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Did your invitation to this year's TED conference get lost in the mail? Or perhaps you just don't want to pony up the $7,500 needed to attend the cerebrally super-powered conference. Have no fear, Long Beach still offers another opportunity to swim in smarts this weekend, thanks to a decidedly more radical (and less expensive) "unconference" aboard the Queen Mary. Meet BIL, TED's prankster sidekick of sorts, which returns for a fifth year, bringing an open-source alternative to TED's exclusivity. Although they are not affiliated with the TED conferences, BIL takes on a similar format of people offering short presentations on wildly diverse topics, such as science and social change. That's basically where the similarities end.
"TED is really more of a baby boomer event," explained Adam Mefford, founder of Currency, a monthly BIL and TED-styled event geared toward entrepreneurs. Mefford was also a TED conference attendee in 2005. "At 23, I was definitely one of the youngest there," he said.
At BIL, the average age edges from the late 20s through 40s, but the biggest way BIL diverges from TED is its fluid, all-inclusive, organizational strategy. At BIL anyone can be a participant, audience member...