In April 2025 I gave a presentation at a computer conference in Northern California that was founded by many of the pioneers of the microcomputer revolution. Past attendees have included:
- Allan Alcorn – Designer of the first “Pong” arcade system for Atari
- Eric Allman – Author of SendMail
- Bob Frankston – Coauthor of VisiCalc and leader of the design teams for Lotus 123 and Excel
- Lee Felsenstein – Creator of the Osborne 1 and Sol20 computers, the Pennywhistle acoustic-coupled modem, and one of the members of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the 60’s
- David Hampton – Inventor of the “Furby”
- Brewster Kahle – Founder of the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine, etc.)
- Len Shustek and Dave Rosetti – Founder and Trustee of the Computer History Museum
- Chris Malachowsky – Cofounder of NVIDIA
- Alvy Ray Smith – Cofounder of Pixar.
You get the idea. It was like a TED conference for geeks AND nerds. I was in heaven.
Here's the talk I gave: