In a fun twist the blogging on the recent Colorado Rockies ticket snafu got noticed by some folks involved at Bernstein Crisis Management PR Firm.

These folks have taken an interesting angle on blogging with regards to the immediate availability of news through the blogging community over status quo news agencies. Basically if you want to find out what is happening you might be better off doing a google or technorati search instead of just hitting the standard news channels. The reasoning is simple, with cell phone cameras (both photo and video) and sites such as youtube or personal blogs regular joes like you and me can be giving the rest of the world news faster than organized news channels. Interesting and fun for this blog to have gotten a little press so I hope you don’t mind my sharing. [Read more →]

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What is more important, land rights and an individuals right to maximize their property value or the preservation of our city landmarks? Then again, who has a right to decide what constitutes a city landmark?

This topic might get more comments than any others so in advance I’ve set up a forum discussion. The trick in the mix is that the owners have also pointed out that if the Rockies and the city advocate groups feel that strongly about preserving the views they can always buy the land away from them. That’s not such a crazy argument and I would think that if the city OR the rockies started to approach local developers they just might find some interested parties who would love the idea of developing the Coors Field lofts.

It has branding, it has some panache, it has some great possibilities (anyone out there who decides to do it give me a call :) ).

Really, just think about it. There is no need to step on property rights or to ruin the views for the stadium folks. Every challenge is an opportunity. First of all, just build the building to the maximum height that still keeps the Rockies owners and the advocate groups happy. That is still a fairly high range and I expect that several floors of condos could go in there.

Secondly, if the Rockies and their advocates are a partner in this to preserve their asset (The stadium views) they could also come up with some killer marketing idea that makes the units unique and increases the price per square foot they obtain and work to make it not just a winning move for the stadium, but also a profitable one for the group involved. What would that perk be…. who knows. What about those units carrying a 10 year season ticket package and rights to renew beyond that for each unit. What about a Rockies affiliated restaurant in the base. What about a rooftop Rockies sports lounge. Heck, you can even throw in autographed Rockie jerseys and baseballs for each owner as a welcome gift at almost no cost but a huge value.

Forget fighting about it. Someone take this bull by the horns and make it the opportunity it should be. My guess is a lower building with a Rockies tie in would sell better ane more profitably than a generic taller building that is in contention with the city. PR matters. Branding matters, and this just begs for a flip from bad to good. Let’s also get the city to do their part with a pedestrian bridge over to the stadium across the tracks from that building. There are always options to make it a home run (had to have at least one pun).

So lets do a little marketing and development feedback here on my crazy little idea. The land looks to be for sale from this info I found when I googled 2010 Delgany so this fiction can become reality. Any buyers out there?

Link to PDF of proposed change

Rocky Mountain News Article

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Here’s a pic from when everybody was still smiling. When the believers still believed. Hickenlooper is pictured here in section 156.

Ah, but no miracles last night.

The fans came with heart, so did the players, but I gotta admit I think we got out coached last night. Boston wasn’t making mistakes in a game that everyone said was going to come down to pitching. The Sox had it down to simple stupid… If they aren’t pitching well pull them. Have no hesitation, no maybes, just leave in the folks who are hot and pull those who are cold.

We couldn’t get that simple idea into our high altitude heads. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Every single person around me, in both of the past two games, could not understand why in the world we kept giving the ball to Fuentes. He was erratic as heck, slinging balls wild and walking the Sox or else pitching straight to them. This is not about picking on Fuentes. Everyone can have a good day, a bad day, a team that they can strike out and a team that licks its chomps when you hit the mound. It was clear to everyone except the coaching team that the Sox had Fuentes’ number. And sure enough, pitch one HR which could have been all the difference (don’t even get me going on game 3).

My point is… lets hope we learn from this for next year. I bought 4 season tickets on my iphone in the middle of the game last night as a show of faith. We hit the homer right after.

We didn’t follow the simple rule of “stick with what works”. The Sox pull pitchers at the first sign of a problem, the rotate back in the pitchers that work. We just didn’t learn. There also was a rumor going on that the karma was impacted by the ticket sale screw up that hit the fans in a bad way. I’m not sure I buy into that one, but then again Baseball is a superstitious sport.

But we were in the World Series. We tasted it. And we will be back again.

Go Rockies!!! Denver loves you!! Thanks for the experience and we can’t wait until next year.

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Yep, this one didn’t go quite as well.

I was on the phone with the hosting company a few times. I was hoping it wasn’t the same snafu as before and wanted to help. I started to tell them what I was experiencing and they suddenly got excited. I guess they weren’t sure where the hangup was. So I told them. I even sent them information on where the system was hanging up after they asked for my help. And it got something moving because they said it was what they needed and I got the following email back after sending the error info when I asked if my email made it to her or if it disappeared.

From: “Cheryl XXXX”
Date: October 23, 2007 12:59:23 PM MDT
Subject: RE: stop page

No, it didn’t disappear! I’m thinking you may be the “man of the hour”.

I said that was great and all, but wanted to be was the “man at the game”. I was baiting for tickets but they couldn’t do it. I understand, even if I lend a helping hand they were selling the tickets as a company and they (I found out) were not even allowed to buy tickets as individuals. But they told me some things that might block someone or mess with they system. Old cookies might need to be cleared out from when the settings were different at the beginning. Those of you with cookies from the start when the server settings were off might have had a handicap and someone who entered the rounds later might have been better off. They also mentioned something about screening IP’s to block the ticket scalpers. This worries me too since who knows how they decide what requests or IP’s to block.

For all I know, the fact that the whole office, heck the whole network of offices were trying to get tickets might have made us look like an IP to block. My guess is that there were so many mistakes made that who knows what might have thrown a request out. I heard sad stories about my friends mom making it to the booking screen only to have the system time out and bomb in processing (no happy ending, the tickets weren’t purchased) and many others of the same.

But the saddest was the stories I heard about folks who have NO PLAN TO GO TO THE GAME. Scalpers, profiteers, bad guys who were grabbing tickets only to resell them. No Rockies fans, no loyalty. Bleah! And my worry is that all the safeguards that were put into place to block these guys also slowed the system down and it was the regular folks, on their slow connections, with slow computers and no knowledge of how to “clear cookies” or the like who ultimately got denied. It sucks.

And yes, I am bitter. I just jumped on stubhub.com and bought two tickets to game 4 at an exponentially inflated price. Why? It might be a once in a lifetime experience. And because I believe. I got all my other seats at face value, maybe I’ll just rationalize out that this puts me at a slightly higher average.

For the record. I bought 4 seats to all the other national and division games and went to each and every one. I took people I know, and anyone who joined me just paid the face cost. That is how it should be.

I am always looking for a new business idea and I think I just found it. I don’t know what I’ll call it, maybe www.loyaltytickets.com, but perhaps my own ticket system that helps the loyal fans get their tickets first.

Ho Hum, drat and Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbtttt to the whole system. Maybe next time use Ticketmaster, as the Rockies are the only professional team here in Denver I heard who doesn’t use them. Now maybe they’ll know why.

Share your experience here and let me know if you gave up to watch at home or if you bought in the secondary market and for how much (and what section). This photo does not represent the section I bought in, I was more around the $900 a ticket range (OUCH). I had some $499 per tickets in the Rockpile but they were gone by the time I clicked through. Already the section I bought in (Pavilion) is jumping above this but who knows.

Go Rockies!!

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Ow…. I am feeling Déjà vu

Still no tickets, and online since before noon. I checked in with the folks doing the hosting and at first they said all things were good.

That soon must have changed because then I encountered long ring cycles and voice mail. I feel sorry for these guys if they have problems two days in a row.

Finally, I get through again and I am told the IT team dead some modifications in the last 90 seconds and to logout and try again. Heck, I’ll try anything.

Either way, I keep getting caught up at ev3.evenue.net which should be the main booking engine. And it just sits, and sits, and sits.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Give me some feedback as to what you all are experiencing or think. But look at it this way, if they sell 80 tickets a day there will be plenty left to buy at the stadium on game day.

**** By the way, I just heard from a someone who had 15 computers going that they did get in (Time 12:44 PM). So we have no choice but keep trying.

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If you don’t want to wait until 5 PM here is the scoop on what I heard is happening.

I was told I can walk away from my computer screen, go grab a shower, and relax for at least the rest of the evening. No more ticket sales this afternoon, or this evening. At the earliest it will be tomorrow. I still recommend you wait until 5 PM to hear the official release but that is the unofficial official scoop.

As you can tell, I am pretty excited about the opportunity to go to see the Rockies play in the World Series. [Read more →]

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Make sure to check out my previous post for the history on this one…

They are calling it quits, throwing in the towel, regrouping… whatever you want to call it. I just talked again with the hosting company and the official unofficial is that they have cancelled the online sales for now. And there will be NO SALES AT THE STADIUM. They are going to regroup and reschedule and it will likely be tomorrow. I asked her what she thought because rumors are that it might be later today but my source was guessing tomorrow.

Guess that brings this little episode to a wrap. But I am a bit too scared to step back and risk it in case it opens up again later this afternoon.

I just checked with the nice lady at the hosting company and she said there were two bits of good news..

ONLY 80 TICKETS WERE SOLD ONLINE… So that means tons of tickets remain.

Here other bit of good news was that no stadium sales were to be done. I don’t know if that is good or bad news until I see if I get tickets. Lets all keep our fingers crossed.

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Like all of you, I am sitting with two computers cranking away trying to get Rockies Tickets. No site is responding and everything is frozen. I started freaking out and thinking that there was no way any tickets would be left but then I noticed that everyone around me was also caught up with nothing responding… so I decided to do some research.

First I tried to call the Rockies office, but no one answered.

Then I tried to pull up evenue.net, but the site didn’t respond. evenue.net looks to be the folks who are handling the sale of tickets for the rockies.

Then I went to Network Solutions and did a whois on the domain owner of evenue.net…. and found them with a front desk number. So I of course called the company to see if I could find out the scoop. The very nice lady who was answering phones caught on to what I was up to right away as she asked “are you calling about Rockies tickets”. “Yes” I replied. So she gave me the scoop.

They are having issues, big issues, on the hosting side with their ISP. Whatever is going on, they can’t resolve traffic between their servers and the outside ISP’s. They have contacted their ISP and are hoping for some resolution soon. They don’t know if it is something really big or something really easy to fix, but either way they are dead in the water and the update they gave me is that fewer than 100 tickets have been sold so far. She said the IT guys just were not expecting this mass amount of response and they whole system is overwhelmed.

Well duh, what did they think would happen. Someone is going to get a little dose of reality about this whole thing.

I heard that Rockies.com did an interview where they said it was all going okay. Don’t believe it, they are still down. I hope you all get tickets, just not mine. :)

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There were no fair weather fans out last night as the Rockies secured their third win against the Dbacks. And there was no fair weather. The rain just kept falling. No big drops, no downpours. Just a steady drizzle soaking everyone.

But it didn’t matter. On their feet, cheering every play, screaming with joy when the Rockies scored in the 6th to break the tie and put the Rockies up 4-1 the fans didn’t even pay attention to the rain.

I was down in section 117 with a great shot on the 1st base line. We hunkered down in our sweatshirts, rain gear, poncho wrapped around our legs, ball caps protecting our faces and dripping water in front of our eyes. The lights were illuminating the shower overhead and created a surreal effect over the players. Fingers pruned, voices hoarse from cheering, and cold beers in our cold hands we loved every minute. And a little secret for future cold games, if you go up top they make hot chocolate with schnapps…. perfect for this kind of night.

Something about this game was different. Maybe it was enduring the rain. Maybe it was everyone sharing the experience. But it felt like we had jumped back in time somehow. The respect for the game, for the team, was just amazing.

I hope many of you got a chance to be at the game tonight. I’ll be there tonight, cheering for our Rockies, enjoying the game. Just one more for the worlds series.

Awesome!

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Filming might start as soon as tomorrow within the plaza at Riverfront Park. Everything is being kept under wraps as far as specifics on when Mr. Eddie Murphy will make his appearance but the set up looks to be close with lights and staging going in place today.

Here is the scoop from cbs4denver.com

(CBS4) DENVER The crew shooting Eddie Murphy’s new movie “Nowhereland” began filming Monday and the producer said filming in Denver is scheduled for 10 working days.

The movie tells a story of a busy father trying to connect with his daughter through her imaginary world, Nowhereland. The decision to set the film in Denver was based on aspects of the script.

“The writer had several choices,” said producer Lorenzo diBonaventura. “We had western motifs in our story and we decided Denver was the perfect city for us.”

Certain aspects of the characters also made the producers want to set the film in Denver.

The 10 days of filming will be mainly exteriors so that the movie will really have the feel of Denver and so far, the producers and crew have loved the experience.

“It’s a great town and what is nice for us is that has been under-utilized on film, so every place is a pretty fresh place to put a camera and as filmmakers, that’s exciting,” diBonaventura said.

“One of the great things is how welcoming everybody has been,” he said. “As filmmakers, that makes you feel really good because we are moving pretty fast and hard. If the people embrace you, it makes it easier for us, frankly, and makes you want to come back.”

Murphy stars as the father in the film. Newcomer Yara Shahidi stars as his daughter and Thomas Haden Church plays the other major role.

“Nowhereland” is currently slated to be released Sept. 26, 2008.

Pretty cool! The plaza will be famous again.

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