If you were one of the thousands of disappointed developers who didn’t manage to get a ticket when registration opened for Google I/O 2011, there’s good news for Google I/O 2012 - it will be harder to get into so you’ve got more of a chance!

According to the Google Code blog, Google has received an ‘unexpected opportunity’ to extend Google I/O to three days, and to move the conference to June 27-29, 2012. It will still take place at Moscone Center West in San Francisco.

When the registration for I/O 2011 opened, the tickets sold out in 59 minutes, and the servers crashed under the load of would-be applications. Partially in view of this, next year’s event will be harder to get into. According to Monica Tran of the Google I/O Team in the blog post:

Be sure to brush up on your coding skills. They’ll come in handy when the new application process opens in February. That’s all we can tell you for now, but we’d advise against making travel arrangements until then.

So it looks as though you’ll have to prove you can code to qualify for registration. If you’re wondering just what this means, it’s not completely clear, but according to a response to a question about it on the Google Developers Page on Google+:

The application process will test general programming skills, as opposed to product-specific knowledge. We're designing it so that every developer is given a fair shot at attending Google I/O, but don't expect it to be as involved as last year's Last Call for Google I/O...how's that for a hint?

Google says that lengthening and rescheduling the event means attendees will have more time to attend sessions, visit partners in the Developer Sandbox, and meet with the engineers behind developer platforms and APIs. There is a link where you can tell Google what you'd like to see happen in the extended session, but when we tried clicking on it we got the message that the form was no longer accepting input - another victim of it’s own success?

You can try for yourself here.

If you’d like to attend next year’s conference, it’s definitely worth following googleio on Twitter (@googleio); it was when the tweet went out announcing that registration was open that the rush to register started last year.

The blog also suggests following the team on the Google Developers page on Google+.

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