"The crowd was sprinkled generously with those who had amassed wealth beyond imagining in a historical eye blink."
— Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal 

The "Billionaires' Dinner" at TED: Readjusted for the 2009 Econalyspe
February 9, 2009
By Kara Swisher

Many years ago in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom, when working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal,BoomTown redubbed an annual dinner that book agent John Brockman threw ... called the "Millionaires' Dinner," but I renamed it the "Billionaires' Dinner."That was due to the frothy fortunes that had been made at the time by the Internet pioneers, from Amazon to AOL to eBay. Well, despite the economic meltdown, there were still a lot of billionaires in attendance at Brockman's most recent dinner last Thursday in Long Beach.

Indeed, Brockman now calls the event the "Edge Dinner," after his lively Edge Web site, where he presides over a variety of eclectic online debates and discussions (in January, for example, the topic was: "DOES THE EMPIRICAL NATURE OF SCIENCE CONTRADICT THE REVELATORY NATURE OF FAITH?").

Since I managed to miss the fete entirely (embarrassing confession: I fell dead asleep at 7 p.m. and did not wake until the next morning) and could not chronicle it, Brockman allowed me to post some photos from the event taken by him and by former Microsoft research guru and current intellectual property mogul Nathan Myhrvold.