2007 Constantine Kaniklidis

"Vista Exposed"

Constantine Kaniklidis, President of TES (Technology Education Support), is an industry-recognized expert in Data and Internet Security, Microsoft OS (Windows XP/Server 2003/Vista/Longhorn (2007)), Web Development and Web Services, among others. Over the past 25 years he has conducted thousands of technical, management, and executive seminars, and delivered consulting services in all these areas.

2007 Sol Libes (Banquet Speaker)

"Computer Hobbyist: The Origin of the Species"

Sol Libes founded the Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey in early 1975. The ACGNJ is the oldest Personal Computer Club in the world serving both PC & Macintosh users. Sol served as ACGNJ President for six years, in other positions for another four years, before retiring in 1986. Sol also, in 1976, co-founded, with Allen Katz, the Trenton Computer Festival, the first Personal Computer show.

Sol was a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Programming at Union County College for 25 years, retiring in 1993. He has a BA from the City University of New York and an MS from Rutgers University. He also taught in the Rutgers University Graduate School of Computer Science and was a visiting lecturer at other Colleges and Universities. Sol is the author of 16 books, most of them on Personal Computer hardware and software design. Many have been translated into several foreign languages. He has authored over 300 magazine articles that have appeared in more than 30 different magazines and journals. He was a monthly columnist in Byte magazine (for many years the leading Personal Computer magazine) for six years, beginning in 1976 and was the Editor of Microsystems Journal (a magazine for computer hardware and software designers) from 1979 to 1988.

2006 Dr. Gregory Olsen, Ph.D.

"Experiences of the third private citizen to orbit the earth"

Gregory Olsen, born in Brooklyn, New York, was the son of a IBEW Local 3 electrician. He graduated from Ridgefield Park High School, Ridgefield Park, New Jersey in 1962. After being written off as a failure by teachers due to poor grades in high school, Gregory Olsen planned to join the United States Army until he was counseled to try college for several months. Through an IBEW Local 3 scholarship, Olsen attempted college, kept his grades high, and graduated magna cum laude with multiple degrees from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He later graduated with a PhD from the University of Virginia.

He is an American entrepreneur and scientist who in October 2005 became the third private citizen to make a paid trip into space. He is the co-founder and present chairman of Sensors Unlimited Inc., a company developing optoelectronic devices such as sensitive near-infrared (NIR) and shortwave-infrared (SWIR) cameras. One of Sensors Unlimited's major customers is NASA. http://www.sensorsinc.com/bio_olsen.html

2005 Dr. Brian Kernighan

"Computers: What Matters, and Why"

Brian Kernighan received his BASc from the University of Toronto in 1964 and a PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1969. He was a member of the Computing Science Research center at Bell Labs until 2000, and is now a professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton. He is the author of 8 books (including the well known "white book" on C with Dennis Ritchie) and some technical papers, and holds 4 patents. Brian's research areas include programming languages, tools and interfaces that make computers easier to use, often for non-specialist users. He is also interested in technology education for non-technical audiences.

2004 Dr. Rebecca Mercuri

"Computers, Public Policy and You"

Dr. Rebecca Mercuri became an overnight national celebrity in the center of a media frenzy when the U.S. Presidential election ended in a dead heat in November 2000. A few weeks earlier, she had successfully defended her Doctoral Dissertation "Electronic Vote Tabulation: Checks and Balances" at the University of Pennsylvania, and then found herself defending the Democratic Recount Committee in the now-legendary Bush v. Gore case working its way through the court system. Her testimony was presented to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and referenced in the briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. Since then, she has provided formal testimony on voting systems to the House Science Committee, Federal Election Commission and the U.K. Cabinet, has been quoted in the U.S. Congressional Record, and has played a direct role in municipal, state, federal, and international legislative initiatives. Rebecca's comments on election technology are frequently cited by the media, and she authors the quarterly "Security Watch" column in the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery. She is currently at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, as a research fellow in their Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dr. Mercuri is also a popular TCF lecturer and long-time attendee.

2003 Marge and Bruce Brown

"Wireless Networking, Realities and Promises"

Marge and Bruce have tested, evaluated, and written about literally 100s of networking products, including all current wireless and wired networking technologies. They performed and wrote the first published in-depth 802.11a wireless network performance tests for PC Magazine and Extremetech.com. The Browns have done extensive wireless interoperability and hybrid network technology testing, including the effectiveness of combining multiple wireless technologies. Bruce and Marge have also written many shorter tutorials involving installing and using wireless networks.

2002 Ari Kaplan

"How Wireless Will Revolutionize Lives"

Ari Kaplan attended his first TCF at age 6 and was a speaker at the age of 13. He is now a world-renowned book author and has served as a database administrator for Oracle Corporation and other Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Kaplan was Co-Founder and CEO of Expand Beyond, a pioneer and leader in the wireless enterprise software industry, and was awarded the prestigious Caltech Alumni of the Decade.

2001 Emmanuel Goldstein

"Hacking and Computer Security"

Emmanuel Goldstein (emmanuel@2600.com) has been publishing 2600 Magazine, The Hacker Quarterly since 1984. He traces his hacker roots to his college days at SUNY Stony Brook in the late seventies. He led the movement to free famed hacker Kevin Mitnick from prison and stop a film that portrayed him in an inaccurate light. He recently completed a film of his own ("Freedom Downtime"), a documentary that focuses on stopping the other film ("Takedown"), the Free Kevin movement, and the hacker world. Last year, Goldstein was sued by the Motion Picture Association of America for printing source code on the www.2600.com website that enabled DVDs to be controlled by their owners. The case is currently being appealed. He also hosts America's largest (if not only) hacker radio show, which airs on New York City's WBAI 99.5 FM every Tuesday at 8 pm.

2000 Jeff Waldhuter

"ADSL - High Speed Digital Connections for the Home and Business"

Director of Bell Atlantic (Verizon) Network Services Strategy

2000 Bill Dyszel (Banquet Speaker)

"Being a Dummy the Smart Way"

Author of Microsoft Outlook for Dummies and nine other books

Amazon

Bill Dyszel, an author, speaker, singer and compulsive instant movie maker just completed five films for the 48-Hour Film Project in five entirely different cities in only 72 days. Four of those films earned places in the "Best Of" screenings for their respective cities. Bill is now the most frequent contestant in the 48-Hour Film Project, with a total of 11 appearances in 7 different cities. He plans to keep doing this until he gets it right, which probably won't happen any time soon. In the meantime he just finished writing "Microsoft Outlook 2007 for Dummies" and gave several speeches for ASAE (the American Society of Association Executives). Now he needs a nap.

1999 Mike Elgan

"The Future of Personal Computers"

http://elganmedia.net/

Editor, Windows Magazine

1999 Eric Raymond (Banquet Speaker)

"Open Source Software Movement"

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1957, Raymond lived on three continents before settling in Pennsylvania in 1971. His involvement with hacker culture began in 1976 and he contributed to his first open source project in 1982. Since then, his open source software development activities have included maintaining the fetchmail email client, contributing editing modes to the Emacs editor, co-writing portions of the GNU ncurses library, and contributing to giflib/libungif, libpng, and some of the Python standard library. Meanwhile he has written a number of HOWTO documents, including much of the Linux Documentation Project corpus. Raymond suffers from a mild form of congenital cerebral palsy.

Raymond coined the aphorism "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." He credits Linus Torvalds with the inspiration for this quotation, which he dubs "Linus's law". The mainstream source for the quotation is his 1999 book The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly & Associates; but his website archives the earliest source (1997), originally distributed freely on the Internet. "Cathedral" is generally considered to be his most important work. ESR is also a prolific publisher of essays and opinion pieces, many of which are political in nature, through his website and blog.

After 1997 Raymond became a prominent voice in the open source movement and was one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative. He also took on the self-appointed role of ambassador of open source to the press, business and mainstream culture. He is a gifted speaker and has taken his road show to more than fifteen countries on six continents. He is routinely quoted in the mainstream press, and as of 2003 has probably achieved more public visibility than almost any other open source advocate.

Raymond and his supporters have credited his tactics with a number of remarkable successes, beginning with the release of the Mozilla (then Netscape) source code in 1998, and he is widely credited with having taken the open source mission to Wall Street more effectively than earlier advocates. http://www.catb.org/~esr/

1998 Stacy Horn

"Cyber Villages on the Internet"

http://www.stacyhorn.com/

Founder Echo

1997 Dennis Hayes

http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18825871

"The Future of High Speed Internet Communications"

CEO and Founder Microcomputer Products, Inc.

1997 Phil Zimmerman (Featured Speaker)

"Cryptography"

Philip Zimmermann (born February 12, 1954) is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He was the first to make asymmetric, or public key, encryption software easily available to all. This led the US Customs to make him the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread all around the world following its 1991 publication on the Internet as freeware. After the government dropped its case without indictment in early 1996, Zimmermann founded PGP Inc. That company was acquired by Network Associates (NAI) in December 1997, where he stayed on for three years as a Senior Fellow. In 2002, PGP was acquired from NAI by a new company called PGP Corporation, which Zimmermann now serves as special advisor and consultant. Zimmermann is also a fellow at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.

http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/background/index.html

1997 Bjarne Stroustrup (Featured Speaker)

"Foundations for Native C++ Styles"

Bjarne Stroustrup (born December 30, 1950 in Aarhus, Denmark) is a computer scientist and the College of Engineering Chair Professor of Computer Science at Texas A&M University. He is most notable for developing the C++ programming language. A rough English attempt at pronunciation of his name would be "B-yar-ne Strov-stroop".

Stroustrup, in his own words, "invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation... chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee." Stroustrup also wrote what many consider to be the standard text for the language, The C++ Programming Language, which is now in its third edition. The text has been revised twice to reflect the evolution of the language and the work of the C++ standards committee.

Stroustrup is cand. scient. (the Danish equivalent to a master's degree) in mathematics and computer science (1975) from the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and Ph.D. in computer science (1979) from the University of Cambridge, England. He formerly worked as the head of AT&T Lab's Large-scale Programming Research department, from its creation until late 2002. He currently works at Texas A&M University as Professor and holder of the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science.

http://public.research.att.com/~bs/homepage.html

1996 Robin Raskin

http://www.robinraskin.com/

"From Hackers to hobbyists to National Phenomena"

Editor-in-Chief of Family-PC Magazine

1995 Bill Machrone

"When Does the Future Get Here?"

Technology VP for Ziff-Davis Publishing

Bill Machrone is vice president of technology at Ziff Davis Publishing and editorial director of the Interactive Media and Development Group. He joined Ziff Davis in May 1983 as technical editor of PC Magazine, became editor-in-chief in September of that year, and held that position for the next eight years, while adding the titles of publisher and publishing director. During his tenure, Machrone created the tough, labs-based comparison reviews that propelled PC Magazine to the forefront of the industry and made it the seventh-largest magazine in the United States. He pioneered numerous other innovations that have become standards in computer journalism, such as Service and Reliability Surveys, free utility software, benchmark tests, Suitability to Task ratings, and price/performance charts. Machrone also founded PC Magazine Labs and created the online service PC MagNet, which later expanded into ZDNet. In 1991, when Machrone was appointed vice president of technology, he founded ZD Labs in Foster City, California. He also worked on the launch team for Corporate Computing magazine, was the founding editor of Yahoo! Internet Life, and is working on several other development projects in conventional publishing and electronic media. Machrone has been a columnist for PC Magazine since 1983 and became a columnist for PC Week in 1993. (PC Magazine Bio)

1994 Steve Levy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levy

Editor of Wired and MacWorld Magazines

"The Revolution of Look and Feel"

1993 Gordon E. Eubanks

"The Future of Personal Computing"

CEO Symantec Corporation

Gordon E. Eubanks, Jr. serves as Transforma Acquisition Group Inc. Chairman of the Board. From October 2006 to November 2006, Mr. Eubanks served as acting Chief Executive Officer, and, since October 2006, has served as a director, of Asempra Technologies, a private software company. From 2005 until 2006, Mr. Eubanks served as Chairman of the Board of Preventsys, an enterprise security software company, which was sold in June 2006. Since June 2006, Mr. Eubanks has been managing personal investments and working as an advisor to a number of private companies. Previously, from April 1999 to March 2005, Mr. Eubanks served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Oblix, Inc., a provider of enterprise identity management solutions that was acquired by Oracle (ORCL) in 2005. From 1984 to 1999, Mr. Eubanks served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Symantec Corporation (SYMC), an international technology firm focused on protecting information and computer systems. In addition to Asempra, Mr. Eubanks serves on the board of directors of Concur Technologies, Inc. (CNQR), a software company that provides expense reporting and travel and meeting management solutions; GuardId Systems, Inc., a private developer of authentication systems to protect consumers against online identity theft; and Oakley Networks, a software company. Mr. Eubanks is also a member of the Oklahoma State University Engineering School Hall of Fame, is on the board of the Naval Post-Graduate School, and is a former officer in the Navy Nuclear Powered Submarine Force. Mr. Eubanks earned a Masters in Computer Science at the Naval Post Graduate School and a Bachelor of Science from Oklahoma State University. (Reuters Business: Officer & Directors)

1992 Paul Grayson

"About the Future of Computer Graphics [HK memory]"

Micrographix and National Chair for Missing Children Alert

J. Paul Grayson conceived Alibre's vision and product direction in 1997 and recruited Steve Emmons to join him in founding the company. Grayson provided the initial funding for Alibre and subsequently closed two private financings with the participation of leading private capital firms including August Capital, Centerpoint Ventures, Bain Capital, Rho Management and GE Capital.

Prior to founding Alibre, Grayson was the founder, chairman, and CEO of Micrografx (NASDAQ: MGXI), where he conceived and co-created the company's first product, PC-Draw, which was the first drawing program for the PC. Grayson is considered a technology industry leader due to his early innovation in PC graphics including the Windows environment. Micrografx shipped the industry's first Windows-compatible application in 1985. Micrografx went public in 1990. Grayson also led the technology industry's most successful charity event, the Micrografx Chili for Children Cook-off, for 10 years. (alibre, J. Paul Grayson, Chairman)

1991 Alfred Poor

alfredpoor.com, hdtvprofessor.com, PC Magazine

Alfred Poor spent more than 20 years writing reviews for PC Magazine, the most prestigious computer magazine in the world. I was a Contributing Editor and Lead Analyst for Business Displays for the magazine. Over the years, He developed the rigorous testing protocols used at PC Magazine to evaluate projectors and computer monitors.

He is also an internationally-recognized expert in the display industry. He is a founding member and past Chair of the Society for Information Display's Display of the Year Awards Committee, and I'm currently Chair of the Society's Delaware Valley chapter. He has also been a contributing editor for the Society's magazine, Information Display. He is Senior Editor and a Senior Research Associate with Pacific Media Associates, a leading market research firm in the large screen display market, where I work on HDTV and related issues. (hdtvprofessor.com)

1991 Featured Speaker

Nano-Technology talk from NASA

1990 David House

http://www.computerhistory.org/trustee/David,House/

Senior VP Intel Corp. "Advances in Microcomputers"

1989 Bill Gates

CEO Microsoft Corp.

William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$51.12 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2007, and employs more than 78,000 people in 105 countries and regions.

Born on Oct. 28, 1955, Gates grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. Their father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International. Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13. In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer - the MITS Altair. In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates' foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.

Philanthropy is important to Gates. He and his wife, Melinda, have endowed a foundation with more than $28.8 billion (as of January 2005) to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that in the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $3.6 billion to organizations working in global health; more than $2 billion to improve learning opportunities, including the Gates Library Initiative to bring computers, Internet Access and training to public libraries in low-income communities in the United States and Canada; more than $477 million to community projects in the Pacific Northwest; and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns.

Gates was married on Jan. 1, 1994, to Melinda French Gates. They have three children. Gates is an avid reader, and enjoys playing golf and bridge

1988 Chris Rukowski

Founder and CEO Rising Star Inc.

1987 Claudia Choi

Editor-In-Chief of Family Computing Magazine (only banquet)

1986 Philip Lemmons

Editor of BYTE Magazine

Philip Lemmons, editor-in-chief, BYTE Magazine

1985 Seymour Rubinstein

Originator of Word Star.

Seymour Ivan Rubinstein was born in 1934, he is a pioneer of the PC software industry. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and later moved to California. Programs developed partially or entirely under his direction include WordStar, HelpDesk, and Quattro Pro, among others. WordStar was the first truly successful program for the personal computer (in a commercial sense) and gave access to word processing to the general population for the first time. In some ways he might be called the typewriter killer.

Rubenstein began his involvement with microcomputers as director of marketing at IMSAI. Prior to this, he was a TV repairman.

http://www.fireinthevalley.com/fitv_timeline_1979.html

http://www.wordstar.org/wordstar/history/history.htm

1984 Steve Ciarcia

Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar

Steve Ciarcia is an Embedded Control Systems guru. From his "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar" column in BYTE magazine to his own magazine Circuit Cellar, he is an inspiration for the rest of us.

http://www.circuitcellar.com/

1983 Dr. Ken Iverson

IBM, Creator of APL

Kenneth Eugene Iverson (17 December 1920, Camrose, Alberta, Canada October 19, 2004, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) was a computer scientist most notable for developing the APL programming language. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions to mathematical notation and programming language theory.

The Iverson Award for contributions to APL was named in his honor.

He received his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics in 1951 from Queen's University, Kingston in Canada. At Harvard University, he received his Master's degree in 1951 in Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1954.

As an assistant professor at Harvard, Iverson developed a mathematical notation for manipulating arrays that he taught to his students. In 1960, he began work for IBM and working with Adin Falkoff, created APL based on the notation he had developed. He was named an IBM Fellow in 1970.

He later developed the J programming language.

http://keiapl.info/

http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/304/ibmsj3004O.pdf

http://elliscave.com/APL_J/tool.pdf

http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/032/falkoff.pdf

1982 Dr. Gary Kildall

President of Digital Research Inc.

Creator of the CP/M Disk Operating System

Gary Arlen Kildall (May 19, 1942 - July 11, 1994) was the creator of the CP/M operating system and GEM Desktop graphical user interface, and founder of Digital Research, Inc.

Kildall received his PhD in computer science from the University of Washington in 1972. While working as a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) US Navy in Monterey, California, he created implementations of the PL/I programming language for the Intel 4004 and 8008 CPUs. He referred to these versions as PL/M (M for microcomputer).

In 1973, Kildall began work on a disk operating system in order to create a host development environment for PL/M on microcomputers, and ended up with CP/M. He founded Digital Research after his resignation from NPS in 1976 and continued work on CP/M, which he originally sold in classified ads in the back pages of computer magazines. With the release of the Altair 8800 in January 1975 there was a commercial system capable of running CP/M, and before the end of the year a number of clones had appeared with disk drives that required it. By 1977, it was the most popular microcomputer operating system in existence, running on nearly every Intel 8080 or Zilog Z80 based computer.

In 1980, IBM approached Digital Research for a version of CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC. Legend has it that Kildall snubbed the IBM representatives by going flying in his Pitts Special (an aerobatic biplane) for several hours. Although widespread, the story is generally not accepted to be true because it was Kildall's wife, Dorothy, who handled business negotiations, not Kildall himself. Another story has it that IBM representatives wanted Dorothy to sign their standard non-disclosure agreement, which Dorothy considered overly burdensome. Kildall associate Gordon Eubanks has said that the non-disclosure was signed, but that Kildall was not enthusiastic about porting CP/M to the IBM PC's 8088 processor[1]. IBM returned to talk to Microsoft and Bill Gates saw the business opportunity of a lifetime. He obtained rights to a cloned design of CP/M, QDOS, from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer products, licensed it to IBM, and MS-DOS/PC-DOS was born.

The possible infringement problems between PC-DOS and CP/M have been the source of much speculation, with secondhand accounts of threatened lawsuits and secret deals, but none of the parties involved ever spoke publicly. Kildall wrote a 226-page memoir shortly before his death in 1994 that contained his account, but the memoir to date has not been published, although it served as source material for a chapter about Kildall and CP/M in the 2004 book They Made America by Harold Evans.

Kildall believed that PC-DOS infringed on CP/M's copyright, but copyright law as it pertained to computer software was in its infancy, the decision in the landmark Apple v. Franklin case was still two years away and by the accounts of Kildall's employees and friends, Kildall was wary of engaging IBM in a lengthy and costly lawsuit. Nevertheless, he confronted IBM in late 1980 with his allegation, and they agreed to offer CP/M as an OS option for the PC in return for Digital's release of liability[2].

When the IBM PC was introduced, IBM sold the operating system as an unbundled (but necessary) option. One of the operating system options was PC-DOS, priced at US$60. A new port of CP/M, called CP/M-86, was offered a few months later and priced at $240. Largely due to the substantial price difference, PC-DOS became the preferred operating system. IBM's decision to source its favored operating system from Microsoft was the beginning of the end of Digital Research's days as the world's largest manufacturer of software for microcomputers.

After CP/M, concerned by the proliferation of BASIC on microcomputers, Kildall created PL/I-80, a ANSI standard subset of the full PL/I programming language, to run on CP/M based microcomputers. He also went on to create a variety of experimental projects, including an implementation of the Logo educational programming language and interfaces between computers and CD-ROM drives and videodisc players. He created a CD-ROM version of Grolier's Encyclopedia. He left Digital Research in 1991 when the company was sold to Novell, and moved to suburban Austin, Texas, keeping a second home in California.

http://www.cadigital.com/kildall.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/kildall_hi.html

1981 Dr. Adam Osborne

Author "Microcomputer Tunnel Vision or Why I Designed and Built a New Microcomputer"

Adam Osborne (March 6, 1939 thru March 18, 2003) was a British author, book and software publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere.

Born in Thailand to British parents, Osborne spent much of his childhood in India. His parents were devotees of the famous sage Ramana Maharshi. He graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1961 and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Delaware. He started his career as a chemical engineer with the Shell Oil Company in the United States, but he left Shell in the early 1970s to pursue his interest in computers and technical writing.

Osborne was known to frequent the famous Homebrew Computer Club's meetings around 1975. He was best known for creating the first portable computer, the Osborne 1, released in April 1981. It weighed 23.5 pounds (12 kg), cost US$1795, just over half the cost of a computer from other manufacturers with comparable features and ran the popular CP/M 2.2 operating system. At its peak, Osborne Computer Corporation shipped 10,000 units of "Osborne 1" per month. For a time, it was a huge success.

http://www.bricklin.com/adamosborne.htm

1980 Carl Helmers

Executive Editor of BYTE Magazine

Carl Helmers is Chairman and Founder of Helmers Publishing, Inc. He earned his BS in Physics with distinction from the University of Rochester in 1970 where he also learned to appreciate chamber music. From 1975 to 1980 Carl was founding editor of BYTE, the first personal computer magazine. He also founded the trade magazines: Bar Code News (1981), Sensors (1984, He sold his Sensors magazine division to another publishing company in July 1999.), SETIQuest (1994, started and published 15 issues of SETIQuest, the magazine of SETI and bioastronomy, until September 1998.) and Desktop Engineering (1995).

http://www.helmers.com/

1979 Wayne Green

Publisher of Kilobaud,

Microcomputing and 73 Magazines

Remarkable Opportunities for the Hobbyist

Wayne Green is the founder of 73 Magazine, Byte, CD Review, Cold Fusion and dozens of other magazines. He is an international speaker as well as being a guest speaker on popular radio shows including Art Bell's late night program. Wayne speaks about amateur (ham) radio, health, nutrition, wealth, world travel, politics, cold fusion, submarines, education, new/future technologies, unusual books, ET's, and most any other topic a listener wants to discuss.

http://www.waynegreen.com/

1978 David Ahl

Publisher Creative Computing Magazine

The Sate of the Art in Computer Games

http://www.swapmeetdave.com/

1977 Mr. and Mrs. John W. Mauchly

Inventor of the first Digital Computer

The Circumstances Surrounding the Invention of the First Digital Computer

John William Mauchly (August 30, 1907 - January 8, 1980) was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, long held to be the first electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States. Together they started the first computer company, the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) and pioneered fundamental computer concepts including the stored program, subroutines, and programming languages. Their work, as exposed in the widely read "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" (1945) and as taught in "The Moore School Lectures" (1946) influenced an explosion of computer development in the late 1940's all over the world.

http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/mauchly/jwmintro.html

1976 There was no keynote speaker the first year.