The Church has a small issue with conference tickets that I believe they are trying to work out. The organizers of conference do not want just anyone getting tickets to conference because those tickets could wind up in the hands of antagonistic individuals who will try to disrupt the meeting. The perfect system, as it has been laid out, is that tickets are sent to Bishops, Stake, District, and Branch presidents around the world. Those tickets are then given to individuals in the church units who come to conference. Of course, not every ticket will be used, so there is a stand-by line where those that have come in hopes of getting in without tickets can wait and fill the empty seats. The stand-by line passes through security where there are church employees/volunteers who look at those coming in to make sure they are not known protesters. It seems like a perfect system, but with one small problem. The incentive to use tickets. If a ward unit is given ten tickets to conference, there is incentive to make sure that all ten get used. If not, this information is used to calculate the number of tickets that will be distributed to the ward at the next conference. If a ward in Washington state is only going to be using an average of 3 tickets each conference, let's only send them three. If another ward in California is going to be using 15, let's send them 15. Send the number of tickets the ward needs. This seems to be reasonable, but it provides incentive to make sure that every ticket gets used because even if a ward is not going to use a ticket, they might want the same number next conference, so they better make sure that it gets used. This leads to ticket exchanges (I don't want to refer to it as scalping). People holding signs in front of the conference center asking for extra tickets and people with extra tickets anxious to make sure the tickets get used. I am one of those that has been able to get into any session I've wanted to because I'm willing to beg for tickets. I've only had one person ever tell me that they would not give up their extra ticket. There's just too much incentive for everyone else to make sure that the tickets get used even though the Church would prefer that we all use the system, that of getting tickets from priesthood leaders or waiting in the stand-by line. The incentive to use the extra tickets is a guaranteed seat in the conference center. We have a tendency to believe that stating the Church's system is enough incentive for members to submit. That, however, isn't the case. So, I propose a solution. If each church unit had it's own bar code that could be reproduced as many times as desired, those coming in standby line could request copies of the bar code from their Bishop or Branch President and be scanned as they went in. These scans could then be taken into consideration when tickets were distributed for the next conference. This creates an incentive to using the standby line. There is still the incentive to beg for tickets, that of getting a guaranteed seat. But it might not be enough to outweigh the incentive of possibly more tickets in the future. And I imagine that priesthood leaders, upon learning of someone's upcoming trip to conference, would encourage everyone to use the unit's bar code. So, we just need to switch the incentives. Give people incentive to wait in the standby line. It always comes down to incentives.

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