I don’t have a perfect solution in my pocket, but here’s my best thought. First, I think there are three ultimate goals.

1 - Shorter lines.
2 - If there’s not room for you, you know in advance.
3 - Arriving earlier (aka, greater effort) gets you in the door sooner.

(I admit that the third goal is not universal - it’s just my opinion)

Here’s my attempt to solve these problems.

Open a table several hours before the event where people can show their id and pick up a ticket. You can then leave, and return when the doors open. (If you want to get fancy, the doors can open for tickets 1-99 at 5pm, 100-199 at 5:15 pm, etc) The point of the system, however, is this. Earlier = better standing. With tickets before the doors open, however, there doesn’t have to be a line and people won’t wait to be disappointed.

Take it or leave it - I’m sure there are other great ways of organizing this event. Cheers

Thanks for the feedback and I’m sorry you didn’t get a ticket. We did send a ‘blast’ out to RSVP’ers via Upcoming but it appears that not everyone received them- not sure if that’s a bug or notification setting issue with Upcoming. We also notified the BarCamp Google Group as well announcements via the Ignite Portland Twitter (http://twitter.com/igniteportland).

The problem we’re trying to solve by using tickets is to minimize the number of people who show up only to be turned away due to capacity being reached. We hate it when that happens. We tried to create as flexible system as we could by incorporating both tickets and a general admission line and there was great demand in the community for the ability to reserve tickets. Yes, some folks will unfortunately have to line up early to get in, but that was also the case without tickets when we had only a first-come general admission line. Unfortunately there seems to be more folks interested in attending than we have capacity for and some people are going to be upset. But this issue exists whether or not we issue tickets.

Thanks again for the input. We’ll be looking to make some tweaks to future events to make give more advance notice, and make getting tickets as convenient and fair as possible.

if you RSVP’ed on Upcoming, you should have received an email as soon as the tickets became available. Notices were also sent via email to past Ignite Portland attendees, and it was talked about a LOT on Twitter (both from the “official” @igniteportland account, as well as that of the organizers.

We also had no idea that all 450 tickets would be gone in less than 24 hours, before we had even announced what the presentations would be. You could say we had higher than expected demand.

In short, we tried to let people know by as many ways possible that tickets were available. I know there were some problems with spam catchers eating some of the ticket emails (Yahoo, specifically), but you’re not the only one who’s a little disgruntled with the way things worked out.

If you show up for the General Admission line, there’s a really good chance you’ll get in. We’ll do our best to make this as easy as possible next time!

But ultimate what this means is that the people at the event (450 of them) aren’t going to be those most enthusiastic about Ignite, but rather those lucky enough to check the site on the 4th.

A more flexible system next time please…?