sacrelicio
Well-Known Member
I don't remember what article I read this in yesterday, but...
The owner of Cigar City said this (I'm paraphrasing): "We thought craft beer was 99% *******-free, but I guess we were wrong."
Holy ****ing blame shift.
Hunahpu's Day is no more
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The owner of Cigar City said this (I'm paraphrasing): "We thought craft beer was 99% *******-free, but I guess we were wrong."
Holy ****ing blame shift.
JulianB1
Well-Known Member
Fundamentally, all the fault for what happened lies with CCB. Yes, individuals are at fault for their specific micro-actions, such as any violence, theft, and so on. But the overall problems of the day all trace their root cause to the crowd being larger than what it was supposed to be, and that is totally on the event host, not the attendees.
tehzachatak
Well-Known Member
I love how this quickly went from:
Which I interpreted as a mea culpa-
To blaming literally everyone besides themselves. What an absolute joke. Yes, there were issues with ticket resellers. Yes, some people were ********. Nevertheless, lots and lots of people have figured out how to hold large, ticketed events with substantial alcohol consumption involved without it turning into a ********. Apparently, those people just don't understand how hard Hannypoo's day is and how it's so special and how there are so many special challenges. Give me a ****ing break.
ridglens
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HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA they sold "3500" tickets and think people created/sold a fake 4-6000? HAHAHAHAHHAHAH
i don't buy that **** for a second. They "saw it early", so they just ignored it until they ran out of beer? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH scanning on iphones... spared no expense on that one...
"We had 16000 bottles and let in 8000 people to buy 3 each, seemed like a good idea at the time"....
Good Lord, Three Floyds is the damn standard setter...
i don't buy that **** for a second. They "saw it early", so they just ignored it until they ran out of beer? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH scanning on iphones... spared no expense on that one...
"We had 16000 bottles and let in 8000 people to buy 3 each, seemed like a good idea at the time"....
Good Lord, Three Floyds is the damn standard setter...
JulianB1
Well-Known Member
I'm not one to start making any sort of demands, but I would really like to hear from Cigar City exactly how many tickets were distributed, and why they had thousands of extra wristbands ready on-site. The one thing that would really piss me off would be to hear that they advertised this as a 3500 person event when they actually sold (or handed out on the sly) thousands of extra tickets. Now I realize that I shouldn't be complaining given that I admitted to having had a great time, and only decided to go at the last minute, but part of the mental calculus I did when making that impulse decision was thinking about how many beers were on tap relative to the number of attendees. It looked pretty reasonable to me. Had I known in advance that it was going to be that setup for twice as many people, I might not have bothered. But again, it worked out for me (drinking-wise) so this is more wanting answers to this so that others see them.
sacrelicio
Well-Known Member
Even that initial response sounded weird, like woe is me martyrdom or something.
sacrelicio
Well-Known Member
Yeah, hats off to the counterfeit ticket ring that was able to pull off thievery of that magnitude. It's like the ****ing Lufthansa heist of beer festivals.
tehzachatak
Well-Known Member
That's seriously the most insane thing about all of this. People are holding up Dark Lord Day as an example of what to do right. It's amazing how far we can fall, I guess?
RandallPinkFloyd
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At this point, I'm guessing, they can't admit how many "I got you covered bro" tickets they handed out for fear of the city/fire marshall/zoning/kharma coming after them for large fines or whatever. and I'm sure they're already being scrutinized by the city.
sacrelicio
Well-Known Member
Well, after a couple **** shows, they made major changes and now the event runs well. Plus they started dating their bottles! Hats off to them.
I disagree. Everyone wanted to try those beers, which led to crazy lines and frustration. A simple online poll would have told them which beers people really wanted to try that day. I understand some beers are more limited/rare and they will run out, but if they had planned to serve larger quantities then I think some of the craziness might have been avoided. It just seems that if so many people want to try a beer your advertising for a special event, and you know the exact number of expected attendees then you'll do your best to let as many of those people as possible try those beers. Especially since you're the host of the event.
I think the best example of this is Peg's/Cycle. Doug always seems to brew enough of his BA beers to take care of a lot of people at their special events. Do kegs kick? Yes. Do they kick in 15 minutes and leave a lot of people disappointed? No.
And for full disclosure, I got pours of the beers I wanted to try since my friends and I split up to go to different lines.
JulianB1
Well-Known Member
One of the CCB guys responded on BA:
http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...-day-march-8-2014.117839/page-49#post-2236866
"the problem is that no matter who is organizing it, you can't control the actual people who get in. you can control the number, but there will still be plenty of people who want to take advantage of rare bottles and will fight to get them if they see a profit. and with a smaller number of tickets, the chances to take advantage of a hungry secondary market increase even more, either through entry to the fest or through bottles after the fest."
Sorry, but this is complete BS designed yet again to push responsibility off of CCB for the main **** up - too many people - and on to the people who attended. What he doesn't get is that there would not have been any fighting among "people who want to take advantage of rare bottles" if they had stuck to their alleged attendance limit, because everyone who wanted bottles (profiteers or otherwise) would have gotten them with no issues. As far as the part about a smaller number of tickets increasing the chance to "take advantage of a hungry secondary market", don't make me laugh. Number of tickets to an event needs to be dictated by capacity concerns, not by a secondary resale market they have never shown an inclination to care about before.
"- this one [selling DBH] was all my decision. there were a couple of reasons for this, none of which really help things in retrospect. 1) the element of surprise was to avoid crazy lines for the DBH when we already knew there'd be crazy lines for Hunahpu's. 2) the case limit was to get through them fast so they don't last the entire day and there's yet another endlessly long line. 3) the 11am thing is probably the toughest to understand, and for that i accept 100% responsibility on ****ing that up. when we told people not to arrive early, what we were really meaning to say is "don't camp overnight/show up at 5am." as most people know we've gotten in trouble in the past for having crazy long lines. again, it's one of those situations where you're damned if you're do and damned if you don't. there was going to be a long line regardless, and we should've planned better on limiting it. "
Funnily enough this part seems to be where he's the most contrite, yet I actually agree with him. CCB wanted to quickly get rid of a ton of leftover beer (or however you want to describe it), and if they had enforced some 1 or 2 bottle per person limit, it would have just led to another enormous line on a day that already had too many of them. One thing a lot of beer geeks don't seem to get is that for breweries, moving product quickly to both generate revenue and open up space is a more important consideration than worrying about whether or not people are going to get butthurt over issues of "fairness" and so on.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...-day-march-8-2014.117839/page-49#post-2236866
"the problem is that no matter who is organizing it, you can't control the actual people who get in. you can control the number, but there will still be plenty of people who want to take advantage of rare bottles and will fight to get them if they see a profit. and with a smaller number of tickets, the chances to take advantage of a hungry secondary market increase even more, either through entry to the fest or through bottles after the fest."
Sorry, but this is complete BS designed yet again to push responsibility off of CCB for the main **** up - too many people - and on to the people who attended. What he doesn't get is that there would not have been any fighting among "people who want to take advantage of rare bottles" if they had stuck to their alleged attendance limit, because everyone who wanted bottles (profiteers or otherwise) would have gotten them with no issues. As far as the part about a smaller number of tickets increasing the chance to "take advantage of a hungry secondary market", don't make me laugh. Number of tickets to an event needs to be dictated by capacity concerns, not by a secondary resale market they have never shown an inclination to care about before.
"- this one [selling DBH] was all my decision. there were a couple of reasons for this, none of which really help things in retrospect. 1) the element of surprise was to avoid crazy lines for the DBH when we already knew there'd be crazy lines for Hunahpu's. 2) the case limit was to get through them fast so they don't last the entire day and there's yet another endlessly long line. 3) the 11am thing is probably the toughest to understand, and for that i accept 100% responsibility on ****ing that up. when we told people not to arrive early, what we were really meaning to say is "don't camp overnight/show up at 5am." as most people know we've gotten in trouble in the past for having crazy long lines. again, it's one of those situations where you're damned if you're do and damned if you don't. there was going to be a long line regardless, and we should've planned better on limiting it. "
Funnily enough this part seems to be where he's the most contrite, yet I actually agree with him. CCB wanted to quickly get rid of a ton of leftover beer (or however you want to describe it), and if they had enforced some 1 or 2 bottle per person limit, it would have just led to another enormous line on a day that already had too many of them. One thing a lot of beer geeks don't seem to get is that for breweries, moving product quickly to both generate revenue and open up space is a more important consideration than worrying about whether or not people are going to get butthurt over issues of "fairness" and so on.
franch
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JulianB1
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dc55110
Well-Known Member
Here is another response from him:
"i have no doubt we could've done something better, but the scanning system was a joke and sorting out the real from the fake would have been even more incredibly time-consuming and would have screwed even more people from getting in. i don't want to imagine the hoard at the gates had we prevented everyone from getting in."
Well if the system was a joke how do you go into it relying on it? "Hey these don't work! There is no way we will be able to scan all the tickets... Let's roll with it anyway, what could possibly go wrong?!?!"
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drgarage1
Not a real doctor. Lives in garage.
What an absurdity -- scans of QR codes works for everyone else, but the fact that his team was incompetent at it makes the system bad.
GetchaPull
Well-Known Member
How about implementing a ticket system (or hiring a crew with the proper scanners) similar to concerts and sporting events? Do either of those scenes experience counterfeiting issues?
dc55110
Well-Known Member
People counterfeit tickets for every event there is, it is all in how the event organizers have planned to authenticate the tickets being presented. At this point they are just trying to save some face with their customers, but it would have really showed some integrity if they had come right out and said...
"We really messed this up. We didn't properly vet our ticket verification system and as a result there was a complete breakdown at the gates. More people were let into the event that we had planned for and the situation quickly got out of our control. We regret not having been properly prepared for an event of this scale. We feel the only way to rectify this with our customers is to offer a full refund to all legitimate ticket holders. We understand that a sizable number of fraudulent tickets we sold in the secondary market, but we cannot guarantee any tickets that were not purchased directly through CCB or our ticketing company."
If they make a press release like this Saturday evening/Sunday morning, it would have pretty much been the end of it.
JulianB1
Well-Known Member
People on other channels are trying to compare this to stories about forging Super Bowl tickets and the like. What they don't seem to realize is in those cases it's usually actual forging, not photocopying.
sacrelicio
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And that's a huge, world famous event. Not even comparable.
HeadHunter
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Didnt they use Eventbrite, who does ticketing for concerts and sporting events? Although it sounded like they didnt have the option to disable the ticket once it was verified. Neither did it sound like they have enough people scanning tickets.
The big local beer fest here (Steel City Big Pour) uses ShowClix (eventbrite competitor) and enough scanners to admit 1500 people (per session) in about 20 minutes. Although to be fair, ShowClix had issues the first couple of years they handled the tickets with demand on the website when tickets went on sale.
sacrelicio
Well-Known Member
Everything about them seems like they are trying to please everyone and are scatterbrained. Even the sheer number of beers that they package and release points to this.
"Let's have a huge event, where we release Hunah, every variant imaginable, and other limited beers, plus we'll do some 5 year anniversary beers, have some of the hottest breweries in the US come down and tap their most sought after beers! And we'll be nice: let people buy cases at the end, and transfer tickets, wheel coolers around, bring chairs, and everything! It'll be so cool!"
"Let's have a huge event, where we release Hunah, every variant imaginable, and other limited beers, plus we'll do some 5 year anniversary beers, have some of the hottest breweries in the US come down and tap their most sought after beers! And we'll be nice: let people buy cases at the end, and transfer tickets, wheel coolers around, bring chairs, and everything! It'll be so cool!"
Treebs
Well-Known Member
Three Floyds does all of that and there really aren't any major problems, the only caveat being no coolers on the festival grounds. Once they implemented that rule the results were immediately noticeable.
Edit: I'm also not saying that FFF hasn't had and won't have its share of problems going forward, but DLD also has 6,000 that line up starting at 4 AM day of.
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dc55110
Well-Known Member
I was part of that conversation, while I didn't bring up the Super Bowl, I did compare it to using some of the official secondary market ticket exchanges. All of these allow you to print you ticket at home. You can make as many copies as you like, but as soon as the first is scanned all the others are instantly worthless.
As far as I'm aware that Eventbrite tickets each have a unique barcode. This should allow them to be able to validate a single use of that barcode.
JulianB1
Well-Known Member
Yeah, wasn't trying to infer that what you were saying was at all incorrect. It was directed at the suggestions that this is the doing of some professional ticket forging ring or something like that along the same lines as those that have attempted forgeries of SB tickets and so on.
tehzachatak
Well-Known Member
This is not difficult to understand. Had CCB scanned the tickets and actually turned away anyone with a duplicate, it would have been fine. They didn't. The end. Thousands of large events use this exact same system every year.
There's no such thing as real vs. fake. There's multiple copies of the same ticket- and if you use it like you're supposed to, the first scan gets in, the rest don't. Sucks for all the people with duplicates, but that is what it is. I don't understand their comment about "trying to figure out real vs. fake".
There's no such thing as real vs. fake. There's multiple copies of the same ticket- and if you use it like you're supposed to, the first scan gets in, the rest don't. Sucks for all the people with duplicates, but that is what it is. I don't understand their comment about "trying to figure out real vs. fake".
dc55110
Well-Known Member
The easiest way to solve the problems these events experience is to first have the event planned out months in advance, review what has worked and not worked at your previous events, look into how other similar events have worked and staff with more people that you think you'll need.
Oh, and make it a free event, in late fall, in Minnesota...
Oh, and make it a free event, in late fall, in Minnesota...
user 305169
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daniel1
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Does anyone know if they used WiFi or cellular to scan the tickets? I can make a pretty educated guess but was curious if anyone knows definitively. How about setting up a secure, non-broadcast wireless network and use that to scan the tickets instead of using the cellular network getting ass ****ed from every direction by every person using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Untappd? I have a hard time believing the blame is on Eventbrite's side here.
Look at the comments from CCB here. Blaming the ticket scanning and attendees instead of themselves. Calling people ********. Unable to clearly communicate a simple definition of the word "early". With these people at the helm, this thing was ****ed since Jump Street
Look at the comments from CCB here. Blaming the ticket scanning and attendees instead of themselves. Calling people ********. Unable to clearly communicate a simple definition of the word "early". With these people at the helm, this thing was ****ed since Jump Street
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sacrelicio
Well-Known Member
Right, and they had problems, but they implemented not only the cooler rule, but they banned chairs, no longer allow ticket transferring. Cigar City seemed to have zero rules or any real foresight.
sacrelicio
Well-Known Member
My guess? They didn't test the scanning system or teach people how to use it.
nanobrew1
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Why don't they use a system where people have to present their ticket and an ID an find their name on a list. Break up people by their last names (something like 10 different lines should handle it). Then once past that area get a wrist band, a taster glass, and 3 tickets to trade in for bottles. Seems fairly straight forward if you are worried about people making copies of their tickets.
No matter what though, the idea of having everyone go in one line with only a couple scanners is the dumbest thing. Were they even checking IDs for being over 21? Their system was doomed from the beginning. With 3500 people, checking tickets and IDs, you have to imagine it will take AT LEAST 5 seconds each, that is 4.9 hours if one line. So, if you do not want people to wait forever (say less than 30 minutes) you need at minimum 10 lines. Considering they had more people than that (3000 fake tickets, yeah right) and it could easily take more than 5 seconds per person, they should they did not think about this one bit.
No matter what though, the idea of having everyone go in one line with only a couple scanners is the dumbest thing. Were they even checking IDs for being over 21? Their system was doomed from the beginning. With 3500 people, checking tickets and IDs, you have to imagine it will take AT LEAST 5 seconds each, that is 4.9 hours if one line. So, if you do not want people to wait forever (say less than 30 minutes) you need at minimum 10 lines. Considering they had more people than that (3000 fake tickets, yeah right) and it could easily take more than 5 seconds per person, they should they did not think about this one bit.
user 305169
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Bingo
daniel1
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Check out the Entry Manager page on Eventbrite's site. They have three blurbs about the software, one of which pertains to multiple entry points support. Two seconds of research and half a brain should have figured this one out.
GottaTickemAll
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Here is an article on Hunahpu's day ticket scalping written in January: http://www.tampabay.com/things-to-d...s-out-becomes-hot-ticket-for-scalpers/2163403. If a few scalpers really sold 3000 or more tickets at a rate of double to triple the price, then they made, altogether, $300000 to $450000.
Here is another article on Eventbrite scanning of tickets: http://help.eventbrite.com/customer/portal/articles/428823-iphone-for-check-in-with-entry-manager. This seems to indicate Eventbrite provides the capability to identify duplicate tickets. I'd presume this was functional that day unless there's some means of turning that off (and I have zero ****ing clue why anyone would ever do that).
Since the scanners can identify duplicate tickets, all of the nonsense from Sat. could have been avoided by using the barcode scanner the entire time rather than deciding to stop using it. If a lot of people with scalped tickets didn't get in as a result, that's their dumb fault for buying a ticket from a scalper in the first place. However, by CCB throwing out their scanning system, they themselves took full responsibility for allowing hoards of people with fake tickets into their event, and probably helped scalpers make a **** ton of money.
While I strongly disagree with them passing the blame onto their customers, and with the decision to abandon their festival, I do agree with seeing Hunaphu's get distributed. At some point, you make enough of a beer that it get's ridiculous to distribute it at a festival. They can BOTH have a festival (without the bottle release) and distribute the bottles. It's not an either/or situation.
I wish most beer releases would be kept separate from beer festivals. It's rare to not have a ******** when the two are mixed together.
Here is another article on Eventbrite scanning of tickets: http://help.eventbrite.com/customer/portal/articles/428823-iphone-for-check-in-with-entry-manager. This seems to indicate Eventbrite provides the capability to identify duplicate tickets. I'd presume this was functional that day unless there's some means of turning that off (and I have zero ****ing clue why anyone would ever do that).
Since the scanners can identify duplicate tickets, all of the nonsense from Sat. could have been avoided by using the barcode scanner the entire time rather than deciding to stop using it. If a lot of people with scalped tickets didn't get in as a result, that's their dumb fault for buying a ticket from a scalper in the first place. However, by CCB throwing out their scanning system, they themselves took full responsibility for allowing hoards of people with fake tickets into their event, and probably helped scalpers make a **** ton of money.
While I strongly disagree with them passing the blame onto their customers, and with the decision to abandon their festival, I do agree with seeing Hunaphu's get distributed. At some point, you make enough of a beer that it get's ridiculous to distribute it at a festival. They can BOTH have a festival (without the bottle release) and distribute the bottles. It's not an either/or situation.
I wish most beer releases would be kept separate from beer festivals. It's rare to not have a ******** when the two are mixed together.
JulianB1
Well-Known Member
Pretty much what I said earlier. I would GLADLY travel to go to a beer festival that has the taplist they presented this weekend, with 3500 people (Brewvival, which I've enjoyed each year I have gone, is about half as many beers for half as many attendees, and works out fine) and no bottle sale or release. Or hell, sell something interesting but not overhyped (like the non-Huna beers they had) at 1 or 2 per attendee just as an extra perk to make it that much more enjoyable. But having an event where there is a ton of great beer available AND the opportunity for the profiteers to walk off with cases of limited beer just invites the kind of ******** that presented itself. If "Huna Day" (or whatever) reappears next year with the same setup, minus bottles, and an iron-clad guarantee that the number of entries will be capped, I'd drop $100 on a ticket no problem.
GottaTickemAll
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I have an idea for a beer festival. Give out pours from an unknown number of bottles of M, Dave, Loerik, Soleil de Minuit & Yellow Bus, plus 100 other non-whale, but still good, barrel aged beers. Release bottles of Morning Delight, KBBS, BA Abraxas, and Cable Car; maybe a few T20s for good measure.
Ensure there's no line by putting a velvet rope in front of all the bottles & taps, ALL located at one table. Emphasize camping out is allowed.
I guess I could just watch Saw instead.
JulianB1
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I'd rather wait in a bread line in Soviet Russia.
GottaTickemAll
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