Email delivery company SendGrid has fired developer evangelist Adria Richards (pictured above) after she outed a developer who was allegedly making sexual jokes during a conference, via Twitter.

The developer in question was fired by his employer, PlayHaven, after Richards posted his picture and a few details about what he said. VentureBeat broke the story last night.

Full story: PlayHaven developer fired for sexual jokes after SendGrid marketer outs him on Twitter

Follow-up: SendGrid is now under DDOS attack

And the latest: Adria Richards’ statement

The company made a statement on its Facebook account:

Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.

At first there was some concern that, although this was showing up on SendGrid’s Facebook account, the company may have had its social media accounts hacked.. SendGrid was under DDOS attack , which means that some fairly sophisticated hackers are focused on the company, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they had cracked into SendGrid’s social media accounts.

However, SendGrid has also confirmed the firing on Twitter:

Effective immediately, @adriarichards has been terminated from @sendgrid. For more details, please see ow.ly/jhW0y

— SendGrid (@SendGrid) March 21, 2013

And late on March 21, the company confirmed the termination on its blog:

On Sunday at PyCon, Adria Richards felt comments made behind her during a conference session were inappropriate and of an offensive, sexual nature. We understand that Adria believed the conduct to be inappropriate and support her right to report the incident to PyCon personnel. To be clear, SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs.

What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders – and bystanders – was not the appropriate way to handle the situation. Even PyCon has since updated their Code of Conduct due to this situation. Needless to say, a heated public debate ensued. The discourse, productive at times, quickly spiraled into extreme vitriol.

A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid.

In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.

This is a fairly shocking move. While on the one hand there is legitimate concern over the public outing of a developer for what even by Richards’ account are fairly innocuous jokes, there’s also a long-standing boys-club atmosphere around the tech world that lends itself to certain kinds of salty, crude, and sometimes inappropriate behavior, and it’s not hard to imagine that Richards finally felt like she needed to take a stand.

On the other hand, her job at SendGrid is developer relations.

Like it or not, reality is that developers are mostly male, often young, and sometimes crude. And they have reacted with startling vigor and venom at one of their own being fired for comments about dongles and forking — some veering way into crazy criminal territory and issuing rape and death threats.

It’s easy to see that the company may believe Richards will have a difficult time doing her job after this. And it’s also easy to see that they may see this as a quick fix for the DDOS’ing attacks on the company’s website and services. But the easiest thing of all to see is that there may be multiple lawsuits about this entire issue before we’re done.

The Facebook post has some of the best commentary on this issue: everyone’s losing.

From David Doran:

I wonder if this is legit. If so, this is one hell of a mess. Everyone’s going to lose here: SendGrid, Adria, the community, the “jokers”.

And from Jason DePriest:

The dude shouldn’t have been fired and neither should Adria. Thanks American Corporations for shitting all over employees. Maybe the two comapanies should just swap employees instead of putting two people out of work during a recession.

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That’s just one of the questions I had for Roman Tsunder, founder and spiritual leader of the TED of the marketing world: PTTOW. Pronounced just the way it’s spelled, PTTOW brings together the people and the companies who are shaping our digitized, commercialized, and sometimes commoditized culture, for good.

Our youth culture, that is.

“Sixty percent of the world is under the age of 30,” Tsunder says. “In the Middle East, that’s up to 70 percent, hence the revolutions. What I want to do is bring together the leaders of every major industry whose customers are between 17-30 … to talk about their most inspiring projects.”

That vision has produced events where Activision and the State Department, QuikSilver and the Gates Foundation rub shoulders with music industry giants. And where beauty and fashion — Diane von Furstenberg — meet brains and technology: Google Glass.

Source: SMH

Google Glass on the runway

“Who would have thought of that kind of partnership?” Tsunder marvels. Von Furstenberg famously featured Google’s augmented reality Glass project on the fashion runway last year. “We want to inspire things that have never been done before.”

PTTOW brings together an invite-only list of corporate bigwigs — you have to be at least a VP at a major international corporation or a C-level exec at a media company to attend — with artists, athletes, and other shapers of youth culture to come together, create community, inspire each other, and win.

The conference has inspired partnerships between notables like Elon Musk of Tesla and Virgin Atlantic. Skull Candy and Spotify started working together at PTTOW. And the U.S. state department partnered with QuikSilver to send cultural attachés — aka skateboarders — to Eastern Europe. In other words: wild and wacky and wonderful partnerships that, maybe, couldn’t have happened anywhere else.

Will.i.am will be a prominent guest at the upcoming PTTOW in May, and he’ll be talking about causes, culture, and media.

“We honor certain icons,” Tsunder says,”and his passion for science and math and technology is really quite awe-inspiring.”

Four years ago, the invite-only event was 25 people. Bob McKnight, the CEO of QuikSilver, was an early believer who attended at the first conference. Today, the event brings together hundreds of Davos-level people: a few dignitaries, some artists, and the high-level corporate executives for whom this is perhaps their only professional development event of the year.

It’s professional development because each can wow others with tales of where they win. Furstenberg learns from Red Bull how they get 10 million viral views on YouTube. Google learns from Furstenberg how fashion and life mingle. Virgin Atlantic sees what Elon Musk is doing in space, and Virgin Galactic is born. Each inspires the others.

“We want to inspire the best marketers in the world,” Tsunder told me. “That’s our biggest aspiration.”

Oh, and the Dalai Lama?

Like everything else — and everything that happens at PTTOW — it’s about relationships. And, critically, about not being afraid to ask.

I talked to Tsunder how he managed to get the Dalai Lama, a foreign head of state, to attend his conference focused on youth and marketing. It’s the first and only time the Dalai Lama has ever spoken a media and marketing group.

“Well, you become friends with his emissary for peace,” Tsunder answered. “I was introduced to Lama Tenzin and we were having lunch, and he said the Dalai Lama speaks to young people all the time. I said, ‘I’m sure it’s impossible, but would he be willing to speak to the leaders of companies whose audience and fans are young people, and inspire them to be more thoughtful about peace and harmony?’”

Lama Tenzin meditated on it, and the Dalai Lama meditated on it. And Tsunder got a phone call, saying that what he was trying to do was a great thing, and the Dalai Lama would like to support it.

Which is how you get the Dalai Lama to speak at your conference.

photo credit: Akbar Sim (NO TIME TO COMMENT) via photopin, kk+ via photopin cc

The Apple CEO has a lot to say to investors. His company’s stock has been ravaged by Wall Street in the past year, causing the company’s valuation to drop over $200 billion in the last half-year. Revenue in a record first quarter of almost $55 billion and profit of $13.1 billion didn’t make Wall Street happy, and Apple stock has continued to sag in 2013.

Source: Google Finance

Apple stock in the last six months

Cook started out with a bang, responding to questions about Apple’s cash stash and suggestions that Apple has a “depression-era” mentality, hoarding cash under its mattress.

Also see Tim Cook: “Apple is the center of innovation”

“Apple makes bold and ambitious bets on products, and we’re conservative financially,” Cook disagreed. “And last year, we invested 10B in CapEx, we think we’ll do similar this year … I don’t think those are the actions of a depression-era mentality.”

He did admit: ”We do have some cash.”

Apple has about $137 billion in cash on hand, and has committed to returning $45 billion of that to shareholders over the next few years.

On the topic of investor David Einhorn’s hedge fund Green Light Capital’s lawsuit, which aims to prevent Apple from removing preferred shares, Cook was straightforward, calling the lawsuit a “silly sideshow,” adding that Apple would go to shareholders before making any changes.

See also: No cheap iPhone: Apple’s religion is ‘we must do something great’

“Frankly, I find it bizarre that we would be sued for doing something that’s good for shareholders,” he said, adding that the lawsuit itself was a waste of shareholder money.

On acquisitions?

In what might be a surprising answer even for long-term Apple followers, Cook said that over the last three years, Apple has averaged an acquisition about every other month. And, also surprisingly, Apple has looked at large acquisitions.

“In the case of large acquisitions, we have looked at large companies,” Cook said. “In each case we’ve done that thus far, it didn’t pass our test. We’re disciplined and thoughtful … and we don’t feel a pressure to go out and just acquire revenue.”

After speaking about Apple’s retail stores adding 30 new locations in 2013 and commenting on cheap iPhone rumors, Cook ended his time by gently but firmly responding to Apple critics, many of whom wear ties, use cufflinks, and trade stocks daily.

“We don’t care if people are lobbing grenades from the sidelines,” Cook said.

Rather, Cook plans to stay the course and continue what Apple is doing best, which Cook feels is “pretty incredible.”

Image credit: Dean Takahashi

Like Emperor Julius Caesar, BritRuby was brought down by white males and the Ides of March.

Scheduled for March 15 and 16th of 2013, this event which planned to bring together members of the global Ruby on Rails community for a summit in Manchester, England , is now canceled.

The intent was to hold a two-day conference with 500 developers and 20 speakers. A post on the company’s web page announcing the cancellation focuses on making apologies, rather than the details of the decision, and makes a few vague references to issues of race and gender equality.

“The Ruby community has been battling with issues of race and gender equality,” the post said .”We at BritRuby were well aware of this fundamental and important issue. This was one of the reasons why we encouraged everyone to submit a speaker proposal. Sadly, BritRuby was used as the arena to air these issues on Twitter and this has fundamentally destroyed any chance we had of addressing these issues. Instead the community should have worked together and allowed us to bring these issues to light at the conference. How can the community address these issues if every time someone tries they are shot down and accused of such awful things?”

A foray into the Twitter-verse revealed negative commentary because the speaker line up was entirely comprised of white males. The organizational team responded to these comments by saying they could not find qualified speakers outside the realm of white male. Debate ensued surrounding issues of discrimination, sexism and racism in the technology community, and whether it is better to have a “token female” or people without strong English abilities speaker, simply to diversify the attendees.

The decision to cancel the entire event seems dramatic, considering it its based primarily on a few negative tweets. Now, no-one of any background will be able to benefit from the events’ intention, which was to “to encourage Ruby developers to unite and create a community, which would allow such to network, exchange ideas and provoke innovation for the future of Ruby. We wanted to encourage jobs and allow companies the opportunity to meet the community and primarily boost the UK developer industry.”

It is quite a blow, for a startup economy that is just starting to take off. Perhaps the founders of BritRuby should pivot and hold an all-female hackathon. Than for BritRuby 2014, they may have a better chance.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Dreamforce is typically a spectacle and a whole lotta fun, but this year it was bigger than ever before.

Salesforce.com claims that its annual San Francisco-based conference is the largest cloud computing event of the year. With over 60,000 people in attendance this year, this may well be true. The majority popped in and out of the event, and were primarily interested in listening in to the keynote addresses by Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson. Another highlight for ticket-holders was the performance by aging rockers, The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Attendees will have noticed a number of new faces. Salesforce.com has been on an acquisition spree this year, buying up five companies including social media marketing company, Buddy Media, and most recently, co-browsing startup, GoInstant. These execs brought into the company through acquisitions were given a starring role at the conference.

A number of new products were announced at Dreamforce, including Salesforce Touch, Marketing Cloud, Chatterbox and so on. To read more about the announcements, read our coverage here.

If you weren’t lucky enough to attend or you’re eager to relive those glory moments, check out our photo gallery.

[Photo credits: Dean Takahashi and Christina Farr]

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

SAN FRANCISCO — “Are you pumped up and ready to go? We are here to excite you!” Marc Benioff addressed a screaming crowd at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this morning, after an opening performance by rapper MC Hammer.

It’s hard to believe this is a vendor-led cloud computing conference. The outspoken Salesforce took the stage for his keynote address at Dreamforce 2012 with one clear message: A “social revolution” is taking place, and his company wants to be the driving force behind it.

The social revolution

Benioff claimed that in the evolution of computing, entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Jack Dorsey have ushered trends like cloud and mobile, which have led to a shift to social business. He later claimed that the social revolution is a “trust revolution.” Not sure I buy it, but his overarching point is that customer satisfaction is becoming a central concern for enterprise startups. Why? Because social media has given them a voice.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Blue Jeans Network, the company that offers super-simple video conferences in the browser, is announcing the first-ever videoconferencing integration with Salesforce.com.

The company, which we covered back in June, was also the first to allow videoconference participants to join conferences originating on legacy videoconferencing equipment simply from a common web browser. Now Salesforce.com clients will be able to initiate or join video conferences without leaving their SalesForce application.

Source: Blue Jeans Network

Blue Jeans’ video conferencing in a browser

Video conferencing is a hot and rapidly-evolving space. Vidyo, the company that supplies the technology for Google+ Hangouts, recently revealed VidyoWay, its solution for seamlessly connecting multiple video endpoints, each with potentially different video conferencing solutions. And industry heavyweights such as Polycom are releasing new products and services to compete with the startups.

Blue Jeans has pinned its competitive differentiation on dead-simple implementation, integration, and use. If you have a web browser, you can use Blue Jeans. That simplicity overlays significant technical complexity, as chief executive Krish Ramakrishnan alluded to in a statement:

“We are the first and only company in the world today that can conduct a single video meeting using endpoints as disparate as Cisco, Polycom, LifeSize, Skype, Microsoft Lync, Google, and even a browser.”

Blue Jeans said it will demonstrate the new technology at DreamForce 2012, the annual Salesforce.com conference.

photo credit: FaceMePLS via photo pin cc

Teens in Tech, an annual conference in Silicon Valley, celebrates the elite and high-powered designers and programmers in the industry that are too young to swig a beer.

They may be college dropouts with dimples, and they certainly say the word “awesome” a lot, but these teens are a force to be reckoned with. At an age where most of us are still taking AP classes, these kids were hustling products, snagging meetings with investors, and teaching themselves to build mobile apps.

We’re at Xerox PARC, a famed research and innovation hub a stone’s throw from Sand Hill Road, and these teen mavericks have some wisdom to pass on. Listen up, kids.

Gumroad’s founder and CEO, 19-year-old Sahil Lavingia

On startups: “Before you start something, ask yourself: Could you see yourself working on this ten years from now?”

On raising funding: “Raise money when you don’t need to. I put my first million dollars in the bank, moved to San Francisco and got a loft. Use the money to build things that are difficult and valuable, and help you build focus.” 

On building companies: I think products keep me alive. Ask yourself “why” before you starting something? My “why”? I want to build products. I think a song is a product. A product is a way to outlive yourself. 

Kiip’s 20-year-old head product designer, Adam Debreczeni

On networking: Even if you’re 16-years-old, go out and email people. I would never have had opportunities if I hadn’t. Just reach out to talented people, especially if they’re not famous yet. Talk to me now! I don’t have an entourage. But have your parents spell-check your emails first!

On startups or school?: For the four years you’re in school, your job is to become a better person. Don’t rob yourself of that experience.

Read more here about Peter Thiel’s $100,000 fellowship for talented teens to drop out of school. 

On playing tough: It is weird being on the phone with the VP of Marketing at Disney when you’re 19-years-old. There are benefits though. This girl I was crushing on in college was into One Direction. So I got some props from her when I did some design work for them.

On delegating and designing: People are going to criticize you, so stop googling yourself! Instead, if you’re really stoked about your work, make sure you show it off. Put your work on Dribbble, it will push you to become a better designer.

Alexander Bass, lead designer, ONE inc. / teen star of “That’s so Raven” 

On snagging opportunities: I met my cofounders going down in the elevator, and we talked about design. Cory and Michael said, we like you. … Go home, check your email, and we’ll make you an offer. It was that easy.”

On Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley: Acting … it’s not a burning love like I have for design and products. But if you’re on TV, they’ll listen to you more. I have learned to accept rejection, be humble, and work with people. In design, you also have to remove yourself from the process and do what’s necessary. I don’t get mad or take something personally. I think the creative process is similar. 

Mark Daniel, 18-year-old CEO of GoalHawk 

On making the move to Silicon Valley from Nashville: I always had this incredible ambition and wanted to make products that impact people on a real level. I also hope that one day I won’t have to worry about money. Growing up, my dad has always had a six-figure corporate job, but we were over-extended and in 2009, we lost everything.  

The collegiate route or the startup?: I’m going to Babson College. It makes sense for me to do both, unless my startup takes off. If it doesn’t work out, I really don’t want to be left in a vulnerable spot.

Advice to fellow entrepreneurs: If you try to do everything, you’re destined for nothing. Stay humble. There’s an infinite amount to learn from every single person. 

Images courtesy of Michael O’Donnell (@Photo) 

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Appcelerator, maker of mobile development tool Titanium, is gearing up for Codestrong, its big code conference and hackathon set to take place in San Francisco this October.

In just three months, more than 500 developers will descend on the Intercontinental Hotel for two days of keynote talks, around 30 breakout sessions, and Hack to Help, a charity-focused hackathon.

“Last year’s Codestrong conference was amazing, and this year is going to be even better,” said Appcelerator CEO Jeff Haynie in a statement today.

“In addition to delivering great mobile and technical content, this year we have a big focus on building a successful mobile business … [and] compelling apps for both consumers and the enterprise.”

Last year’s Codestrong did have a hackathon for mobile developers, conducted in a fairly typical hack through the night/be judged/declare the winners format. This year, the Hack to Help event will also take place overnight, but in addition to having an overall winner for the hackathon, each app will be built for the benefit of a pre-selected nonprofit organization.

Twelve teams will work around the clock to build apps for 12 charities. The apps will help each nonprofit boost their fundraising and awareness efforts. Some of the organizations that will receive apps include Stop Hunger Now, Mercy Corps, Special Olympics, and the Avril Lavigne Foundation, which supports organizations working with children and youth who have serious illnesses or disabilities.

“I am very excited that my fans will have the opportunity to give back from the convenience of their mobile phones,” said Lavigne in a statement on the hackathon.“I think an app will be a great way for them to help make a difference and to follow all the great things we do for sick or disabled children and youth. I am very grateful to all of the developers who are participating in Hack to Help, and I can’t wait to see the final results!”

Codestrong is Appcelerator’s annual mobile conference. This year’s two-day event will take place in San Francisco, Calif., at the Intercontinental Hotel starting October 21, 2012. Currently, all-access passes are available online for $599.

Top image courtesy of olly, Shutterstock

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Google+ is an interesting place for photographers to share their art, according to many photogs we’ve spoken with. So it seems fitting that the first Google+ focused conference would be all about photography.

“There is no more vibrant online community for photographers right now than the one we have on Google+,” said Ivan S. Makarov, photographer and pioneer of the philanthropic Plus One Collection.

“Flickr and Facebook both have groups, and photographers usually spend time in smaller communities, inside those groups. Google+ does not yet have groups, so the community itself is bigger,” Makarov said in a recent interview with VentureBeat.

And now, that photography community will be getting a lot more exposure, thanks to a conference organized by Photoshop User magazine editor Scott Kelby. The first ever Google+ Photographers’ Conference is set to take place next month in San Francisco, and it will be all about the power of images plus the power of community.

While the conference isn’t produced by Google, it has the full support of the Google+ team, including Google VP Bradley Horowitz, who will be speaking at the conference. Other luminaries slated to speak include photo-blogger Trey Ratcliff, tech personality Guy Kawasaki, Google+ community manager Brian Rose, and a number of others.

Content will include sessions on best practices for Hangouts, how to build a brand on Google+, what kinds of content and posts perform best, and photography-specific sessions on shooting portraits and sports photography. The schedule also includes several photo walks in scenic San Francisco locations with conference speakers and photographers.

Makarov’s Plus One Collection is one of the more interesting photographic-related uses of the Google+ platform. It aims to be a photography book for charity, with all proceeds going to Kiva, the micro-lending startup for the developing world. So far, the project includes the work of 516 photographers — something that Makarov attributes to the Google+ community and tools.

“The online photography world is very fast-moving, with the river of images flowing in front of us every day. It’s so easy to forget what impressed us because there’s an overload of information,” he said. “The Google+ tools for sharing and discussing topics are… very powerful. For example, in the first hour we posted the news about our book release, our website got 5,000 unique visitors, as people kept sharing the news about the project to their streams. It’s very easy to spread the word on Google+, as long as one has an interesting message others feel is worth sharing.”

The Google+ Photographers’ Conference is taking place May 22 and May 23 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco. Registration is open now, and tickets are $300.

Image courtesy of olly, Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Cloud storage provider Box.net will now work with Salesforce.com’s enterprise social network, Chatter, and its mobile application will now come pre-loaded on the Motorola Xoom tablet, the company announced today.

Box.net is now shipping its content over to Salesforce.com’s enterprise social network Chatter. Users can pull content from Box.net — like shared files and the comments attached to those files — in activity streams in Chatter. Chatter had around 60,000 customers when last reported, although that number has grown significantly since then, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff told VentureBeat. Yammer, a Chatter competitor that has gained good traction in the enterprise social network space and is led by former PayPal graduate David Sacks, also has an existing partnership with Box.net.

“Our strategy is to be the social Switzerland where we integrate with any and all applications including Saleforce.com, SharePoint and many others,” Sacks told VentureBeat. “This announcement has no impact on that strategy.”

Box.net chief executive Aaron Levie made the announcement at the company’s first BoxWorks annual conference in San Francisco, Calif. He said Box.net’s application on Google’s Android mobile operating system will now also come pre-loaded on the Motorola Xoom, the current flagship tablet for the company. Box.net unveiled plans to pre-load its mobile app on Samsung tablets in January this year. While Box.net is an enterprise application, it could punch a hole in the niche Dropbox has carved out as a mobile cloud storage provider for consumers.

“Box has to be the easiest way that you can securely share information in the enterprise. That’s the whole reason why software doesn’t work today — it’s cumbersome,” Levie said. “And for employees that want to use a tablet or a smartphone, the power of those devices are comparable to laptops just a few months ago, they’re becoming an integral part of the enterprise.”

The company also unveiled a new version of its desktop sharing app, Sync (pictured above). That application creates a folder for your desktop that automatically copies the information to a remote cloud-based server. The new version of Sync works across both Mac and PC computers. Any changes made to a file on a PC are immediately transferred over to the same file in the shared folder in the Mac. The process works the same way in the other direction.

Box.net recently turned down a buyout offer worth more than $500 million, as we reported exclusively earlier this month. Box.net previously raised $48 million in its most recent round of funding led by Emergence Capital in February. It is also in the process of finalizing an extension to that round of funding worth $35 million. The company has 6 million users. Some 60,000 businesses employ its cloud-storage software, including 77 percent of Fortune 500 companies. That figure is up from around 66 percent in February. The company is based in Palo Alto, Calif.

Your exclusive $50 discount on this year’s conference is available now! Click here to purchase your discounted ticket.