I did some tests (oh joy) and I got some interesting results by doing the following:

I created a bulb with a nice glass shader (see below). Then I created the filament and gave it a glow channel combining two colors, light yellow and bright orange, using the turbulence mixer. Then I went into the assemble room and under the properties window:modifiers I enabled the glare option and set the glare properties. I also then went to the edit menu:environmental lighting and set object color to object glow. Lastly I deleted all light sources.
This produced a nice effect of a glowing filament within a light bulb. It was a nice learning opportunity and took only about 30-40 minutes.

With more time and experimentation, I could probably do a little better. [;) One probable improvement would probably be to use an anything glows tube light for the filament. This may allow for more lighting effects and greater impact on other objects in the scene.

glass shader:
(color:value=0,transparency:value=100,
shininess:value=20,highlight:value=60,refraction:index of refraction=common glass)

Yours Truly,
DotPainter123