky anyway. A lottery could have produced the same results without disruption of daily schedules. The disruption of this sale had no pay off for most people who wanted to participate in this sale.
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The difference is that you an enter a lottery without putting forth time and effort. And scalpers can sign up for more lottery entries way more easily then they can buy tix at a single moment.
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A queue no more scalper proof than a lottery. In fact, on the tight timings required to get in the front of the queue for this sale, one expects that the scalpers had a distinct advantage.
Professional scalpers are mechanized and computer savvy. They either are or hire computer scientists. They can afford to. They have real person-like profiles setup a year in advance, have single use credit card primed and at the ready the millisecond the clock turns noon. Their computer programs click and fill out forms faster than a human can. And the scalpers are experts at what they do. They make a living from this. A real person is seriously out-gunned in a sale like this one.
The only way shun scalpers is through a manual and laborious process of looking through the logs, finding IP address, email address and domains used by known scalpers. This is what I suspect what pre-registration and generating a code is all about. This process gives the BM folks a chance look over the registration and log files and direct the scalper’s codes to be silently placed at the end of the line when they enter the queue.
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Here, let me forward you some of the (literally) thousands of vicious emails and hate comments we got when we sold tickets through a lottery system in 2012.
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Hi Will,
The lottery system you guys used possessed a fundamental flaw. Not a technical flaw (it was a fair algorithm) but you forgot about the human engineering aspect.
If you want to re-think a lottery then write me and I’ll explain what was missed and offer some suggestions on what to change to accommodate the human engineering aspect. The viciousness of your complaints will go down by 10X. But complaints can never go to zero, some people would complain if they got their tickets for free.
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Send along your ideas, Breaker … odds are we’ve considered them, but it’s not impossible we missed something.
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Reducing the number of pre-registrations to 50k would also cut down on disappointments. 2 events per year could be great.
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There are certainly no easy answers here. It is interesting to read posts about the ticketing experience. Mine was much the same. I was initially 22 minutes out, then suddenly over an hour. I finally got in, requested two tickets and was told that they weren’t available. Immediately tried for one, but too late. Just like thousands of other folks I am disappointed with the process,and I wonder if there really is a better way. Could tickets be issued as non-transferrable unless sold back to BMORG and re-sold in STEP? That would prevent the panic of everyone trying for more tickets than they need so that all friends get to go, cut out scalping and etc. It would still be no guarantee that everyone gets in, but that won’t ever happen unless the attendance capacity is unlimited. The car pass thing is a headache. Not everyone can hitch a ride, especially if you need to transport a mutant vehicle, plenty of water and supplies and haul out your trash. Better road control should be addressed. It can be orderly if the law enforcement focused on the highway instead of the private event.(Of course that wouldn’t be as much fun for them.LOL) The wear and tear on the road is a big excuse. When the mine at Imlay was producing there was heavy truck traffic daily. I think the big problem is safety because people can’t just take thier place, be patient and plug along. Maybe car passes should be sold according to need in a later sale. It would again give people a chance to plan the trip instead of just grabbing one when you buy tickets to be safe. As far as preference for veterans v/s virgins goes, selfishness and entitlement shouldn’t be a principle. I know a couple who got tickets. They have never been to the event and although I may not be able to enjoy it with them as we planned (it would have been my 5th year), I am thrilled for them. I will just try through STEP and the grapevine and hope for the best.
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Ah, again another good idea here. Having the vehicle pass sale come AFTER the regular ticket sales (well after, maybe just a month before the event) would really help the planning process. By that time, most people will know if they really need a vehicle pass or not and can arrange to have just one pass for those cars that need them. The downside I guess is that if you don’t get on line for that sale early enough and they sell out of passes, and you have tickets but no vehicle pass, you are kinda screwed. I don’t know the whole vehicle pass thing seems weird to me. I know they want to control traffic, and urge people to come to BM in groups and reduce traffic, but I don’t think the pass has really done that much. Maybe it will when the screws are really applied to the number of passes available but so far its just a bit headache. And it really does seem like just an excuse to get more money out of the ticket buying public without appearing to raise ticket prices. When tickets were $380 and no vehicle passes, and then last year the tickets were the same price but the vehicle passes were $40 and 30,000 were sold, that amounted to a $20 per ticket increase on average but just distributed differently.
Sigh.
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My biggest concern was the Direct group sale, i was invited like i was the last 2 years and i didn’t get in this year, i knew the individual sale was a crap shoot but not the DGS, why would you allocate 20k tix with invites ( knowing how many people have said yes i would like a ticket in this sale) and not have enough tix for them?
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I appreciate the explanation. Last year I didn’t get them in the sale, this year I did. It really is a crap shoot. It was hard to find the tickets last summer for the 3 of us but in the end it worked out. I ended up buying them from some stranger that answered my Craigslist ad , he could have easily ripped me off, but after talking to him on the phone, I went with my gut feeling. I didn’t really know that he didn’t rip me off until after hours of waiting in that ridiculous will call line. 6 hours…. Fix that by the way. That was fucked up. Anyway. Keep the faith and understand that not everybody that bought tickets will actually be going so keep your intentions focused.
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We’re definitely fixing the Will Call situation. Read this: http://blog.burningman.com/2015/02/news/what-the-heck-happened-with-will-call-last-year/
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I hope the fix for Will Call works one hell of a lot better than the “fix” for purchasing tickets! From BMorgs perspective it is called a success because the servers didn’t crash in SF, however that doesn’t in any way address the overload on the bandwidth that was most likely responsible for all the delays and miscues presented to so many supplicants!
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Thanks for the response, Will! I had read that well before posting my comment and hope against hope that there are no problems at entry or will call this year! Mailing out as many overseas and STEP tickets as possible will do wonders in itself! And an attitude adjustment by the overworked gate guards and ticket pushers will do even more! See my comment at the link above (by Driftwood D. 02/12 @ 8:56 PM)
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I’m probably going to get a negative response from the community here but, did anybody consider that in the rush of the moment people will try anything to get tickets i.e. pressing buttons/refreshing the page, using multiple browsers, etc..
Why should somebody be penalized for just being creative by having their ticket order canceled when this glitch or whatever it was was no fault of their own.
This was clearly an issue with TicketFly and in my opinion they should be held accountable, not some poor soul who just happened to get in through a “Back
Door” which this clearly wasn’t.
Also, if Burning Man truly does cancel those orders they damn well better refund those folks money!
Just sayin.
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From what I read elsewhere, someone devised a code to get into the back door. That’s different from using the code the Org gave us in the email and maybe entering Ticketfly’s website through normal ways (signing into Ticketfly before the sale, cutting/pasting the link in the email) and getting tix. Like I said above, I never was in a queue but imagine I was one of the first into buying tix (last year I had my ticket in the first 10-minutes) and I just did what was logical: seeing my promo code was accepted, I pasted the email link the Org gave me into a new window, minus the promo code and question mark. (I’m very good at buying items on Ebay at the last second.)
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Ya, I thought the same thing as EB. I mean face it this is a community of creative people… I think it should be expected that people will do creative things to get what they want. Though this is NOT how I got my ticket, I fully understand why someone would do that and I wouldn’t really even consider it “cheating”. I would simply consider it utilizing a creative opportunity that presented itself – no malicious intent involved… (think of the phrase “work smarter not harder”)The glitch appears to be on ticketfly so have them correct it prior to next years’ sale and let the creative souls keep their tickets this year.
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so, a glitch where going in through ticketfly skips the line on the bm page routing you to ticketfly. Another glitch where you can enter multiple people’s codes once you’re in, and a “backdoor” that was more technically challenging that 200 ppl went through. Only the intentional 200 ppl backdoor will be followed up on. Still no word on # of tickets gifted to the board and employees to sell or scalp or gift as part of compensation.
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if your meant to go you will go if not you wont.
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There were people who reported clicking in after 12:00 and got tickets. One person at 12:12, and one at 12:40, while thousands of people who clicked in at 12:00 on the nose didn’t. That doesn’t sound like everything worked exactly the way it was supposed to to me.
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Bottom line, if you did what you were told, you had a half assed chance of getting tickets. I guess we just were either too naive, or not creative enough. Either way, the answers given don’t exactly sit well.
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last time i checked, the desert is a pretty big place.
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What does the ‘technical backdoor’ mean?
I was lucky (so much so that I had to check my confirmation email multiple times to make sure that it was actually real) enough to get ticket within minutes and was never put in the dreaded queue. At about 11:59 (2:59 my time) I clicked the link in the email and was told I was to early. I kept closing the page and re-clicking the link until the page changed. My memory gets little fuzzy here – to much adrenaline – but I don’t even remember seeing a green button. The page first said something about the site being down. So I refreshed. Then it said all tickets were already in carts! BUT HOW COULD THAT BE!?! Only a minute had gone by. I just kept refreshing the page until the ticket buying option came up – bingo, got one in about four minutes.
This is the same thing I did last year. Refreshing constantly. Didn’t get put in queue either. Got my ticket in two minutes.
Unfortunately out of our planned camp of six, only myself and my friend got tickets. The others will join the thousands of others in the hunt for one.
To all of those looking – best of luck and stay positive.
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Whenever I read such posts I feel relieved that this person did not get tickets….
This is of course not a nice thought, but if you are such a complainer and are not able to express yourself in a constructive manner….how would you be able to contribute to Burning Man as a community at all?
I like reading post with a critical note, but with a positive approach….
This is flat out too easy and I rather not see such people at Burning Man at all, this is not the loving and warm feeling the true burners gave me at BM.
Just my 2 cents!
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Eric, I totally agree. If you cannot wait the extra 5 minutes to take a breath and organize your thoughts before posting a rant, maybe the playa isn’t quite for you!
I was lucky enough to get tickets through STEP last year. I wasn’t “lucky” during individual sales. If STEP didn’t come through, I still would have found a way.
It’s a burner thing ;)
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I was completely and totally screwed by a glitch in the system this year which has not been addressed here. Wondering if anyone else had a similar experience. I clicked the unique link from my email right at noon and was initially told I had a 5 minute wait. Then pause, then back to a 19 minute wait. By 12:22 my wait had gone down to 0 minutes and I was informed “You’re In! Please wait while we redirect you…” except I was not redirected to the ticketing page. The window notified me “Old number in line” and explained “this number has already been used, please click below to get back in line” at which point I was completely screwed. I had only one browser window open, I did not share my link or unique code with anyone else and I numerous attempts to explain my situation to ticketing has been futile. I figured with the unique QueueID this year that there might be a way to look up what happened, but it seems all the ticketing admins are able to do for me is tell me better luck next time and link me to this blog post. Did anyone else have a similar problem? I can’t be the only one. I think this is something that needs to be addressed.
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I think I may be one of the ones who slipped through, not intentionally though. Now I’m worried I’ll have my tickets taken away and be punished for a system that broke down and allowed a select few to slip through. This was my first year attempting to buy tickets so I wasn’t terribly familiar with the process.
Here’s my experience. I clicked on the link from my email maybe a minute early, and it said you’re early and you can either wait for the green button to appear or you can refresh the page once the clock starts manually. Well as soon as it hit 12 noon plus one nanosecond I hit refresh, and the page was hanging without any activity so I closed the window and went back to my email and reclicked the link within another second. The page opened back up and it said the ticket buying service was down and was being worked on. I panicked and closed out the page, tried reopening it again, the page was hanging. Panicking more, I didn’t know what to do, a couple minutes passed, and thought I might try an alternative way of getting to the ticketfly burning man site by typing it in direct. Tried it, and boom got in, tickets purchased.
I never saw the queue or green button, went straight to the purchase ticket page and had my tickets and VP in under 10 minutes. I didn’t try gaming the system… my actions were simply the result of the regular approach I was told to take leading to a dead end of the service being down, and trying another avenue that might lead to a workable solution. I don’t think I deserve to have my tickets taken away or should be punished…that will leave a very negative taste in my mount about the Burning Man community if so…
How soon will people that slipped through like this find out if they are getting their tickets revoked? There’s no real way to find out out stumbled upon this method vs those who were intentionally trying to exploit it. I was so stoked to get my tickets, and now I’m stressing that they might be taken away :(
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Hey Will, email ticketsupport@burningman.com with your explanation, please. They’ll take a look at the situation.
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Why is everyone acting like this one sale is the only opportunity to get tix? It’s not, nor has it ever been. Plenty of determined people hustle their asses off and get tickets by other means. “If you will it, it is no dream” – Walter Sobchak (sorta)
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So BM people, I can absolutely tell you that your queue system is broken. I have 2 friends in the UK and Australia that were able to go through the entire process successfully 3 times each. They only waited about 15 minutes the first time but after that getting through the queue was instant. No idea how or why but there are the facts. Believe me they aren’t technical people so no ‘backdoor’ was being created.
We didn’t break any rules as the codes they used were from other friends and they purchased all of our tickets as they were getting through so quickly.
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It sounds like this is a glitch in the Ticketfly system. Once you got “in” to the purchase queue (as opposed to the outside the door “line”) you probably had a cookie set that said you could purchase tickets. If you then came back on the same browser and just used new codes to purchase additional tickets, the TF system may have been fooled into thinking you were buying your first tickets after getting into the queue. The problem is that I think the rules stated clearly that you couldn’t do that. So from BM’s standpoint, this is like using a single line position to buy multiple tickets with other peopels’ codes. Not allowed and you should have read all the stuff about this (I knew about it). The fact that you did it, even inadvertently, at least in my opinion, doesn’t absolve you of not knowing that you were doing somethign wrong. EVERYONE with ticket codes was supposed to log in one their own and use their code to get in seprately from you and anyone else. So yes, I think this might be a real violation of the rules. I guess you will find out when/if they notify you of your transgression.
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The system did not work. I finally got in after 45 minutes. I was excited, had my credit card out and put two tickets in my cart. The next page prompted me to sign in with my ticket fly account. From there, I was never able to get past a sign in error page. It said to call ticket fly if I had problems. I did so and there was nothing they were able to do but tell me to reset my password and clear my browser history and data. Once I did that I was unable to click back and lost my tickets and place in line. I was on the phone with them for 20 minutes and all they could say was sorry. Thanks ticket fly… And BM the system did not work for everyone. I’d rather have not even gotten into the placing tickets and selecting delivery page than what happened with me. What a tease and let down.
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Email ticketsupport@burningman.com, Cadence, and describe your situation.
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A lot of people described this happening to them. A more widely posted response to this particular situation might be helpful.
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What about Jimbo starting a camp that sells spots for $16,000? How does that fit with all this hippie talk put out here to sooth the masses? Seems like that would inflate prices, and is kinda predatory, and you are in fact part of that, at least until Jimbo is dumped. “Our community has historically demonstrated its commitment to buying tickets at face value — a very small percentage of participants in the past have paid inflated prices, and we are certain that “scalpers” are not responsible for the high demand for tickets. But as long as people are willing to buy tickets at exorbitant prices (we wish they wouldn’t, but some apparently do), there will be a market for predatory resellers. It’s antithetical to our community’s ethos…”
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Before reading: Please keep in mind that I am “technologically challenged.”
Would it be logical to break the individual sale into more than one event? For instance, hold the sale three times, maybe the second and third Wednesday in February, and the first in March. Place a cap on the registrations for each sale so not everyone is registering for the first round. Like, week 1, 10,000 tickets available, 15,000 registrations issued for that day. You can only register one time, so if you don’t get your ticket in the individual sale “wave,” you wont be able to register for the next round. So, people will still have to “commit” to the individual sale and the week they intend to purchase.
Also, during the registration, duplicate names to addresses could be checked and then limited to one registration for the individual sale. That way Jon Doe on Westbury Way isn’t registered ten times using different email addresses.
I know that administratively, this probably adds to the burden of setting up the sale to begin with. However, I am wondering if lowering the amount of people who log in at a given time (decreasing the ball bearings) will help prevent “back door” entry.
Again, I don’t know enough about the internet or how the site works, or how hackers hack. I am certain that the system in place does work. I’m just wondering if there is something that could curb the huge demand vs. supply.
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Semi-entertained at reading comments, semi-frustrated “in spirit” with those burdened by disappointment. For me, the clear answer is for BMorg to figure out the logistics (as they begin/continue to pile up) and find another venue. Not that the Black Rock Desert site is “bad”, but there should be other desert sites that would provide at least the same access if not better AND, AND, AND provide enough space and LESS, LESS, LESS BLM hoops to negotiate… to allow all the Burners who want to be there to be there. Think about it. If there are music festivals that host hundreds of thousands, why not the BM festival? There are HUGE logistical issues to be worked through, but that “problem” already exists; it just becomes “bigger” on its face. I am certain that the BMorg can handle it. Let us all remember that in addition to the spiritual thing that is BM, it is also a HUGE business and business IS about costs offset by income. This is at it should be (on this planet anyway). The business generated by BM is global: travel, materials, time. Being the idealist/dreamer that I am, I’d say fill the desert (Nevada, Utah, Arizona.. Gobi?, Sahara?) with Burners, Art, music, etc…. and provide for a global impact worthy of radical inclusion, radical art, radical expression that communicates to the entire population that the “default world values” are just a different way of seeing, expressing values and/but there ARE different ways to see and function and live. In MY dream, over time the “default world” loses its status of “normal”. It will still remain alive and viable because so much depends on that place, but perhaps, over time, the human experience of BM shines such a bright light that it is eventually seen as the lesser of two “evils”. This DOES NOT reduce the valuable impact of BM, but spreads it like a virus growing stronger, helping the world population to see, understand and experience the value of greeting your fellow human with hugs and loves, rather than shrugs and shoves.
Just some food for thought. Before you (the multitude who say it can’t be done) say “no”, consider this. We live upon a planet that has experienced us develop from grunting, hunter/gatherers to grunting jet-set entrepreneurs, and developers of global systems of communication and commerce. The exponential speed of our development has brought upon us “newly” discovered dangers as we have quickly outgrown our crib… our outreaching limbs are stretched through the bars and our “comfy” bed is no longer so comfy… How do we continue in our growth, which is apparently flywheel-like in momentum, without dying off? This is a ‘way bigger’ struggle and series of questions than “on topic” here EXCEPT that in my dream vision, it is in places like BM where some of those answers can be found. Let’s see if expansion is possible, in order to begin to address the global questions so many have. WHY NOT HAVE BM BE THE PLACE WHERE OUR NEXT GROWTH CYCLE BEGINS!?!
RicciRat
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I think this is something to think about. However, one issue that always comes up in my mind is the “special” place the playa is. And I don’t mean the nostalgia. The playa is special because it is really the only place in the United States like it. It is the largest single flat expanse of uninhabited land anywhere in the US borders. What makes it more interesting even that places like Death Valley or the Salt flats is its vastness, flatness and emptiness. One of the unique things about BRC is that it is essentially a “white canvas” on which Burning man is “painted” every year. That is different than any other place. I’ve been to a few regional burns, one in the mountains, one in a forest, and they are very very different from the main BM event. The lack of a “white canvas” is the thing I always come back to. The environment will always have an impact on any event but BM, except for the heat and dust, the environment is non-intrusive (in the sense of no flora, no fauna, no varying landforms, etc.) And there is no other place in the US where you can do this. The Black Rock Desert is IT. So any event that moved to a different KIND of location would be, of necessity, a different kind of event and I expect that is something the BM folks don’t want to attempt (even moving it to the alternative site back in 1998 I think it was, was considered a flop by most Burners and it was moved back to the main playa from that year onward.)
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Why don’t you just have 2 BMs? One that covers the week prior and weekend of Labor day like normal. Another that covers the week prior and weekend of Memorial day. Or some variation. This will allow double the people to experience BM.
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Have you been to the playa on Memorial Day? It is sometimes still a patchwork of mudpits on the 4th of July.
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Thank you for debriefing the me (and larger Burn community) on the individual ticket sale.
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I think it is so incredibly sad that no consideration is taken for long term Burners. We have a camp with 16 people who have gone on average for the past 16 years. We have a Bar that we roll out onto the playa and make drinks (great drinks) for people. We bring back 200 bronze buddha’s from our journey’s to Asia and hand these out to random people. We bring otter pops and cycle through the desert and hand these to people that are asking in the heat. We are a tight-knit group of friends and this is our annual week to be together and celebrate life. Of the 16 of us, two people scored 2 tickets. We got one vehicle pass. So you are eliminating over 75% of the old time burners (Who make this event so successful and who make it a great experience for new burners) and you replace us with LA party kids and rich kids (I heard from somebody I know in one of those all inclusive $10,000 per person camp that they will have no problems getting ticket allocations – we went to see this guy last year and the camp refused to serve us even a erin of water and told us “sorry, the bar has just closed”!) Sad to see this go the ay of Coachella. Just sad.
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Sad for you too. But at the same time, if EVERYONE with the same story was given THEIR 16 tickets, how many would be left for anyone who has never been? And both kinds of people need to go. I started volunteering with the DMV about 4 years ago when it was clear this was going to be an ongoing problem. I spent at least 18 hours working each year (out of 10 full days I am onplaya, or about 7.5% of my time) and I get a guaranteed ticket each forthcoming year (and it even is at a discount). So if the next time you all get out to the playa (and I hope you do), you start volunteering at somethng you enjoy doing and do enough work, you too will have at guaranteed admission ticket every subsequent year. You’ll never again have to worryabout this.
Bleurose
PS – when I suggested this to someone who was also whining about their ticket experience, they responded “Why should I have to actually volunteer to work for the guys who are charging me to come to their event in order to guarantee a ticket?” To which I just shrugged and said, you don’t, but if you want to avoid the headaches, you will. Reality is what it is and the sooner you realize it, the better off you will be.
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That’s exactly how BMorg has designed it. Make it a headache for anyone to attend the event on a regular basis unless they volunteer for the free labor force. “Be a slave like me, or you’re whining.” Typical ego response from volunteers. My other favorite is how volunteers see all non-volunteers and ‘civilians’. I don’t volunteer to support the infrastructure because the infrastructure crews are all like you. And please don’t tell me within the first 10 seconds of meeting you that you volunteer at the DMV. It’s like how New Yorkers always start off a conversation about how they’re from New York.
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It’s sad, but it’s also by design. the 20k directed tickets go to building the esplanade camps, art and art cars enough to keep the other 60k (forced spectators) feeling like they had some kind of transformative (whatever that means) experiences. so they go home and check BM off their bucket-list.
the new generation of burners accept articulated muni buses with the tops chopped off and a bit of fur as ‘awesome!’
the old-timers who continue to hang-on to the way it one was – interactive camps off the esplanade and random acts of giving, are going to find that serving the new generation who are mostly entitled brats who demand mixers for top shelf liquor… who show up to your camp naked on sunday demanding meat and cheese because they’re ‘starving to death’ and get pissed-off when you only offer them soup… these old-timers are going to be wondering – why bother any more? and when BMorg throws the $300 vehicle pass hoop at them to jump through, why really bother anymore?
the new generation doesn’t bring enough food or water and for years have relied on others to provide for them. those ‘others’ once had extra supplies to give, but i can see 2015 being catastrafuck because very few people will have anything to share with anyone other than their own camps. what happens when there’s no more food or water for these scene-kids?
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That’s a pretty impressive amount of generalizations.
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okay, will, i’ll let you know when someone invents a way of making generalizations without generalizing. do i really need to say, “well, generally speaking…” before making generalizations to avoid the charge of generalizing?
if you don’t think it is GENERALLY true that there is a troublingly large segment of the population that only brings the clothes on their backs, who rely on the ‘kindness of strangers’ to survive out there, then you haven’t camped amongst the general population. collectively, these kids area a time-bomb waiting to go off if they can’t find burners who have excess to give to them.
and the VP situation is going to force a lot of people to only bring enough food and water for themselves. so one of the unintended consequences of the invention of VPs could be that BMorg has to rescue these kids in very large numbers.
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What are “forced spectators”? Is someone making them come to the playa and then preventing them from participating?
I’m sorry you’ve had such poor experiences with the newbies. I guess the only thing I can do is to relate that my experience with them has been extremely positive. In 14 years, I’ve only had to rescue one ill-equipped newbie, and even then he was an amazing kid from Japan who provided endless entertainment for my village after we adopted him.
If your prediction does come to pass, and way to many ill-prepared people arrive on playa, I don’t see why the org would need to “rescue” them. They can just pack up and head home once they run out of food.
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Very good response, guys. I was really disappointed in my virgin ticket buying experience, but will keep on trying. Logically, it appears you have about a 25% chance of getting a ticket with the registration/sale ratio… Would be good to put that out there to curb the disappointment factor in the future? (I was looking forward to this Burn as a 60th birthday gift to myself, but will keep trying!) Thanks for the explanation, it does ease the pain. And love to all who did get a ticket, burn on!
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Gayle June, DEFINITELY keep trying! A great 60th birthday present indeed! I started coming to BM right after my 50th and it was my best birthday present ever. This will be my 10th year. And if you DO get a ticket, you can IMMEDIATELY start to volunteer to help on playa (all sorts of things you can do) and if you help enough you will get what is called a “gift ticket” which guarantees you can return the next year for a reduced price without having to worry about tickets. From that point on, the ticket problem disappears (as it does for me). Good luck and I hope we run into each other “at home”!
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Thanks for your hard work and explaining. Every one was amazing that help me.
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Was my previous post proving that ticket fly’s system did go down rejected by the moderators?? I can only assume it was as my comments aren’t on this thread – I posted it several hours ago
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I just hadn’t gotten to moderating comments yet, is all. All comments that include a link (like yours did) automatically go into moderation, to help combat spam, btw.
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Thanks!! :-)
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No ticket equals not Going Home and that hurts one’s heart like abandonment
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How can tickwiz be selling 12 tickets for over approx. $3,000.00 and one vehicle pass for $380.00 on e-bay?????? Such a shame for those of us who want to experience Burningman and play by the rules….
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The problem I experience is that many of the tickets sold go to people that have never gone to Burning man and do not intend to go. My direct experience was at the OMG sale last year. I was not able to get tickets based on this “first come system” forcing me to buy tickets the next day on Ebay for three times the face value which were OMG tickets.
This isn’t fun anymore. If I get tickets, I will show up at the event with resentment in my heart. The feeling of being ripped off.
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Excellent recap ! Also, here’s a suggestion (for future years) for stopping scalpers: what if you were to ship purchased tickets immediately (vs waiting until mid-June) ? Then after-market ticket purchasers could request/demand a ticket image (showing the number) to make sure it’s not a cancelled ticket (referencing your ‘cancelled tickets’ list). Then, offer a valid ticket puchase to anyone who reports a scalper with proper evidence of scalped asking price and ticket number. These ticket numbers from scalpers get cancelled and go on the list, and you would then have thousands of volunteers going immediately after scalpers, and the whole scalper market would dry up ? You could even get volutneers to help with the processing / verification process. I’d help… : )
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I clicked the link 1 minute before noon and the page informed me to hang on. Then the green button came up and I got the message “less than 1 minute to next step”. In a few seconds, it changed to “you are now moving to next step” or something similar. Within a couple of seconds, it changed to “less than 22 minutes to next step”, then “about an hour to next step”, then “queue has paused”!
I clicked the link again and got immediately directed to the ticket page, where I purchased the ticket.
Now, if this is the “so-called” technical backdoor, who created it in the first place? And how was I supposed to know that this was a technical backdoor? For all I know, I had received the “moving to next step now” kind of message as well! And buying the ticket and logging out meant that I lost my place in the queue. So why should my order be canceled for no fault of my own?
If anything, change the way you do ticketing and for Christ’s sake, get rid of ticketfly!
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milliseconds, milliseconds, milliseconds ????? I’m just sayin!! Not fair. Hackers and super computer savvy people have an advantage.
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The fatal flaw that you aren’t mentioning is that you had the tickets go on sale in the middle of the day on a weekday. A majority of your burning man hopeful attendees are working adults. It is difficult to login during work hours on work computers, especially if you have a meeting during that time and can’t login at the exact minute like everyone else. So that is not fair. Those who have no work commitment have the advantage over everyone else, and can sit around and wait, and login at the exact second needed to.
My suggestion is simple. Make your tickets go on sale on a weekend. Why not a Saturday? You release the sale date well in advance, so true burners will know not to schedule anything on that day or time and almost everyone will be available. I really don’t understand why you didn’t do this in the first place.
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Actually, our participants are international, so the time isn’t particularly convenient for anybody — is it more or less “fair” for the guy who has to sit at his computer at 3am?
A Saturday sale hurts people who are traveling or doing weekend things on a weekend. Plus, an entire army of folks would have to be working over a weekend to support the sale.
Point is this: there’s really no ideal day or time to do the sale, and Wednesday at noon is the lesser of evils.
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Weekend plans tend to be more flexible than work, generally speaking.
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Very simple steps could have been taken they are as follows.
1. In pre reg you should be able to login to ticketfly enter and store your card details do a pre authorize on it to confirm that your details are correct etc… so that the problem that many had this year with 100% exact match address details such as “ST” instead of “STREET” would have not been an issue. (burning man merchant services fault)
2. Keep the ticketfly user logged in. Even if you are logged into ticketfly you still needed to login again and there was no option for facebook login so you had to enter it wrong just to get the facebook login prompt.
3. Have users in pre reg select what they would like to purchase ie 2x tickets 1x parking
All this can be done over a matter of days with no pressure.
Now imagine you now wait for the button to show, you click it, wait in line and when your time comes, it simply says please confirm your purchase details. If correct hit confirm and your tickets are purchased. DONE!
That whole process can be done in less than 20 seconds. Almost all issues and delays once inside the system will be eradicated.
All tickets would be sold in less than 10 minutes and people would not be waiting around to be disappointment/frustrated with billing issues etc…
Please me know if there is a flaw in this process? Seems like a huge time saver and huge relief on the servers.
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What would you do about orders that could only be partially filled? We were able to buy 2 tickets, but no Vehicle Pass. If you read the previous Blog entry here, we have a *lot* of company.
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Give those people a message saying “Due to unavailability, your order can only be partially filled. Would you like to purchase ___ tickets and ___ vehicle passes, or cancel your order?” Problem solved.
Gary’s suggestion was a good one, and I think deserves serious consideration. I think some people might be nervous about putting their credit card info in a week early and having it “stored,” but that seems like a purely psychological thing if they’re perfectly willing to make a purchase during the sale anyway.
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My concern is regarding the car passes. Statistics says that 27K passes were used last year out of 35K bought. So now BMOrgs cut down total number to 27K.
Might seem logical, but think again – whats wrong with selling same 35K or 50K passes, if only 27K will be used anyways. The upside of that would be reducing stress for all of us, cutting down on scalpers and such.
As for the tickets – if BMOrgs can’t organize normal sale on such scale in one day (and past few years is a good proof of that), split it 2 or 4 days – would level chances of folks who couldn’t for one reason or another hit the button on the dot. Eliminating multiple entries is not a problem – profiles, billing name\address, all the means are there already.
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“the system lets people into the purchasing stage and then they by their tickets” is ,of course, not true. I’m let into the purchasing phase is it counts down from 28 min to back up to over an hour to finally counting down til I’m in. Click the number of tickets box from 0 to 2 and it says tickets unavailable! Sad that such a wonderous part of my life for ten years is now so painfully distant.
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What’s somehow saddening is how the lack of tickets is changing the dynamics around BM. Groups that gets split up, can’t bring their gear and art, “dilluting” more experienced burners, creating a feeling of “take” instead of “giving”.
The problem is too much success! For many years, BM managed control mass-media to ensure that the event grew organically but now it’s all over the internet and media. Let’s be a little more incognito about it. Let’s keep it low. Let’s keep the media 100 miles away! Then maybe the situation can be avoided.
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So, yes BM is now ridiculously popular and definitely a mainstream festival. In some ways, sad to see after almost 20 years on the playa. In other ways, hopeful that it will continue to change people’s lives. I get that demand far outstrips supply. Fine. But selling so many tickets in less than 2 seconds (how long it took me to click the green button and NOT get tickets) seems absurd.
My biggest beef is not on this sale but on the Directed Ticket Sale. We were given an allocation for directed tickets, but some of our campmates including the ones that run it didn’t get tickets because (again) there was a limited amount of tickets which was LESS than the allotment. What’s the point of the allotment/pre-allocation if they are not truly allocated. Now our camp is in a little disarray because some of the key members and looooong time burners don’t have tickets. Our 3000 sq foot lounge operation and offering is at risk. Can someone explain to me why the DS was also first come first served?
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Hello,
I just signed the petition, “StubHub, Inc.: Forbid exorbitant scalping on the Burning Man 2015 event.”
I think this is important. Will you sign it too?
Here’s the link:
http://www.change.org/p/stubhub-inc-forbid-exorbitant-scalping-on-the-burning-man-2015-event
Thanks,
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Has BMorg looked at the current Glastonbury ticketing system? IMO it is best in class (even though I didn’t get a ticket!!).
It totally eradicates scalping as every ticket has its owner’s photo on. Combined with other methods this also makes the tickets harder to forge.
The only way you can resell a ticket is through their own version of STEP & it goes to the next person in line , not a person of your choice. Not only is this much fairer it also stops people buying more tickets than they actually need at its totally pointless!!
All international tickets are sent out via post which is way better as there’s no need to spend hours queueing for Will Call!!
I’d be really interested to hear BMorg’s thoughts on this – Glastonbury have been trying forever to come up with ‘the perfect solution’ & the current system may well be as close as they’re going to get. Why try & reinvent the wheel…?
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/information/tickets/ticket-info/#TIXDIS
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Can you have payment information required at registration time? We all waited a long time to find out that the tickets were gone and the only reason was that people had to type their info in. I’m in Asia and I stayed up until 4:30am just to find out I didn’t have a ticket.
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that can’t be right. i got my tickets at 4:39am and i’m from singapore.
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I’m confused, I never saw a wait time… at all. I got a message saying that “Ticketfly is temporarily down.” I waited about 10 minutes, re-clicked the link in my email, and was able to purchase tickets. No wait time at all….. will my order be voided because i “bypassed the line”?
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I wonder what percentage of 2 ticket buyers don’t know who will be using the 2nd ticket at time of purchase.
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Does her name really matter?
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Wonder if the people wanting to bring the 747 got tickets? it would take more than two i should think!
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They are making a massive contribution so you’d hope so!!
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Thanks for the formulaic response!
I have read a fairly large selection of the posts on the blog all of which lead me to conclude even more than before that the situation this year was no better than a few years ago (the first year that demand outstripped supply, the first year Ticketfly was involved!) Although the explanation presented is better than none (BB’s in a funnel being positioned in the queue by milliseconds) at all, I don’t believe that it is an adequate explanation of what occurred. I have no doubt that from your side of the operation that is the way you saw it happen, Iin actual reality from the outside it appeared to me no better than the fiasco of 4(?) years ago! Apparently more than a few others seem to agree. I was glad to see the addition of queue ID’s and wonder why they were not applied and tickets sold based on the order those numbers were assigned.
Perhaps next time as each registrants code is accepted instead of an inaccurate and misleading progress indicator being returned with an incomprehensible hexadecimal queue id, the software could be set to return one’s actual numeric position in the queue. Thereafter the purchasing process could precede at leisure… spread out over as much time as necessary to avoid overloading any of the servers involved and creating the bottleneck(s) (funnel) to begin with. Blocks of numbers could be assigned appointed dates/hours for the entry of transaction info. Those who don’t return , supply invalid cc nrs or simply don’t want to would be passed over so that 20,001 would effectively move to 20,000 and so forth.
As position in queue is matched to login code, emails could be sent to those who do not get into the initial 20,000 advising them of their new status well in advance of when they need to complete the transaction.
The point of this exercise is to separate assigning one’s place in queue from the actual purchase thereby avoiding server bandwidth overload and the need to allow the servers “to catch up.” (effectively, shaking the funnel and redistributing the allocation of position in the queue).
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I hope bman publishes the names of those that cheated and jumped ahead of people in the queue. Put their camp names too! Petty , yes! I’d certainly like to avoid these losers who drag their default me first attitude to the playa. Publish their names on the front page!
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There are too many inconsistencies that BMORG did not address in their initial attempt to explain all this that appear in the Blog. Some feel they have done a great job explaining. I do not.
IE How can there be a thousand scalped tickets? Do 100 people work for stub hub who have the back door secret? Who, besides the 1%, can afford to pay $1000 for a ticket, many many tickets? Something just seems out of line here. I feel your pain.
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Sid, either people bought tickets and immediately put them on StubHub because they can’t resist the profit potential of a hot market, OR these folks are speculating that they’ll be able to somehow get a ticket to resell later — we don’t know which is the more common case, but my money is on the latter.
And clearly, there are many people who are willing and able to spend $1000 or more to experience Burning Man. And we all know the experience is priceless.
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Realizing that I have been lucky enough to get two tickets, but not a vehicle pass, for some reason it has brought a lot of stress, considering one of the reasons BM only sold limited amounts of vehicles passes was to encourage carpooling. I am carpooling from BC along with an individual from Alberta. So, my thoughts are now, are my tickets worth anything at all if I can’t obtain a vehicle pass? My heart goes out to those Burners who were not as fortunate as I, and weren’t able to get tickets.
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it’s very simple
1) get rid of the pre sale, nothing is more against the ethi of Burning Man than forced “charity” donation… especially if you can get three times more tickets per person and still have access to other sales… IT IS FLAT OUT WRONG
2) use the list of early access pass from the previous year and make it your Direct sale population, NO EXCEPTION… the builders, artists of last year are the only ones that you let bypass the queue.
3) All tickets left sold on two separate waves with the option to register to only one of them
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Thank you for the explanation, I get the high demand, I think first come first serve is good, I think everyone should have this amazing experience. I understand that not everyone can be lucky to get tickets (I did not and yes we were a bunch of mates who all logged in 12:00 – zero tickets) still super sad and yes not giving up….yet.
However what makes me really upset is not the waiting, not the time, not the virgins, not the people with lots of cash, it the scalpers . I think only way around this is names and id’s, non refundable unless via STEP, not valid unless you have bought the ticket and YOU are attending, not even to mates, only back to STEP otherwise it becomes who you know and we are right back in the default world, are we not? I don’t quite understand why individual sale allowed two tickets and but pre sale could buy additional? that seems unfair? i do see any need to even have a pre sale?
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vehicle passes could be allocated to the ones with confirmation on ticket purchase only and again with option to sell back to STEP
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basically when you have confirmation, system then gives you opportunity to buy vehicle pass – simple two step process.
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I would like the very high tech answer to why my friends using their -VERIZON- brand wireless 4GLTE phones had purchased 4 tickets within 2 minutes, (if not seconds) while 5 others of us located in different cities in throughout Oregon, had 1 hour wait times and “NONE” (no not a single one) of us made it through. 5 different computers, people, ISPs, login codes and cities. NOT one success, Yet Those who paid the big bucks for that nationwide 4G LTE got through in seconds. Now I am not insinuating any large corporate dollar exchange for server priority amongst the big boys because that “NEVER” happens. But I would like an explanation.
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@Craig
I was a Verizon Customer Service Representative for 9 years until I moved into management. Verizon has a camp at BM, but I can’t tell you the name. We’ve been working closely with BMorg to bring cell service and other benefits to the playa. I can’t tell you officially that Verizon customers get preferential treatment in the sale of BM tickets, but if I were you, I would change service providers next year to increase your chances.
Verizon Bunny
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Holy frickety frack, that’s just SO wrong. Oh wait, I’m a Verizon customer ;)
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I live in Noe Valley, and was very lucky to get 2 tix, but no vehicle pass. If anyone reading this lives in SF, I’m prepared to offer oral services for 2 hours, in-house. Our camp would like more than one pass, so if you have extra my housemates can also service you orally. No vaginal penetration, unless you have 3 passes. In that case you only get one girl. Email me at suzan@noevalleyautoworks.com
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post facebook page/photos.
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PLEASE, PLEASE open up STEP to ticket holders who still need a vehicle pass! Your radical decision to reduce the number of vehicle passes (WHY?) this year has put a bunch of us ON HOLD. Do we stay? Do we go? Do we plan? Do we build? Do we drive mopeds or bicycles? Beg to strangers? Who can we trust?
Not allowing us to enter the “wheel of fortune” through STEP feels like a slap in the face… A Cold Hard Slap! Please take the sting out of it by allowing us to enter STEP to either sell our tickets or buy a vehicle pass.
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Robyn, I was unsure if we’d be able to just buy VP’s thru STEP, sounds like you’ve been told that we can’t. But what do you mean about not being able to sell our tickets thru STEP? I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does, why wouldn’t we be able to sell thru STEP???
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carpool?
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a few thoughts after reading all posts: (1) split the individual sale into 2 sales… 20,000 for people who have a record of purchasing tickets in the past, a later sale of 20,000 for anyone not already having purchased a ticket. (2) if the individual sale has to be on a Wednesday, please avoid Ash Wednesday for those of us traveling home from Mardi Gras (2 of the last 3 individual sales have been on Ash Wednesday). (3) vehicle passes while good in theory, really suck.
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I didn’t get a ticket… so you will understand my frustration.
Why are self-congratulating yourself on poorly solving an unnecessary problem of your own creation? I agree with the others above that you are rewarding promptness, internet connection and click reflexes … creating a digital stampede that (as you admit above with the ball bearings metaphor) is challenging to handle.
THERE IS A SIMPLE SOLUTION:
1. People Pre-Register with Payment Info and Requested # of Tickets and Car Passes
2. Computer Produces an Ordered, Sequentially Numbered List of Requesters with a Serial Number of X Numbers in Random Order… this is published to the web.
3. Host a Live Video Stream A Lottery Style (yes ping pong balls) and an auditor from a major accounting firm. Only use as many balls as digits required for serial number. These machines are relatively inexpensive.
4. The order of balls selected in identifies the Serial Number of the first person in line.
5. Start executing transactions in a orderly fashion, if your payment fails for any reason, you lose out.
6. If you started in the middle of the list and you get to the end and still have tickets, you go back to the top.
If the goal is fairness, I can’t think of a better way.
True there is some risk of holding peoples credit card info on file. This could be solved with placing a hold or delayed charge like rental car companies or Apple iTunes does. PayPal or amazon are other potential options. Or worst case, you could make the charge at the time of registration and refund later if the individual did not get tickets. Regardless of how you choose to handle it, there is a way to do a ‘pre-payment’ model well.
This is such and area of angst for this community why wouldn’t you spend some of the millions of dollars raised to solve this problem?
I would donate $5 more per ticket for a better ticketing system.
I’m happy to volunteer to fix this. Is anyone listing anyway?
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They already tried a lottery which failed and people hoarded and sold tickets at a profit. There is no one fair scheme that makes everyone happy. Sorry that ship sailed four years ago. See my post below.
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My comment from yesterday appears to have been deleted?! Is there some moderation going on? My post contained nothing objectionable, so I’m rather confused why it might have been removed.
I suggested that Early Arrival Passes count as Vehicle Passes in order to ensure that artists and theme camps are able to build up the city infrastructure.
Is this a controversial suggestion?!
Wizard
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How is that going to control vehicle entry? The point of vehicle passes is to limit vehicles. It would be smarter to have an almost free pass for 4 or more passengers. The way its stands now a 70 foot bus counts the same as a 2 person smart car.
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All posts that include a link go into moderation automatically. No comments have been deleted on this thread.
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In order to avoid the scalping issue, why not require the participant’s name on the tickets at the time of purchase?
Then, at checkin, ask for a picture ID.
That’s what the airlines do and you don’t see any airline tickets being scalped.
If someone can’t go, they can get a refund and the tickets can go into the OMG sale.
J
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5 seconds of googling will show you that its been considered by BMORG and refused. That still could happen in the future. Even if names are on tickets and photo ID is required they’re not going to not allow ticket transfers like every other event does.
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That’s what happens with Gladtonbury tickets – see my earlier post
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Curious about the voiding of tickets being sold by scalpers. If scalping is legal, how is it legal to void the ticket? Do they get their money refunded?
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There are four groups that can go to Burning Man. The essential, the lucky, the poor and the rich.
The rich fund the poor in the $800 presale. The lucky and the essential will get tickets. If you’re essential per BMORG and didn’t get tickets you either didn’t notify the right person to get on the list or you didn’t follow instructions to get a ticket. The truly essential will get a ticket through the right people. They know how to do it. Having gone 10 times or being in a theme camp doesn’t make you essential according to BMORG or anyone. We have no sympathy for complainers that don’t work to help themselves.
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You can add the persistent to that. I’ve gotten a ticket via STEP the last few years. Don’t give up, and be able to live with uncertainty, and as the event gets closer, more tickets become available – via STEP and friends.
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I got a ticket, but many of my friends did not. So I was about to write down a little step by step on how my friends could get tickets next time, but then I realized that no, the system needs to change. Again.
The 2015 ticket sale had a huge bias towards:
1 – People who are computer nerds. I am a computer nerd, and that is why I got a ticket.
2 – People who are in close proximity to the servers, e.g. Californians, and USA in general. I am outside the USA.
If you’re a nerd, you could game the system, or at least set yourself up in a way to maximize your chances. If you live near the servers, your lag time will be low so you might get in regardless.
Here’s how I prepared:
– I measured ping time to the ticket fly server. In my case, > 300 ms. That’s round-trip time for an IP packet from my computer to the ticket computers, so if I click a button on my end, it will take about half that, 150 ms to arrive at the servers (and get entered into the queue).
– I made sure my computer time was in sync with internet time – most computers are doing this but if not, it could cost you a ticket
– I turned on seconds display on my computer clock, and flashing dividers so my clock read 11:59:59 and dividers would flash
– I practiced hitting the button just before the seconds would turn over. If you start clicking when you see 12:00:00 – you’re too late. You need to hit it at 11:59:59 and just before it’s about to turn over. So I did that a few times, following the pulse of the seconds and hitting the link a few minutes before 12, to get practice.
– I saw the “a green button will appear here” page that comes up when you try to enter the sale early. As a computer nerd, it was immediately obvious to me that that would not be good enough. At a round-trip time of 300ms, that button would come up WAY later than just hitting the link. Didn’t want to take chances so I opened a new browser window to hit the link on, and left the page that was going to show the green button open to keep an eye on it.
– I’d saved my special code link from the email as a bookmark so just one button in the browser to hit
– Hit that button at 11:59:59 and “almost” one second as best as I could guess.
I got through and got my ticket in 20 minutes. So I wasn’t the first to get in, clearly, but good enough, and much better than all the other people in my camp. I didn’t think what I was doing was in any way special – just common sense. But I heard later people actually did wait for the green button, or just waited around for 12:00 without considering seconds, and so on. And lots of non-nerds and internationals in our camp did not get tickets.
I propose for next year to make a lottery of all those who enter in the first minute. So you still have to be on time, but you don’t have to be a nerd or near the servers to make it.
Also should probably make it so everyone has to state in advance how many tickets they’re going to buy, and all those who are not guaranteed a ticket depending on their queue position get informed that they’re on a waiting list, and all those who have a ticket for sure get told so too while they’re waiting.
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I’m in Germany with a pretty slow connection (at least for German standards), clicked exactly at 9 pm our time and got two tickets and a vehicle pass. How could that work?
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In the old days pathetic losers would beg for free tickets. The one positive note now is that many of the leeches are back in the sewers off playa and more deserving folks are getting tickets.
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Your suggestion is interesting. Since you’re a webmaster and Network architect engineer please post your resume.
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The disappointment, loathing, finger-pointing and half-arsed-thought-out solutions are familiar for anybody who’s tried and failed to get into an event with more demand than supply. Concerts, triathlons, marathons, etc.
The real villain is the cap of 70,000 which is halfway into a four-year agreement with the BLM, the landlord. If there are 120,000 who want to attend Burning Man, that’s an overwhelming endorsement of how successful and awesome Burning Man was and continues to be, but 50,000 are going to be disappointed.
My advice to those 50,000: support and go to your regionals. Their tickets are often tier-priced and may even be available at the gate. The number attending could be a few hundred or a few thousand. I went to Burning Seed (Australia) and KiwiBurn (New Zealand). There are regionals in every continent, some perhaps only a few hours’ drive from you. Then have a go at Burning Man next year.
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I say, just like Wanderlust, make them ALL regionals and decentralize this event. It makes it more affordable and possible for the attendees, more unique, and I bet there are better places across this beautiful country to host them than the hot dust of Nevada (said by someone born and raised in Reno, NV).
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Not pleased to not have a ticket when my own company was conceived on the playa. But pleased that burning man still happens with so many amazing people each year. Just wish I could know which and how many of me/my friends are going. makes planning a bitch! and that, especially without a ticket, reduces enthusiasm.
sure, ok, everyone’s got ideas about how to make this process better. but i think i may have stumbled onto an idea that fits only for an event like BM that’s threatening to out-expand itself, become colonized by tourists, and fragment interconnected groups and individuals who want/need to (correctly plan to) be together on the playa.
in geek speak, what if we striped the potential attendees over a number of years? basically, we take advantage of the fact that we know BM happens exactly once a year and that our community is made mostly of patient, non-reactionary people with common sense by encouraging people to help conserve the resource that a good burn IS by not overusing it selfishly. lets say we tell everyone interested in going to BM anytime 2016-2020 to register a profile, then add to the questionaire a place where they can declare years between 2016-2020 they WILL NOT TRY TO GO. by ticking boxes, they volunteer themselves to be ineligible for any official sales those years, and give their word not to attempt to come otherwise. in exchange, they get preferential access to a segment of the 40,000 general sale tickets.
obviously im painting with wide strokes here, leaving the details to the imagination of BM folks. but this approach should make it hard for tourist companies which will want to offer the trip every year, while allowing you and all your friends to pick a year together and have some decent chance youll all get tickets to it without going broke or having to be so deep in BM culture that a recognized group will declare you as invaluable. thoughts?
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Reading through these comments, I find it really amusing how no one is commenting on how the actual online ticketing system finally WORKED. It didn’t crash, it didn’t die under the stress. Kudos to ticketfly for making that happen. It’s too bad demand has reached such critical mass that people are overlooking that.
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Well, Gideon, when you have a larger percentage of dissatisfied customers than satisfied customers, that is really irrelevant. The only answer is to decentralize the event, hosting several large events across the nation.
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Just to comment on the claim that the servers never crashed: “No, they never did and the ticket buying process was never stopped — the queue was intentionally paused (briefly) to allow the servers to catch up to the demand — and nobody lost their place in line as a result.”
As others have commented, there was a period of a minute or two before the queue was intentionally paused when the purchase page was unavailable. I was lucky enough to make it through the initial queue, only to be told (with two different error messages) that the site was down. The next time I refreshed the page, the queue had been paused. After waiting and refreshing the browser a few times, I did get put back in the queue after the pause, and was able to purchase tickets.
While the site was down, I took a screenshot to show my friends who were in their own queue. It happened at 20:05 GMT.
I’ve posted it here:
http://www.anony.ws/image/DSf0
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Hey M,
And just think of all the people who don’t know to do a screen refresh and, subsequently, don’t ever get back in the queue. It seems to me that techies are all that are going to BM this year.
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“So even if you clicked the link right at 12:00pm PST, you may not have gotten to the front of the line. Is that fair? Inasmuch as everybody’s in the same boat, it’s about as fair as it can be.”
NO, NOT FAIR. If a queue is formed in a matter if milliseconds why is the page with green button (taking you to ticketfly) is updated every 30 seconds? :) And the page with the green button says “No need to update the page.”
So, basically, if you are unlucky and the system shows you the button at 12:00:29 you are not getting tickets for sure.
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If it’s a given that the tickets will sell out immediately, a lottery system is better. In one respect it’s more fair – it doesn’t favor people with faster connections or better dexterity. In another respect, if it’s known at 1 second past noon that about 50,000 people in line have statistically no chance to get a ticket, why make us wait for 90 minutes to find out? 75,000 man-hours is a lot to waste.
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The system is a heartbreaker. Because of the way it was queued, you might be in a slow lane in seconds, and nothing changes for the next 90 minutes while you chat with others who are moving in their lines faster.
This is why the world has evolved to single lines feeding all “tellers”, “cachiers”, etcetera. Even airport security works fairly.
If any tickets were sold to someone who clicked into the sale after 5 or 10 minutes, this is very unfair, and a poor experience.
This is also like standing in line for 90 minutes blind. It would have been obvious within 20 minutes that there was no point for about 30,000 people to hang around and hope. A pointless waste of time and anxiety that something would happen to the connection, or there might be a problem with payment, or all the other worries that people have when waiting in line for 90 minutes.
There should only have been one queue.
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I signed in at 12:00:10 & got a “you’re too early” notice “but no problem – click the green button when the sale starts”
Clicked green button the instant it appeared, & wait time was 14 minutes – then 45 min, then ‘over an hour’, back down to 51min, back to 1 hour, then 45 min, 36 min & “sale over” .
So, there is no ‘1st-come-1st-served queue. I signed in less than 1 sec after the sale started & was pushed to the back of the queue multiple times according to the notices I received, until the sale ended.
After contributing to the event for 10 years, perhaps it’s time to find something else to do that week…
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I’m just struck that no matter what BM Org does, there will be LOTS of people who can’t get tickets, and each of those people will develop his/her own theory about how “stupid” BM org is, or how dumb Ticket Fly is, and how if YOU were in charge THIS is how it would be done, and so on. It’s a no-win proposition.
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I propose a system to prevent scalping but not inhibit sharing burning man tickets and parking passes and still allow you to buy two tickets and resell them to friends only).
Unfortunately, this system may require any re-sold tickets to be passed back through Ticketfly, even if resold to friends.
1) During pre-purchase sign-up, request that ticket buyer list 10 of their friends who also want to go and are trying to purchase tickets. If ticket needs to be resold, it can only be submitted for a refund if one of their friends didn’t get a ticket and wants one. Otherwise the ticket can be submitted to Ticketfly for possible re-sale, firstly, to the general waiting list and, secondly, to the general public, and a refund will only occur if ticket is sold to one of those party’s at a subsequent time.
2) Parking-passes should be sold only as a supplement to the existing ticket-holders (a few months later) or the parking-pass can be acquired if (2 or more) names are pooled to request shared pass (within 1 week of original sale). The total number of parking passes would be allocated based on a percentage of total ticket sales (for example, 2.3 tickets per vehicle).
If ticket-holder wishes to resell either ticket or parking pass, it must be offered to other party in friend group or to non-friend ticket holders (only after friends decline). If these two groups decline then it would be re-offered to general public (this assumes less than 100% tickets sold). No refund if tickets are oversold initially and no demand exists after initial lottery and before BM starts.
DOWNSIDE: This would require tracking ticket #, purchaser’s name (ID required), and list of 4-5 possible vehicles they might attend event in. If you breakdown, bring a copy of your vehicle registration if arriving in different vehicle that has no pass. (New vehicle will have to park in Satellite parking and walk of take shuttle into grounds.
This would severely limit scalping, abuse and give people options if they were willing to share responsibility for friends and community members.
Note: I don’t know if satellite parking exists but you could charge a prohibitive amount if required to encourage vehicle sharing.
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The Current system unfairly favors those who are technology more savy, have better computers and connections, and can make the system work better. I felt the attempt to buy tickets to be confuse and stressful. Comic-con had a better system where Yhose who has preregisterrd could enter the lobby on your computer anywhere from 9 to 10 am onSaturday. At 10, the people already in the lobby were moved to ticketing in random order. It felt much more fair than the BM process. I didn’t get tickets to either,but feel much better about the Comic con system
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This comment below is a fact – friends logged in way after me and got tickets – so much for my beloved art car and sunrise on the playa 8 years running – think lottery man not a bogus queue where high speed lines get tickets to resell – logged in at 12:00 exactly – 32 minutes to tickets then pushed back and off the chart – fact
blbpdsusa says:
February 21, 2015 at 6:11 am
Good post, but not at all accurate. Many people logged on ten, 12, even 15 minutes into the sale and got tickets. I clicked the the green button in the nanosecond it appeared and had no chance. There is no way the queue worked as you described.
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This system of selling tickets sucks. I’m a carpenter. I can’t stand around a computer clicking at an exact time and watching a timer for an hour during my workday.. Anyone who thinks this system isn’t weighted towards people who have the ability to be sitting in front of a computer in the middle of the day are delusional. That is not radical inclusiveness at all.
I haven’t been since 2011, which was my 10th year starting back in ’98. Thought I’d give it a try this year and made it into the queue at 12:15 but got busy at work and missed my chance or who knows if I even got one, can’t hear my phone with tools screaming, next time I looked it said sale over.
In any case, the whole click-race seems techie and stupid and as one commenter mentioned, totally uncreative or inventive as a solution to this problem. First click after 12:00 noon? Lame.
Ya the lottery didn’t work so keep trying new ideas. Lotteries in 5 paks? 10 paks? 2 paks?
I do agree no one has any more right to go than anyone else, IMHO. I have to say in 2011 I enjoyed hanging with the burgins a lot more than a lot of those crusty old “it was so much better back in 19xx” blah blah. can you imagine how much it would suck if it was just the same crew of burners every year since 2000? ZZZzzz. We play a game where we take a shot of whatevers handy every time we hear someone say that line.
Still, this ticket thing sucks. Burning man has always had a weird sort of smugness around it, where people are constantly challenging others and trying to prove their own “burningmanliness” cred or whatever. I just laugh it off, I’ve had some of the best times of my life there. But it is a weird undercurrent..and this ticket thing only makes it worse. I understand only a certain amount of tickets can be offered, and more than that number want to go. So now everyone starts stepping up their creds.
In my opinion, the crusty old burners who have their big walled-off camps and stink-eye anyone they don’t know, are right up there with the first timers who run out and get some fuzzy boots and vintage goggles, shoot a few pics for the facebook page, and go BM, checked off! Who deserves the tickets more?
The beauty of never running out of tickets back in the day is we could all just cruise together and who cares why we are all there, we just came to the desert so we have that in common so lets hang.
Now it’s a battle. I hope the event is still good for the first timers. I hope it’s still something new every year, and that that thing is good. Because like most things, BM can never go backward only forward. I’m sure there’s a great metaphor in here somewhere buy BM as an organism is growing in changing, let see if it can survive.
And everyone, just relax! It’s BM. It’s supposed to be FUN.
But that ticket sale system still sucks.
Hasta!
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Kudos, this is the best comment of the bunch – well said.
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Why do you use the internet to promote an internet ‘time’ commodity?
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All this does not explain why when I logged in, I was told I was “Next in line”, a minute or so later, I was told it was 20 some-odd minutes, then 40 something, then “Over an Hour”, then the pause happened.
I’m a programmer, and “load balancing and sorting” does not account for this. This is either really really bad programming, or something else was going on.
I was in by 12:00.01, possibly 12:00.02, but there are people who came in, according to them, several seconds later than I and they got tickets.
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It has taken me a good week to get over the disappointing experience of following the rules to get a burn ticket. I’m a 3x burner and again for the 3rd year in a row I was not able to get a ticket due to a sell out. I haven’t read all the other feedback yet, but I’m sure there’s others who are feeling like I do. I was online logged in before high noon, clicked the purchase ticket button as soon as it opened and my little cyber guy had only 43 minutes originally to wait then KaBoom…sold out. In fact ALL of my friends followed the protocols and none of us got tickets. Who DID get tickets and what was their process ? I would love to know. Was the trick to this… using a super computer connected to multiple systems and bombarding server simultaneously? Were these genuine playa lovin burners or hi-tech scalpers? Are their tickets going to magically show up on Craiglist for sale at crazy high prices? Somehow, the internet ticket purchasing path leaves room for all sorts of snags and potential unfairness. There’s lots of explanation here from the powers that be, but we need more answers, at least I do with an iT translator if necessary. Did the burn staff test drive the online ticket purchase experience real time personally with an option that they won’t be going to the playa if they don’t get a ticket? Whatever the case is, there’s always going to be a feeling of unfairness as long as the population on the playa can only hold so many burners. Perhaps the old skool way of standing in a line to purchase a ticket could be a novelty adventure offer one year. Hey, if we need to wait in a line for a week…we’ll be campout experts at that now won’t we. More ticket buying options and creativity is needed, and we’re just the community to figure this out.
Signed, a wilted Lovelotus 007
#
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Now that you released more information about the ticket sale process, I think I know why it’s such a clusterfuck: you should have only allowed each person who signed up to buy one ticket instead of two. I mean, only 80000 people fought for 40000 tickets. I thought it was like 200k, but it felt that way because people went for 2 tickets no matter what due to the scarcity.
One step further would be to have named tickets just like a plane ride: no name changes, must sell ticket back to the ticket pool, etc.
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It’s time to actively work and promote to decentralize this shindig, folks. Here in Arizona, we have a Burning Man chapter/off-shoot, and the event needs to happen in more places than just this one, for there to be any more growth or true congruency to the event and experience.
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I feel the lottery is the fairest with the 72hr to respond. This takes away the Internet access speed differential.
To eliminate scalping, and to sell only to only committed attendees, print the tickets airline style tickets with a name on it. As one BRC an ID must be shown. These tickets could be resold through the step program only because the name would have to be removed from the tick serial number and issued to another individual .
BMan org. may want to charge for a ticket return to cover added expenses incurred. This may raise the commitment of those wanting tickets.
People may still find ways to get around this name requirement, ex. fake ID but that is another step for them to overcome and it might take the online abuse of ticket sales away. Technologically this is possible.
OR Allow BRC POPULATION to GROW and/or the event spans a longer time, say 2 weeks.
Also other BM event sites could become just as popular, especially if it attached directly to the BM org and held at the same time in Aug/ Sept
As you can see people like me still care about B Man and always will. It’s home to us.
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Why not sell tickets to people in an actual line of people regionally? there are many burners who don’t have a computer or despise computers altogether. Burning man is not a tech convention. Get over the reliance of the internet.
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HEY HERE IS A CRAZY (RADICAL) IDEA.
WHY NOT ACCOMMODATE 80,000 FOLKS SOME HOW?
THE INCREDIBLE BLACK ROCK PLAYA
COULD EASILY ACCOMMODATE ANOTHER BLACK ROCK CITY.
YOU KNOW A SISTER CITY!
BLACK ROCK SISTER CITY!
OF COURSE
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
WOULD BE A WHOLE NEW “ENTERPRISE”!
LOVE YOU ALL
KEEP THE FIRES BURNING
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I want to help crack down on marked up ticket prices. As of now, 100% of tickets on StubHub are marked up over 100% of the original cost. I realize that if StubHub cracks down, the sellers will just relocate to another site that is less regulated like craigslist
So what to do?!
Make the transfer of tickets a better process. Instead of being able to sell tickets on the open market, what if tickets are permanently in the name of the purchaser (which is checked via ID at the BM entrance). The only way to redistribute a ticket and remove the attached name is through a Burning Man controlled website like the STEP program. That being said, I think burners should be able to sell to a specific friend or just sell the ticket back to BM. I think this site should be able to support both!
For those who buy 2 tickets originally, there are a few ways this can be handled.
1. The purchaser can register whoever they want, whenever they want for the second ticket (prevents at least one ticket being sold on the open market)
2. The purchaser must register the second person at the time of sale. Both are then in control over 1 ticket (either person could sell back to BM or purchaser can choose to sell back the 2nd ticket because they paid for it)
3. The second ticket stays in the purchasers name and both people must arrive together (not a likely case for a scalper to show up with a stranger or even want one of the tickets)
This is not a catch-all, full-proof plan whatsoever. Just because I sell a ticket through my theoretical BM program to a friend, doesn’t mean that I didn’t negotiate a price outside what BM can see and pocketed a few hundred bucks on top of the official transaction. My hope is to make it harder for those who are trying to profit, though not impossible.
To make the redistribution of tickets for profit impossible, all tickets must be registered to an individual and only BM can purchase the ticket back to redistribute on a first-come, first-serve basis. This way there is no direct sales from one individual to another. I don’t like that idea all that much though. If I can’t go, I want to know my ticket is going to a burner who will appreciate it! But at least I would know that my ticket isn’t being sold at a ridiculous price.
I am passionate about this cause and would like to help in any way possible! BM folk, please reach out if there are ways I can contribute! Thank you and
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FUCK YER DAY!
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I’m with you….this reliance on technology to make the system fair is a fallacy. As we all know, technology isn’t equal. Location, speed, systems, server jams, and more make this a poor system for equality. Since everyone has a registration number, it would be easy to order registered burners into random batches which would cut down on server issues and the example of balls into a funnel. I have tried for 3 years to get tickets and have not succeeded and I was in at 12:00:36 (I have the print out showing the time I entered!), yet I did not get tickets but some people who came in 10 – 15 minutes later did get tickets! How did that work based on the above explanations?
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