If you build it…
If I weren’t flying back from Vegas on the night of the NY TechCrunch party, I’d organize an overflow party. I bet you’d get just as many people at the overflow as you would at the TechCrunch event, and since the signups for TechCrunch have been pretty much first come/first serve, chances are you’d get a similar quality of people. I’d bet you could even get sponsorships, as well as some cross-traffic between the two parties.
Conduit, one of the sponsors of the conference, are the folks behind the Blogdigger toolbar. They have a very cool application, if you’re in the market for a toolbar for your site or community, check them out.