"A key feature and sought-after invitation at TED, hosted on the second night by the literary agent John Brockman, is the Billionaires' Dinner — row upon row of the world's most successful (and richest) human beings." — Michael Wolff, GQ

"John Brockman...the shadowy figure at the top the cyberfashion food chain." —Ted Nelson

THE BILLIONAIRES' DINNER
1998 — 2010

"The dinner party was a microcosm of a newly dominant sector of American business.
— Gary Wolf, Wired

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

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 9, 2009

The "Billionaires' Dinner" at TED: Readjusted for the 2009 Econalyspe
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. ...

NEW YORK MAGAZINE
February, 2002

This media life
My Dinner with Rupert
By Michael Wolff

Rupert kept taking. He grew more expansive, more conspiratorial, even (although it did seem like he'd conspire with anyone), his commentary more intimate. We proposed that he come with us to the dinner we were scheduled to go to John Brockman's Billionaire's dinner ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES
February 28, 2002

The TED Conference: 3 Days in the Future

It happened here one night last week over chicken and polenta at the annual private dinner, given by the New York literary agent John Brockman, formerly called the Millionaires' and Billionaires' Dinner after the rich techies who traditionally flocked to TED. There were still a few members of that endangered species scattered about, among them Nathan Myhrvold, the retired Microsoft chief technology officer, who gave an electrifying discourse at the 1997 TED about dinosaur sex. .... By Patricia Leigh Brown

WALL STREET JOURNAL

Now, instead of being the font of all goodness and light, the Web sector is considered dead as a doorknob.....

Where that will take us now is anybody's guess, but it won't be back to headier times, says John Brockman, a New York literary agent who became known in Silicon Valley over the past several years for throwing an annual "Billionaires Dinner." He wants to change the name of the event. "This year," he says. "It's the 'Joy of the Ordinary Income Dinner.' "

Bon appetit and pass the Rolaids. — Kara Swisher

Wall Street Jounral
February 28, 2000

At the Growing Billionaires' Dinner, Tech Stars Move to Grown-Ups' Table

MONTEREY, Calif. — Like a lot of things in the frothy Internet world, it didn't take long for an annual get-together at one of the industry's trendiest conferences to show mindboggling growth —in this case a change in its name from the Millionaires' Dinner to the Billionaires' Dinner.

... the crowd was sprinkled generously with those who had amassed wealth beyond imagining in a historical eye blink. The muscle and money behind tech stars such as Microsoft, America Online, Sun Microsystems and others had gathered at the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference here.

When the host, New York literary agent John Brockman, added three zeros to the dinner last year, there was more than a bit of giggly discomfort among the attendees. The general agreement was that the provocative Mr. Brockman, who also runs a discussion Web site called Edge.org, was poking fun more than offering a description.... — Kara Swisher

WIRED
February, 2000

A few TEDs ago, [The Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference] John Brockman began hosting an annual Millionaires' Dinner in honor of his acquaintances at the conference whose net worth exceeded seven figures. But rising equity values prompted Brockman to rename his party the Billionaires' Dinner. Last year, Steve Case, Jeff Bezos, and Nathan Myhrvold joined such comparatively impoverished multimillionaires as Barnes & Noble's Steve Riggio, EarthLink's Sky Dayton, and Marimba's Kim Polese. The dinner party was a microcosm of a newly dominant sector of American business. — Gary Wolf

WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 24, 2000

DIGITS

You don't have to be a billionaire to get invited to the "Billionaire's Dinner" tonight in Monterey, Calif. But you do have to know literary agent/ author/ entrepreneur John Brockman, who makes it his business to know who is among the digerati. The dinner coincides with the 10th annual Technology, Entertainment, Design or TED, conference, which brings together Hollywood and Silicon Valley.....Last year's dinner guests included confirmed billionaires Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc. and Steve Case of America Online Inc. as well as likely contender Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft Corp.

It's just a fun gathering for a few of my friends," Mr. Brockman says. The stock market has made new billionaires out of some previous centimillionaire guests, so Mr. Brockman doubled the size of the dinner but claims he still has to turn people away. To add suspense to this year's event, Mr. Brockman promises two surprise billionaires who prefer to remain unidentified. Hint: at least one is unmarried.

NEW YORK MAGAZINE
February, 2000

The weather, though, from San Francisco down the coast to Monterrey, where TED is held, turned bad, and it suddenly started to look like Brockman's dinner might be short a few billionaires.

It used to be the millionaires' dinner, but in the enthusiasm of the bull market, Brockman upped it a thousandfold (certainly, among the guests, there were a lot of millionaires — maybe everyone). Of course, the point is not the billionaires per se but the good fellowship that the idea of proximity to billionaires engenders. Does that fellowship disappear just because some billionaires don't want to take a chance on the weather? — Michael Wolff

NEW YORK POST
March 2, 2000

It's a Terrible Thing To Lose Minds

It was billed as the "Billionaire's Dinner" ... But with cameo appearances by Conde Nast editorial director James Truman, Time Out New York's Cyndi Stivers, Fortune's Peter Petre, Powerful Media's Kurt Anderson, news anchor Forrest Sawyer and Industry Standard columnist James Fallows, this was the year when chic New York media met the geeks.

UPSIDE
[2.24.1999]

The Annual "Billionaires' Dinner" (upgraded from last year's "Millionaires' Dinner") was held on Thursday, February 18th at Cibo in Monterey. Among those emerging from the Gulfstream jets were Steve Case, Nathan Myhrvold, Jeff Bezos, Steve Riggio, Danny Hillis, Bran Ferren, Douglas Adams, Terry Gilliam, Kai Krause, and Joichi Ito.

Leon Lederman & Savannah Brentnall

UPSIDE
[2.23.1998]

World Domination, Corporate Cubism, and Alien Mind Control at the Digerati Dinner - 1998

Chronicler of the digerati, John Brockman, handpicked the best of breed at last week's Monterey TED (technology, entertainment, design) conference to attend his yearly soirée, where technology's philosopher-kings mused on all things Internet, multimedia.