“BIL” and “TED’s” Excellent Adventure
Many of you are familiar with TED, the annual conference where great thinkers, visionaries, experts, and creators get up and expound on ideas in a 15 (or is it 18?) minute timespan, the results of which end up on video for people around the world to digest. The big problem with TED is that the barrier to entry is cost–you need $6000 to attend, unless you’re a member of the media or get comped somehow. So what happens is a lot of rich, accomplished people talk to other rich, accomplished people, while the rest of us watch at a distance on YouTube or whatever your favorite video site is. Surely there’s a way for creative types to come together like this without having to go into serious credit card debt.
Enter BIL, the first day of which I attended this past Saturday in Long Beach.
BIL (which can stand for any one of a number of things) was a totally open-source, marginally organized, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants wild time, where people randomly proposed 15-minute talks and no one had to pay thousands of dollars to hear them. Over the course of the one day I attended, I heard and saw:
- Humanity+’s Richard Leis expound on how the digitization of physical entertainment content (books, movies, music) is the next step in our evolution as beings, from creating parallel realities of information to having content beamed or woven directly into our bodies and brains.
- Silona Bonewald of the League of Technical Voters discussing the many ways we can democratize government information and make it accessible through the use of Web apps.
- Jayson Elliot discussing Lightful, his proposed next-generation open-source operating system that should be designed with the user experience first in mind, not dead last as it usually is.
- Evonne and Brent Heyning demonstrating the Lightning Temple project, a massive structure designed to harness electricity and create sound for all kinds of entertainment and spiritual diversions.
And that’s just for starters, I assure you. It was really heartening to see, even in the midst of a terrible global recession, with climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, and seemingly endless wars draining our collective soul (and Treasury), that people still had optimism and the gung-ho belief that any wacky or wild idea was possible if you found the right people and had the right motivation to make it happen.
BIL and TED are good complements to one another. Where TED is the polished, professional podium for experts at the top of their game to expound, BIL is the rapscallion scalawag cousin nipping at its heels and wondering when the party’s going to start. I’m definitely glad I attended–it was inspiring as hell. You can check out my Flickr stream for a sense of what it was like. It’s certainly on my list for next year’s thing to do. Party on, dudes!
February 9th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I cannot say enough how refreshing it is to have an accessible alternative to TED. Yes, I watch the TED stuff, and get their newsletter, but my $6K has to go towards stuff like paying bills and a house downpayment. Disposable income is not in my vocabulary.
I love it when people do stuff like this. All we need to have is a good template, so we can do BIL conferences all over the place. And with large-capacity hard drives going at rock-bottom prices (along with the accompanying camcorders), recording it, and later streaming it wouldn’t be that hard- or expensive- either.
Who smoked this up, anyway? Is it limited to SoCal, or can anyone pop one off? Hell, I’d help organize one here in the boonies of AR.
How are you settling in to your new home?
February 11th, 2009 at 3:19 am
Sunfell,
BIL is designed to coincide with TED, so that speakers from one may cross over into the other with little difficulty. That said, I see no reason why you and other fellow geeks couldn’t organize your own BIL anywhere you liked. That’s part of the point–it’s totally non-hierarchical and designed to enable the free flow of ideas.
I’ve begun posting regular updates to my Facebook about my adventures and life in LA, but I will start doing so here so as not to leave out all those friends and comrades who don’t use that platform.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:42 am
Loved the review you have written here. Is there anything else to say on this subject?