BIL 2011
A free interdisciplinary un-conference designed to expand minds, share ideas and make friends.
March, 2011 * Long Beach, CA: Queen Mary
This year, BIL 2011 is being held at the Queen Mary. 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach, CA 90802. Google Map It.
Tips on navigating the Queen Mary, independent of BIL, here.
Parking at the Queen Mary costs $15.00 per 24 hours and special events. Bring your parking ticket with you to pay at the kiosk before you leave.
Guests who are renting rooms on the Queen Mary may not incur parking charges. "May" because we've heard two different things from QM. Someone is working on negotiating it down.
Other parking information here.
Long Beach Transit - Passport Bus
Long Beach Transit - AquaLink Water Taxi
Metro Blue line (to downtown Long Beach, take Passport bus to Queen Mary)
Creative Commons: Sebastian George
This year we have 3 decks aboard the Queen Mary. They may be interconnected.
Exhibit Hall D: registration tables, raffle, food stuffs, socializing areas,
Exhibit Hall E: 2 lecture spaces
Exhibit Hall F: 2 lecure spaces or 1 lecture space and 1 interactive space
BILs current schedule is just bare bones. As we get more information, we will update it.
09:30 a.m. Get Thee To Registration Deck! Exhibit Hall D.
10:15 a.m. Opening Talk: Welcome, speaker instructions, outline of the day and events, Thank you to Sponors, Introduction to Speaker Wranglers, AV ppl, etc
10:30 a.m. Sign up for talks per instructions, 2-4 rooms available.
11:00 a.m. Talks begin, check the schedule that is ON LOCATION that is the only one there is. Someone may be kind enough to take photos, post them to twitter and
hash tag them with #bil2011 #schedule
01:00 p.m. Lunch. Simone is trying to arrange something awesome.
02:00 p.m. More Talks. Schedule is ON LOCATION only. You are unlikely to find it online, unless there are photos and a hashtag
06:00 p.m. Closing Talk, 1 room 15 minutes max. Then begin Fun and Games
09:30 a.m. Get Thee To Registration Deck! Exhibit Hall D.
10:15 a.m. Opening Talk: Welcome, speaker instructions, outline of the day and events, Thank you to Sponors, Introduction to Speaker Wranglers, AV ppl, etc
10:30 a.m. Sign up for talks per instructions, 2-4 rooms available.
11:00 a.m. Talks begin, check the schedule that is ON LOCATION that is the only one there is. Someone may be kind enough to take photos, post them to twitter and
hash tag them with #bil2011 #schedule
01:00 p.m. Lunch. Simone is trying to arrange something awesome.
02:00 p.m. More Talks. Schedule is ON LOCATION only. You are unlikely to find it online, unless there are photos and a hashtag
06:00 p.m. Closing Talk, 1 room 15 minutes max. Then begin Fun and Games
To sign up, log into, or sign up on the wiki, and look for the 'edit' button to add your name to either list.
If you call the Queen Mary for reservations, reserve them under the block for BIL. Between March 3-6th, rooms are currently $129.00 per night for a "deluxe king" and a "delux twin" and for a "family state queen" the nightly rate is $159.00. You must call 1-800-437-2934 and ask for "Reservations",you must let them know you want the "BIL Conference rate," which is why it was repeated. Book before March 1st to get the rate. Additionaly questions can be directed to Nicole at 1-562-499-1798.
There are several people willing to share rooms, find them here. Please feel free to add other hotel information to that document.
Additionally, there is no need to let hotel personnel in on the fact that you plan to have more people in the room than is recommended. Sales is aware that we are a conference and that we often share rooms with friends. There is no need to state that you ar planning for additional people to stay in your room during reservations.
Currently there is a bus traveling down from the Bay Area on Friday the 4th. Thanks to BILder Raines Cohen. More information can be found here.
For ride share information, add where you are coming from, what your travel dates are, and how many passengers you can take in your car and how to contact you; or that you are in need of a ride, your dates for travel, and how to contact you here.
Speakers are not invited, but asked to step forward the day of the event to spread their ideas. That said, some of the BILders know of people they'd like to hear speak at BIL, so you may have received an invitation from a BIL attendee stating their preference that you give a talk, or that you are part of their fantasy line up at BIL conference.
Currently, the speaking schedule will be created at the beginning of each day of the conference. We've experimented with various formats for curating speakers from year to year, and this year we are going back to our roots. First come, first served. Maybe a show of hands and a vote during the 9:30 a.m. orientation. But, maybe, just a race to fill in your name. That said, give attendees a heads up about what you plan on speaking about-- add a bio/blurb/photo of you here.
If you are going to talk, here are some guidelines. Other recommendations, watch Garr Reynolds talk on giving good talks. A 10 minute talk by Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen provides another good over view. Nancy Duarte, author of Slide:ology, has some good tips here too. You don't have to follow everything they say, but they provide some good ideas . . . like do not bombard your audience with too many words on your slide. If they can read your slide, why do they need you?
Cameron Sinclair at BIL09; Creative Commons: photonquantique
Once your speaking time has been selected, you need to be in the room 20 minutes before your talk. You may need to find the speaker wrangler or a/v tech assigned to your room (if someone has volunteered), and get to your room 30 minutes before your talk is scheduled. Make contact with the speaker wrangler for that room (eventually they will be pictured or shown on the morning stage) and give them your slide deck. They will cue you when to go up.
Speaking of slides, probably many of you would like to know how you will show your slides, whether we'll just connect to your computer or you should have your slides on a thumb drive in a specific format. We'll let you know as soon as we get some a/v volunteers.
If you manage to sign up on our sign up board, expect to speak for 15 minutes.
Creative Commons: Jeriaska
Currently we don't have a plan, so bring your own WiFi. But we are working on it. If you know of something cool, let us know.
The Queen Mary has Internet access available at the front desk for $9.95 per 24 hours for those staying at the hotel. There is also a business room.
This may be something you want to be a Rockstar on, and figure this out for all of BIL. If you remind us you did it, we will thank you publically on stage.
Most of all, remember you are on a big metal boat is partially submerged. Signals are not strong. If some rockstar does rig wifi, however limited, use it sparingly and don't complain about how it sucks. Remember, if it sucks, it is because you didn't make it better.
BIL happens because BILders make it happen. Every single BIL has been run solely by volunteers. We need your help, because you make BIL go. Every year we need people to help with A/V, speaker wrangling (Ie, once the schedule is set, we need someone to cue up the speakers and help them with the technology to make their slides go), live-streaming/video, information spreading, and anything else you like to see at a conference - you want morning coffee? Arrange it! We believe in you.
For example, if you are the type that likes pretty name tags at a conference, you make it happen by taking the attendee list and combining it with your favorite way to make names, with some blanks for the many people that show up the day of. Don't forget to post what you are doing on the volunteer wiki, that way work isn't duplicated.
Sign up on the Volunteer wiki: http://bilconference.pbworks.com/w/page/36599131/Volunteers-2011 Think of something we haven't added? Add it. Additionally if you want to help with media or sponsorship pre-conference contact any of the pre-conference volunteers that are working on what you are interested in and able to help with, the second half of the page, here.
Creative Commons: Quinn Norton
Join us at the Friday night Meet-n-Greet was held at Rock Bottom Brewery and was sponsored by Ask.com
After the conference Saturday and Sunday there will be fun and games, and hopefully no one will lose an eye, a beard, or anything else. Ok, eating and drinking, but if you wanted to organize a game or LARP, you are totally welcome to.
Sunday night activities can be found and organized here.
This is probably one of the most important tasks at BIL. It is what keeps BIL free. To donate any amount below $250, please go to the wePay link here. wePay takes about 3% or so of every donation and some banks add a 50 cent transfer fee.
To read about our Sponsorship options ($250 and above), follow this link, to find out more, or contact Joseph.Jackson on his gmail account for different sponsorship options.
This year's BIL is not currently kid friendly. However previous years at BIL have been kid friendly because BILder parents have chosen to make it so. If you are up for the task of organizing a parent babysitting brigade, or figuring out a way to hire baby-sitters from a vetted organization that does background checks on all their hires, or even better-- organizing a team for kid friendly activties, you rock! If it changes, a link to the PB wiki information will be posted here. (If you don't see it, no one did it.)
BIL 2008 Creative Commons: Quinn Norton
BIL has historically used Twitter as a communication channel during the conference, sometimes we luck out and someone donates the use of walkie talkies for the weekend. For many people that like to live blog or tweet, this year's hashtag is #bil2011. To see BIL's current twitter feed using hashtags you can search for #bil2011 or click here. Or you can use hashtags.org/bil2011
For a look at Flickr photos from past BILs, you can search under "bilconference" or bil**, or bil20** where ** represents the last 2 digits of the year the photo was taken.
You can do the same thing with youtube or vimeo videos. For example you can watch Jonathan Sheffi (BILder and linchpin for BILpil) give a talk on The Promise and Peril of Personalized Medicine.
You also have the option of joining the conversation in the Facebook event page.
So as many of you may have noticed, people say-- sign up to be a volunteer, add your name to ride or room share, organize an event BIL event, all on the wiki. Some of you already know how to do this and have an account with PBWiki.
For those that don't here is what you need to know:
Once you are logged in, how to edit the page you want to edit:
No. If you have to smoke, do it in designated areas only.
The ship has "state of the art" particulate sensors. Despite being 80 years old, US Coast Guard Regulations demand Smoke sensors that rival the Space Shuttles.
Smoking outside of designated zones, (exterior balcony, landings, marked areas of open deck, etc) will set off smoke sensors that will create an *immediate* response by ships personnel.
Your commitment to helping our community is sincerely appreciated. We would like to thank the many individuals that make BIL possible.
We would like to give a special thanks to the Queen Mary, while not a sponsor, we deeply appreciate how amazing the venue is, and the staff has been in making our event awesome!
We would also like to thank this year's sponsors:
Primal Alchemy- Flavored waters
Art Space LB - Media
HubLA - Media and TBA
Catalyst - Long Beach Media
Open Science Summit- Supporting Organization
SENS and Aubrey de Grey- Signed copies of books
Each year BIL continues to advance the open, self-organizing, emergent, arts, humanities, science, society and technology conferences.
We hope to see you there! (sign up!) (donate)
(to ask more questions you'd like to see in the FAQ send Alexis an email to her LexBright account at gmail.)