When I arrived at Five Sixty, coats, not people, occupied most of the chairs on the main stage. Amanda Palmer was scheduled to give a talk in less than an hour.

The idea for BIL came to Michael Cummings during the 2008 TED talks in Monterey, Calif. He and a group of friends wanted to hang out with TED people, even though they weren’t attending the conference, so they set up an event across the street, and 300 people showed up.

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