Gore sells out 10,000 seats
It was one thing when 1,200 tickets for Al Gore's January 22 speech at Boise State University sold out last week in 10 minutes. It's another thing entirely when 10,000 seats in Taco Bell Arena are snapped up in less than five hours. That's what happened today. "I understand the tickets went faster for this than for the Elton John concert," says Garry Wenske, director of the Frank Church Institute, which is bringing in Gore to keynote its "Global Warming: Beyond the Inconvenient Truth" conference this month. The institute held back 2,000 tickets for Boise State students who are still on winter break; those will be available to out-of-town students when they return to campus next week.
Wenske says the interest in Gore and his message seems genuinely nonpartisan. "When you think about global warming, it transcends everything people do," he notes, though he added that people also seem to be responding to how Gore has taken the issue "and made it his own."
It'll be interesting to see whether people will also pack the main conference sessions, which will run from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Student Union Jordan Ballroom (the original site for Gore's evening address). Wenske says the morning programs will focus on policy solutions to global warming, while the afternoon sessions will look at practices, including what some local companies are doing to develop and implement energy-saving solutions. "We'll bring it down to what people are doing in Idaho," Wenske adds.
The conference luncheon, set for noon in the ballroom, also is sold out. Gore won't be attending that.
Whoohoo! Can you believe it...in Idaho? I was able to grab two before they were all snatched up.
Posted by: MountainGoat | January 09, 2007 at 05:41 PM
Hmm... I tried (in trying to work on my New Year's resolution!) to trackback-ping this; Serendipity said it worked, but I don't see one (unless there's approval required)?
At any rate, my post on the subject is linked in my username....
Posted by: The Nickel-Plated JA | January 09, 2007 at 09:20 PM
Awesome.
Posted by: sharon fisher | January 09, 2007 at 11:09 PM
NPJA, the trackback worked. Heading over to comment ...
Posted by: Julie Fanselow | January 10, 2007 at 08:43 AM
P.S. If anyone has an extra ticket, let me know. I want to take my daughter. (I bought a reserved seat last week and thought I had PLENTY of time to get another ticket before the 22nd. Ha!!)
Posted by: Julie Fanselow | January 10, 2007 at 08:44 AM