The HoldMyTicket team recently returned from Phoenix, where we had a booth at IAVM's 86th Annual VenueConnect Conference and Trade Show!

The Phoenix Convention Center

The International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) is an organization committed to the professional operation of amphitheaters, arenas, auditoriums, convention centers, exhibit halls, performing arts venues, race tracks, stadiums and university complexes. Thats a pretty wide range of operations so we were able to interact with many facets of the industry. From venue infrastructure like seating and lighting, to crowd control and ticketing, everything to do with events was represented. The HMT team arrived with our mobile box office. Our setup included ticket printers, iPod scanners, a few Mac Minis, and a bunch of monitors. We had workstations set up for patrons to demo our software, even print sample tickets. For fun we gave away HMT Ninja stickers and 'Show Me Your Barcodes' t-shirts, which were a hit!

We made some great contacts and enjoyed fraternizing with our potential clients. Being amongst the largest names in the ticketing industry was slightly nerve-racking at first, but then we realized our software is not only on par with our competition, its cutting edge and industry leading. Like our proprietary interactive seating charts which are iPad/iPhone friendly. We believe those who took the time to learn about us saw a better ticketing solution. A big thanks to everyone who took part in preparing and managing the conference! We look forward to returning for the next one. -HMT

Neon Desert Music Festival 2011 from Rodolfo Romo on Vimeo.

The team at HMT spent last weekend in downtown El Paso for the first ever Neon Desert Music Festival! Sprawled over two of El Paso?s downtown parks and seven city blocks, this full day festival featured nearly thirty musical acts spread over four stages. There were multiple art walls, excellent food vendors, and because of the title sponsor, tricked out Scion's parked randomly throughout the festival grounds.

Attendance was great, exceeding expectations. And aside from some mild wind, the weather was perfect! The vibe was one of positivity and enjoyment. The locals had a sense of gratefulness that something like this was happening, and were already looking forward to having another! It was a hit! We?re proud to say that our Apple powered mobile point-of-sale system worked flawlessly throughout the day, cranking out thousands of tickets from our trusty Boca ticket printer.

The beeping sounds of our mobile ticket scanners began at 11am, and continued throughout the day until after 10pm! Our setup included a portable 4G network, allowing our laptops and iPod based ticket scanners to share ticket sales and validation info. The doors opened at 11AM with a constant flow of festival goers, and arrivals increased steadily until they peaked around 6PM. Around peaking time we averaged over 1300 ticket scans per hour; every two seconds there was another person through the festival gates. In fact, any bottle necking was a result of security personnel using the metal detector wands.

The festival volunteers handling the iPod ticket scanners were doing so for the very first time. A quick twenty second explanation of how they work was enough, owing to the intuitive user interface of our ticket scanning app. Next door to the festival entrance was our box office setup, running an a few MacBook Pros and a Boca ticket printer, we were selling tickets for nearly twelve hours straight! People were psyched to see we were taking credit cards so they could save their cash for the vendors in the festival. Oh, and the free HMT Ninja stickers were a hit too! A big thanks to Brian, Gina, Zach and the other folks at Splendid Sun Productions for putting the festival together.

Thanks to all the volunteers and sponsors as well! We look forward to doing it again! Here's another awesome video we recently found of Neon Desert.. Enjoy

We are now offering our clients low-cost high-quality paper tickets. All tickets have valid bar codes that will tie into your event and can be validated with our barcode scanning equipment. All tickets are numbered and have a hologram.

TO ORDER TICKETS

Just login to your Spark app, and go to the Events tab, then click Ticket Orders. From there you can place ticket orders for any events and tickets that are active in your system.

GETTING YOUR PAPER TICKETS

• We will send you an invoice through email
• Tickets are $ 0.15/each + shipping
• Shipped via USPS Flat Rate Priority

Its been a week since we returned from Lake Powell, and the first annual POWELLAPALOOZA. Set amongst the red rock desert landscapes and on the lake's marinas, this festival was the beginning of something legendary. From the Solar Saucer DJ booth to the Page Shores stage built into a natural rock amphitheater, to the waterfront stage at Antelope Marina and the dune-like setting of the camping area, this experience was without compare. Have you ever seen a 40 foot giant praying mantis with flaming antennae?

There was good food, hot air balloons, house boat parties, fireworks and great people at this event. If you weren't there this year you'd better make it a point to go next year!

A special thanks to everyone who invested their time, efforts and money into making POWELLAPALOOZA happen. Based on our experience, and everyone else's feedback, this was the beginning of a great thing. And we all look forward to next year's party in the desert.

Check out the POWELLAPALOOZA Facebook page

On the day after HoldMyTicket's staff climbed to the top of Wheeler Peak (the highest mountain in New Mexico) we managed to pull ourselves together, ignore the sunburn, sore legs and go scan a few thousand tickets for fans anxiously arriving at the Taos Mountain Music Festival at Taos Ski Valley, NM. The dodgy mountain internet had some people involved worried, but it did not affect our ability to quickly scan and validate attendees with our nifty mobile box office devices. In fact, our free-standing box office validation solution just became faster, even if there is no internet available. Even the fact that many people "forgot" to print or bring their print at home tickets with them did not slow us down. Our mobile devices allowed us to quickly check IDs and get people through the gates. I can't even remember a time through out the day that we even had a line of people waiting! This year was a pleasure handling ticketing for the Taos Mountain Music Festival 2010. We want to thank everyone for their help and support! See you next year in Taos!

HoldMyTicket's app on Facebook is designed to automatically pull events from your HoldMyTicket account to your Facebook business page. Installing this app will import your public event calendar and all event info to your Facebook business page. Data that will be pulled into your Facebook page include your published event(s) name, date/time, price, description, flyer, ticket links, etc. Data on your ticket counts, revenue, site hits will not be shared.

If you have repeating events you can add them to your account as attractions. For example, you can create an attraction for a band, which includes a description, images & video. Once you've created an attraction you can add it to any event at any of your venues and the description, images and video you saved to the attraction will automatically appear in the custom event page! Take a look at the following screencast to learn about attractions.

We are now offering free mobile websites. A "mobile site" is a website that is specialized for the small screens of mobile phones like the iPhone or Blackberry. Calendars can be hard to look at on a small screen so we can direct your visitors to an optimized, smaller version of your event calendar.

Homepage screenshot - mobile site Launchpad, Albuquerque, NM www.launchpadrocks.com

**Event calendar page screenshot - mobile site

** Launchpad, Albuquerque, NM www.launchpadrocks.com !

Map page screenshot - mobile site Hi Tone, Memphis, TN www.hitonememphis.com

Check out our features page >>

Check our "Annual Report" feature in Albuquerque's Weekly Alibi >>

Welcome to HoldMyTicket's Blog, here you will find updates to our application, and news worthy posts related to Hold My Ticket. Please stay tuned for the latest. Thanks!