The BIL conference was a remarkable success: people arrived, engaged, learned, helped, heckled, spoke, listened, and shared — and it was free.
There was an exhilarating mix of chaotic energy and deep focus, a network of curious minds and new friends.
I can’t remember the last time I was so fully engaged by so many brilliant ideas and conversations.
– savorie, reflecting on their experience at the BIL Conference
How do you create an event that leaves people feeling energized and connected like that? You can’t manufacture it from a template. The best gatherings are spontaneous, authentic, and emerge from the community itself. Just as the character of a city like Austin or Boulder arises from everyone who lives there, the spirit of an event comes from the people who show up and participate.
Part of BIL’s success was that no one arrived with rigid expectations. We hoped for a handful of interesting attendees and were delighted when many more showed up. What started as a modest plan turned into something much larger — and unexpectedly inspiring.
With BIL2009 projected to attract over a thousand attendees, we’re considering how to preserve the culture and participatory energy as the event grows. There are practical organizational challenges, and a subtler issue: as groups get larger, participation can shift toward passive observation rather than active contribution.
Some features of the unconference format don’t scale easily. At BIL, the schedule was organized BarCamp-style on a large whiteboard. In minutes, the whiteboard filled up for both days, but several excellent speakers didn’t get the chance to present in the main room. As attendance increases, balancing the desire to showcase many voices with the limited time in a single space becomes harder.
We also experimented with wiki-based organization. While the collaborative wiki allowed many people to contribute, its constant edits on the day of the conference made it difficult to keep essential information accessible and stable. Broad participation is important, but as the event grows, a clearer structure is necessary to make sure vital details remain visible to attendees.
Below are the main ideas we’re considering to help the BIL experience scale while staying true to the unconference spirit. We invite your feedback and suggestions — this is a community-driven effort.
- Curated voting for main-room talks. A month or two before the event, we’ll invite potential speakers to post talk proposals. Attendees can then vote SXSW-style on which talks should appear in the main room. To refine selection, we may apply an “interestingness” measure that factors in views, comments, and votes. After ranking, organizers can fine-tune the lineup to ensure a diverse mix of topics and voices.
- Short talks followed by deeper sessions. Main-room talks will be concise — roughly 15–20 minutes — in a space that holds about 1,500 people. Immediately after a short main-stage talk, the speaker will be encouraged to continue the conversation in a smaller breakout room (100–200 people) for a 30–60 minute, more interactive session. After the breakout, conversations can continue informally in game rooms and common areas.
- Whiteboards and schedules for smaller rooms. We’ll maintain the original unconference feel by providing multiple smaller rooms with their own whiteboards and live schedules, allowing ad-hoc sessions and participant-led discussions to flourish.
Our aim is to ensure anyone who wants to share an idea has a place to do so. We believe smaller-group discussions are often more valuable than formal main-stage presentations. To help preserve content and reach those who can’t attend every session, Revision3 will film the main-room talks so you can catch up later.
Don’t just sit back and passively watch big talks. Use the quick main-stage presentations as springboards: when a short talk grabs your attention, follow that speaker and the spontaneous group that forms for a richer, more focused discussion. If your interest wanes, break off and find—or start—another small group.
That’s the current plan for scaling BIL while protecting its emergent culture. We welcome your thoughts, ideas, and concerns so we can refine these plans together.
Note: BIL2009 will be held in Long Beach, CA on February 7–8. If you’re interested in updates, sign up for the mailing list to receive announcements and participation details.