Registration for Google I/O, Google’s yearly developer conference held in San Francisco, opens Wednesday morning at 7 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (to check your local registration time, go here). The event is set to be held May 15-17 at the Moscone Center. It has been extremely difficult to buy tickets the last few years, with I/O 2012 tickets completely selling out in a mere 28 minutes.
General tickets will set you back $900 apiece, while student and educational faculty tickets get discounted to $300. There will only be a limited number of academic tickets, and they can only be used by currently enrolled (or 2013 graduating) full-time students and faculty. If you do not fall into one of these two categories, do not buy an academic ticket, because academic tickets can not be changed to general admission and are non-refunable.
Hit the break for how to prepare for registration day, and some tips to maximize your chances of grabbing some of this year’s I/O tickets.
To buy tickets this year, you will need two things: to be logged into Google+, and to have a Google Wallet that is ready to make purchases. If you have a Gmail account (which anyone who is buying tickets should), make sure your browser is logged into Google+. Next, make sure your Google Wallet account has a valid credit card on file so you can actually buy the tickets. Once you have these two things, you can open the registration page and start waiting until show time.
To maximize your chances, Google has given us two tips. First, don’t refresh the registration page – the proper buttons will appear automatically. Refreshing will only hammer Google’s servers and waste precious milliseconds you could be using to buy your tickets. Second, don’t try and register in multiple tabs at once or refresh while waiting for a ticket, as this will actually decrease your chances of a successful purchase.
Good luck to everyone tomorrow! If you need to kill some time until morning, feel free to relive the milestones of Google I/O 2012.
Source: Google