Voting for Talks
We recently integrated some software from The Social Collective to power the BIL Community. These new additions on our site allow you to connect with other BIL attendees and submit or vote on proposals for talks at BIL2009. Additionally, it allows you to discuss the conference (or whatever) using its own messaging mechanism that’s also mashed up with Twitter.
Just after launching the site, we received this great question:
John Larkin (thatlarkin): If the conference is self-organizing, why are you asking for speakers ahead of time?
First off, we should make it clear that anyone will be able to show up and give a talk the day of the conference. That being said, we learned some things from the last BIL Conference that we feel need fixing. (Refer to my blog for more information.)
At BIL2008, the talk schedule was done with a whiteboard and anyone could sign up for a time slot to give a talk. Within a few minutes, all the space for both days was already taken — if you hadn’t been there at the very start, you didn’t get to put your name on the list.
BIL 2009 will have much more space and we’re expecting many more people. We’re hoping people will submit their possible talks beforehand so they can spend some time preparing for their talk, as well as sharing with others the range of talks that will be at BIL. If our main room fills up (which holds about 1500 people), we would like to look towards the submitted topics to see which were most popular (through pageviews, comments and ‘favs’), and give them preference for the largest areas.
We will also have many smaller rooms that hold a little over 100 people each and these will feature the whiteboard signup like we did last year.
BIL is organized by the community. Does the community think there’s a better way to do this? I’ve voiced my opinions, now it’s time to hear yours. If you have any ideas as to how we can ensure the talks with the most interest make it to the biggest rooms, please share them in the comments.
New Website
BIL has a new web presence! Thanks to Always Creative for the design, Markup Ninjas for coding it, Bill Erickson for integrating Wordpress, and Downtown Cartel for hosting. Also, thanks to The Social Collective for our BIL Community site, which should be released in a few weeks. And of course, thanks to everyone who made comments and suggestions while we built this.
But, we still need the rest of the community to help out. The content of the site still needs some work. So we’ve put it in the wiki, and we’re hoping you can make suggestions for improvement.
It’s time to get ready for BIL 2009 in Long Beach February 7-8!
Singularity Summit
The Singularity Institute is holding the Singularity Summit, a dialog on the impact of dramatically accelerating technological change. The Singularity Institute was one of the early supporters of BIL, and an excellent forum for discussing world-changing ideas. The speakers and attendees of the Summit are the movers and shakers who will guide technological progress in the coming decades.
Saturday, October 25, 9am-5pm
Montgomery Theater, San Jose, CA
Aging 2008 with Aubrey de Grey
Aubrey de Grey was one of our most popular speakers at BIL. If you’re interested in his work on ending aging, you should definitely attend Aging 2008. Here’s an invitation from Aubrey himself.
Here’s the details:
What: Aging: The Disease, The Cure, The Implications, hosted by Methuselah Foundation
When: Friday, June 27, 2008, Drinks 4pm, Presentations 5pm, Dinner 8pm
Where: Royce Hall, 405 Hilgard Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90024
Who:
- Dr. Bruce Ames, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UC Berkeley
- G. Steven Burrill, Chairman of Pharmasset and Chairman of Campaign for Medical Research
- Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Chairman and CSO of Methuselah Foundation and author of Ending Aging
- Dr. William Haseltine, Chairman of Haseltine Global Health
- Daniel Perry, Executive Director of Alliance for Aging Research
- Bernard Siegel, Executive Director of Genetics Policy Institute
- Dr. Gregory Stock, Director of Program on Medicine, Technology & Society at UCLA School of Medicine
- Dr. Michael West, CEO of BioTime and Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley
Free Registration: www.mfoundation.org/ADCI
Sign up for BIL 2009
Now that we’re done with BIL 2008, it’s time to start planning BIL 2009
Sign up for BIL 2009. If you have any ideas on how to make BIL better, add it to this page too.
If you missed out on BIL 2008, read up on what everyone thought of it on the Blog Coverage Wiki Page.
BIL was a huge success!
Thanks everyone who came to BIL and made it such a huge success. We probably had 300 people there in total. Here’s some content from the event:
- Photos on Flickr
- Video - One Click Webcasting and Robert Scoble
Some information about the future:
- BIL2009 will be in Long Beach next year with TED. We will have a much bigger facility that can hold all those interested (guessing 500-1000). Add your name to the attendee list if you’re interested in attending: http://bilconference.pbwiki.com/BIL2009
- If you didn’t get one of the free BIL shirts, go to http://bilconference.com/bil-shirts/ and fill out the form to request one.
- We might have BIL:UK in a few months if there’s enough interest.
I look forward to seeing you all in Long Beach next year, if not sooner.
Thanks
We're capping attendance
We had no idea BIL would be this popular when we started planning. Our facility holds 150 people, and at the time we didn’t consider that there’d be more people interested.
Per the request of the facility manager, we’re capping attendance at 150 people and no longer adding people to the attendance list.
If you aren’t able to make it, join us next year. Now that we’ve proven interest in this concept we’ll be ready for the next BIL.
We’ll be accepting donations at BIL to support next year’s BIL. We’ll also have a PayPal donation set up for those who couldn’t make it.
This weekend is just the start of the BIL community.
Looking for Musicians
Between some of the talks we’d like to have some musicians play. If you are interested, add yourself to the UnConcert wiki page
Things we need!
As we get closer to BIL, we’re updating the wiki page Things We Need! If you can help out by providing any of these, edit the page and say what you can provide.
We’re still looking for sponsors to cover all the little unexpected and logistical expenses. If your company would like to sponsor BIL, send us an email.
Thanks
We need some help with internet connectivity
Our biggest problem at the moment is that the facility where we’re having BIL doesn’t have internet. Robert Scoble, who will be filming all the talks, won’t be able to stream them online live if we don’t have at least 300kbs for him. If they can’t be streamed, they’ll be uploaded to a video service sometime after BIL.
If you or someone you know is well connected with a cellular or internet provider (Earthlink, AT&T), please have them contact us immediately at huffmantm@gmail.com.
We’re hoping the BIL community can help us solve this problem.
Thanks
