Dear Burning Flipside community–
As many of you know, in order to hold an event with 2500 people or more, the event organizers need to apply for and receive a mass-gathering permit from the host county. Austin Artistic Reconstruction, LLC sought and was granted a mass-gathering permit for the first time in 2013, and again in 2014.
We are pleased to report that we have been granted a permit again for the 2015 event. This represents the hard work of many volunteers going back years, and is made possible by the positive working relationship that the organization enjoys with county officials and the site’s landowner.
Each year that we go through the permitting process, we get better at it, and this is the first year we have been able to secure the permit before ticket-request opening. This should make the ticketing process smoother and clearer for everyone, not least your hard-working ticket team.
While this permit does give the event the opportunity to grow, AAR, LLC will continue to manage growth responsibly, within the limits imposed by the site, volunteer capacity, and common sense.
About ticket lotteries
For the past few years, Flipside has held a ticket-deselection lottery. The first year we held a lottery was because we were not seeking a mass-gathering permit yet, and needed to keep the event population under 2500. In 2013 and 2014 the total number of requests received was below our self-imposed cap, but above the 2500 MGP limit. But the situation has been more complicated: we did not receive the permit until after ticket requests were processed. In 2013, hundreds of requests were pulled in the lottery to bring our numbers below 2500. In 2014, we held what we called a “soft lottery”: We held a lottery to bring the number of accepted requests below 2500, but gave the people picked in that lottery the option for their requests to be held until we had a decision on the MGP. In the end, we were able to fill all those requests, and had more tickets to sell even above that point.
As of this writing, we don’t know how many ticket requests we will receive in the mail. If that number puts us above our self-imposed cap, we will need to have a lottery, regardless of the MGP. If that number falls short of our cap, we may have a bonus-round ticket sale. We’ll know more by Monday, Feb 23.
Even if, for whatever reason, you didn’t get a ticket but want to go to Flipside, there is always a lively secondary market, right up to (and even after) the last minute. If you plan on going to Flipside, plan on going to Flipside. Volunteering is a great way to meet other participants who might know about tickets coming available.