Headlines: Oral History of MIT Analytics Conference

Ringer: 

And that's how the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference was born. The idea was to create a space for people who thought about sports a little bit differently. The quants, the wonks, the contrarians--those typically ignored or looked down on by the establishment. The first gathering was small, but it quickly snowballed into one of the biggest nonsporting sporting events on the calendar. Over the past 20 years, "Dorkapalooza," as it was dubbed by Ringer founder Bill Simmons, has helped an underground movement go mainstream.