I decided that I'd have sponsors for a project that would get me there. I actually had a couple of people confirm sponsorship if I decided to go this route -- I won't mention who they were specifically but they were very helpful in thinking it through.
The concept was: a video project of behind-the-scenes footage of BoS and sideline interviews of many of the speakers. I'd put up a site and ask in places like answers.onstartups.com for people to suggest questions for me to ask the speakers and I would mention their startup while video recording the short interviews ("So and so from X startup asks...").
I'm a bootstrapper with a day job and a relatively young product; so while I'm cashflow positive, I'm carefully watching expenses and reinvesting it back into the business. This is why I was making plans for this project. Ultimately, after much back and forth (and discussing it with my wife), I decided that if it was that important for me to go I should just take some of my profit and reinvest it in myself by going (which is an investment in my business). If I took on the project, what I'd gain in money I'd lose in valuable time that I could spend working on my product.
So, basically my thought here is that people that win free tickets should earn them in some way that gives back value to the entrepreneurs that can't afford to make it.