Most of us have had to stand in a long will-call line to pick up tickets. We probably even paid a ticket "service fee" for the privilege. Some places are helping by having online printable tickets with a bar code. However, that requires that they have networked bar code readers at the gate which can detect things like duplicate bar codes, and people seem to rather have giant lines and many staff rather than get such machines.

Can we do it better?

Well, for starters, it would be nice if tickets could be sent not as a printable bar code, but as a message to my cell phone. Perhaps a text message with coded string, which I could then display to a camera which does OCR of it. Same as a bar code, but I can actually get it while I am on the road and don't have a printer. And I'm less likely to forget it.

Or let's go a bit further and have a downloadable ticket application on the phone. The ticket application would use bluetooth and a deliberately short range reader. I would go up to the reader, and push a button on the cell phone, and it would talk over bluetooth with the ticket scanner and authenticate the use of my ticket. The scanner would then show a symbol or colour and my phone would show that symbol/colour to confirm to the gate staff that it was my phone that synced. (Otherwise it might have been the guy in line behind me.) The scanner would be just an ordinary laptop with bluetooth. You might be able to get away with just one (saving the need for networking) because it would be very fast. People would just walk by holding up their phones, and the gatekeeper would look at the screen of the laptop (hidden) and the screen of the phone, and as long as they matched wave through the number of people it shows on the laptop screen.

Alternately you could put the bluetooth antenna in a little faraday box to be sure it doesn't talk to any other phone but the one in the box. Put phone in box, light goes on, take phone out and proceed.

Photo will-call

One reason many will-calls are slow is they ask you to show ID, often your photo-ID or the credit card used to purchase the item. But here's an interesting idea. When I purchase the ticket online, let me offer an image file with a photo. It could be my photo, or it could be the photo of the person I am buying the tickets for. It could be 3 photos if any one of those 3 people can pick up the ticket. You do not need to provide your real name, just the photo. The will call system would then inkjet print the photos on the outside of the envelope containing your tickets.

You do need some form of name or code, so the agent can find the envelope, or type the name in the computer to see the records. When the agent gets the envelope, identification will be easy. Look at the photo on the envelope, and see if it's the person at the ticket window. If so, hand it over, and you're done! No need to get out cards or hand them back and forth.

A great company to implement this would be paypal. I could pay with paypal, not revealing my name (just an E-mail address) and paypal could have a photo stored, and forward it on to the ticket seller if I check the box to do this. The ticket seller never knows my name, just my picture. You may think it's scary for people to get your picture, but in fact it's scarier to give them your name. They can collect and share data with you under your name. Your picture is not very useful for this, at least not yet, and if you like you can use one of many different pictures each time -- you can't keep using different names if you need to show ID.

This could still be done with credit cards. Many credit cards offer a "virtual credit card number" system which will generate one-time card numbers for online transactions. They could set these up so you don't have to offer a real name or address, just the photo. When picking up the item, all you need is your face.

This doesn't work if it's an over-21 venue, alas. They still want photo ID, but they only need to look at it, they don't have to record the name.

It would be more interesting if one could design a system so that people can find their own ticket envelopes. The guard would let you into the room with the ticket envelopes, and let you find yours, and then you can leave by showing your face is on the envelope. The problem is, what if you also palmed somebody else's envelope and then claimed yours, or said you couldn't find yours? That needs a pretty watchful guard which doesn't really save on staff as we're hoping. It might be possible to have the tickets in a series of closed boxes. You know your box number (it was given to you, or you selected it in advance) so you get your box and bring it to the gate person, who opens it and pulls out your ticket for you, confirming your face. Then the box is closed and returned. Make opening the boxes very noisy.

I also thought that for Burning Man, which apparently had a will-call problem this year, you could just require all people fetching their ticket be naked. For those not willing, they could do regular will-call where the ticket agent finds the envelope. :-)

I've noted before that, absent the need of the TSA to know all our names, this is how boarding passes should work. You buy a ticket, provide a photo of the person who is to fly, and the gate agent just looks to see if the face on the screen is the person flying, no need to get out ID, or tell the airline your name.