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 at the TED conference.

It was jokingly 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. Get it?!?

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. But he recounted to me that the proceedings were a lot more focused on the serious times we are in, as was the whole digerati-packed conference held last week.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here is a video of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Nathan Myhrvold, founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures.

In it, Mossberg wrangles with the former Microsoft CTO and research guru over his controversial company, which is assembling a large body of patents and inventions.

In this third part, Myhrvold takes questions from the audience.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here is a video of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Nathan Myhrvold, Founder and CEO, Intellectual Ventures.

In it, Mossberg wrangles with the former Microsoft CTO and research guru over his controversial company, which is assembling a large body of patents and inventions.

In this post, Myhrvold talks about legendary inventor Thomas Edison and the history of patents and inventions, “invention capitalism,” the patenting of software and its abuse by tech giants, multi-touch technologies and where innovation will come from next.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here is a video of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Nathan Myhrvold, Founder and CEO, Intellectual Ventures.

In it, Mossberg wrangles with the former Microsoft CTO and research guru over his controversial company, which is assembling a large body of patents and inventions.

The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece today about Myhrvold’s efforts today, covering a lot of what he talked about at D6.

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For those who love a five-ton mechanical computing device, Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum recently installed a Babbage Difference Engine.

Designed on paper by English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage (pictured here with his creation) and built to his specifications, it is on loan for one year from former Microsoft tech guru Nathan Myhrvold.

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Earlier this week, BoomTown posted our speaker list for the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital, which will take place in a few weeks–May 27 to 29, to be exact–in Carlsbad, Calif.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo, and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

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Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.
All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional [...]

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