Louisiana Bowl Eligible, Ticket Reservations Underway

[cajun4ever]

Anybody unhappy with lower level seating that wants to trade for a better view, I have 8 in Sec.316 row 14,15 seats 10-13

PM if interested

[sdf1012]

Still waiting here. RCAF member. Emailed Matt C. Tuesday and he assured me I'll get a call in the next day or two. Well, I'm at the end of day two and still no call. Getting very disappointed. I'm thinking I'll go by tomorrow and check it out, but I'm pretty sure they'll tell me to go home and wait for the call.....It's just my luck, I always get screwed. UUGGHH!! I'm hearing some non-RCAF members have their tickets already. Sorry, this is me just venting.....

[Sir Cajun]

I heard last night from a very very reliable source last night, that 16,000 have been proccesed and there are stacks and stacks of forms left to go through.

Via Buckley and HUD's twitter feeds

20k tickets have been sold by UL
1,100 more than last year

And there's still one week to go...

[Frenchie35]

Still waiting here. RCAF member. Emailed Matt C. Tuesday and he assured me I'll get a call in the next day or two. Well, I'm at the end of day two and still no call. Getting very disappointed. I'm thinking I'll go by tomorrow and check it out, but I'm pretty sure they'll tell me to go home and wait for the call.....It's just my luck, I always get screwed. UUGGHH!! I'm hearing some non-RCAF members have their tickets already. Sorry, this is me just venting.....

Went by today, still waiting........and go home and wait for the call is what I got........maybe ticketmaster was the way to go. I filled out a form for a friend and his wife a week ago. He might get his NO Bowl 2014.

[douglas]

it does seem that the method the university is using is counter productive, you can't see the whole picture at once since the orders are sitting in stacks which would drive me nuts if I were running the show. I have to think after two seasons of this everyone in the ticket office must be saying "there has to be a better way" ala black and white infomercial cut.

My proposal with the spring semester coming, computer science students should be tasked with developing a software environment to tackle a real world problem that can then be licensed to other universities that may have the same issue. Shoot for a beta version as a graded product test it all summer with mock bowl stadiums and have it ready for next winter.

Most rcaf renewals likely take place in the first two quarters of the year so you should have a good bit of data to work with as long as you collect as much info as possible at the renewal time. If the environment is robust enough you would be able to adapt and accommodate a much more precise roll out by member level, season ticket holder, legacy etc. without a mad dash through paperwork.

I just think doing it the way we are doing it makes no one happy, including the guy charge with making over 10k phone calls and emails in a two week period

[Cajun Crusader]

Yea props Matt Casbon .. He answered my email almost immediately .. It's not his fault this crap isn't online .. I think if we finally jumped into the modern era this process would be better .. But I'm not gonna _____ h too much CAJUNS back 2 back bowls .. Woooooooooooooo

[CajunRebel]

it does seem that the method the university is using is counter productive, you can't see the whole picture at once since the orders are sitting in stacks which would drive me nuts if I were running the show. I have to think after two seasons of this everyone in the ticket office must be saying "there has to be a better way" ala black and white infomercial cut.

My proposal with the spring semester coming, computer science students should be tasked with developing a software environment to tackle a real world problem that can then be licensed to other universities that may have the same issue. Shoot for a beta version as a graded product test it all summer with mock bowl stadiums and have it ready for next winter.

Most rcaf renewals likely take place in the first two quarters of the year so you should have a good bit of data to work with as long as you collect as much info as possible at the renewal time. If the environment is robust enough you would be able to adapt and accommodate a much more precise roll out by member level, season ticket holder, legacy etc. without a mad dash through paperwork.

I just think doing it the way we are doing it makes no one happy, including the guy charge with making over 10k phone calls and emails in a two week period

It would definitely make for a great student project. But I would be very surprised if a system didn't already exist to handle this sort of thing. It's not like this is the first time in history someone had to process a large amount of tickets in a short amount of time.

It seems like they're using an analog system in a digital world.

[douglas]

im sure there are a bizzillion programs for ticketing. but a "bowl" version would be somewhat stable since none of the venues seem like they will change anytime soon. Where this project would differ is the information it is fed. Im not talking about a ticketing system, but a "how do we keep our big fish to tadpoles happy and in that order" system in a timely fashion that allows us to provide real time feedback rather than "we have a stacks". if rolled out correctly it would also allow the ticket office to actually go out and sell tickets rather than work the stacks.

[CajunRebel]

Yeah but that's kind of what I meant by ticket system. In all honesty UL could probably set something up easily through ticketmaster using the same method musicians use when offering fan club and credit card pre-sales.

For example when Justin Bieber goes to the Cajundome they'll have a presale for the fan club, a presale for Cajundome newsletter subscribers, and a presale for AMEX card holders. Each group gets their own password to buy tickets. Each group is limited to a certain number of tickets and only certain sections are open for certain people.

So if you did it this way on Monday you'd give all the $10,000 donors a password and let them buy the best tickets on Monday. On Tuesday you give all the $5,000 donors a password and let them go at it. And so on and so on until all the RCAF members have had a chance to grab what they want. Then you can finally open it up to everyone else. It's not perfect but it seems like something like that would be a better option that the current system. And most importantly it already exists and works really well.

[CajunEXPRESS]

They do not want a rational process. This is a individualized custom process taking care of the highest levels on down. Then you have in addition custom request to sit groups together.

[Sir Cajun]

Yeah but that's kind of what I meant by ticket system. In all honesty UL could probably set something up easily through ticketmaster using the same method musicians use when offering fan club and credit card pre-sales.

For example when Justin Bieber goes to the Cajundome they'll have a presale for the fan club, a presale for Cajundome newsletter subscribers, and a presale for AMEX card holders. Each group gets their own password to buy tickets. Each group is limited to a certain number of tickets and only certain sections are open for certain people.

So if you did it this way on Monday you'd give all the $10,000 donors a password and let them buy the best tickets on Monday. On Tuesday you give all the $5,000 donors a password and let them go at it. And so on and so on until all the RCAF members have had a chance to grab what they want. Then you can finally open it up to everyone else. It's not perfect but it seems like something like that would be a better option that the current system. And most importantly it already exists and works really well.

Because no one would abuse that system and give their buddies the password.....

[BrockMeaux]

Because no one would abuse that system and give their buddies the password.....

Exactly what I was about to say. It would take about 30 minutes before everybody in Lafayette had the password on Monday and it would be a total free-for-all. But I do agree with the general sentiment, we need a software-based solution for this, not the hardware "stacks of paper" solution we've been using. Although the plan with the order forms was definitely a step in the right direction this year, we've still got to be able to find a way to clean up and speed up the process a little more. Maybe it's having a large temporary staff of people dedicated to inputting those forms into the program, then having the program make robocalls asking people to press 1 if they'd like to split their orders into priority and non-priority (if they exceed their RCAF allotment) or press 2 if they'd like to forgo priority to keep the group together, and would then automatically assign seating based on donation level, because it wouldn't be hard to pre-load the software with all possible bowl stadiums and their layouts/seating, then simply selecting the stadium once the bowl's announced and specifying which sections are priority, which sections are non-priority, and which sections need to be filled and in what order. It would make another robocall or email once someone's tickets are printed letting them know that they're available for pickup. Anything we can do to remove a step for a person (sitting and making phone calls) and allow them to focus their energy on making another portion of the process go faster (stuffing and organizing envelopes of tickets) will make it go faster for everybody.