The First 48. Droidcon NYC Stats & Hotel Info Inside

Almost the first 48 hours.

Each year Droidcon NYC has increased in popularity, and this year is no exception. Talk submissions so far are about twice what they were in 2015 (which means probably 4x 2014, but I haven’t looked).  To improve the overall content, we’re going to figure out a way to communicate what types of topics have been submitted, and hopefully a way to get suggestions from the community.

If you’ve been at events in years past, just an fyi. In the new venue, all rooms are actually “rooms”, so we won’t have the curtain sound issues.

On the ticket sales front, the block that’s publicly for sale – we’ve crossed over 25% sold. We will likely start cutting back on the number of tickets you can buy per promo code after the long weekend to spread things around a bit, but we’ll see how it goes.

To give a little more insight into the ticket sales plan, we switched venues and are going to offer video because it matches better with what the demand seems to be.  Rather than trying to sell as many tickets as possible, we came up with a number of people who seem interested, and found that size venue.  Also, rather than 5+ different ticket tiers, timeouts, etc, there’s one “ticket”.  And fomo.  We are going to have some student, sponsor, and other ticket blocks on reserve.  If/when these aren’t sold we’ll offer them up later, but no guarantees.

To clarify for speakers, if you bought a ticket and your talk is later selected, we’ll refund your ticket.

AirBnB

There are some cool AirBnB’s if you want to group up with a few people, we’ve seen some as low as $100 per person/night.

Here’s a pre-filtered search for an entire apartment with 4 beds.

Hotels

Hotels in NYC, like most major cities, can be expensive.  This year the venue is way downtown, but accessible by a number of public transportation methods. We’re working on getting a “deal” with a hotel, but from past experience, they mostly don’t care, because it’s NYC and they will book eventually.

Some suggested options:

Near venue/no hassle plan

Best Western Seaport Inn

$249/night

http://www.seaportinn.com/

Decent spot.  9 minute walk to venue.

There are a number of places in soho and northward in that price range as well.

Don’t mind sharing bathrooms plan

There are a few hotels in NYC that have shared bathrooms but save on budget

Pod 51

$175/night

http://www.thepodhotel.com/

230 E 51st St

Commute will be somewhat longer, but its a good area to stay in.

Hotel 31

$149/night

http://www.hotel31.com/

120 E 31st St

Looks decent, but definitely in the budget range of places to stay.

Interesting commute plan

Candlewood Suites (Jersey City)

$164/night

http://www.ihg.com/candlewood/hotels/us/en/jersey-city/ewrjc/hoteldetail

21 Second Street, Jersey City, NJ

This is in NJ, but its a normal hotel room, and because of where the venue is, you can take a ferry almost directly back and forth (20-25 minutes).  If late night, Uber/Lyft is reasonable.

Bit of a hike the ferry from the hotel. I did say “interesting.”  Ferry should be nice, assuming the weather holds out.