What’s the best part of TED? Oh yeah, it’s BIL

As we all know, TED is in full swing down in Long Beach—the glossiest, bling-iest, intellectual conference around. With a price tag of $6,000, it’s an elites-only event. Sure, TED now posts a sample of talks on their website—which are well with a watch—but I think it's more fun to explore BIL.

BIL, the unconference. A free, self-organizing, emergent arts, science, society and technology unconference held near TED that first formed spontaneously in 2007. I read about BIL yesterday in the Wall Street Journal and it made me smile (when the front page of WSJ makes you smile, it’s something memorable). I loved the idea of a bunch of smarty-pants couch surfers rubbing TED the wrong way, stealing a bit of their publicity. In this particular article, when a TED spokeswoman was asked about the conference’s relationship to BIL she declined to comment.

No comment?! (First off, the PR side of me says, “Ouch, that was a mistake—now you look like a real snob.”) But the real zinger is this:

If TED is all about “ideas worth spreading” than they should be spreading around a little more BIL.

BIL is the ultimate DIY—because the organizers of the original BIL encourage people to create their own BIL unconferences—to organize their own community events that share great ideas, not just about technology, but about comedy, politics, communication, really, anything worth talking about.

We all know that ever since higher education became accessible to everyone (thanks, Kennedy) great ideas are no longer limited to the realm of the leisure class. It’s just a matter of putting time aside to, you know, actually do something great.

So, when will the creators of BIL be gracing the stage of TED?