In this exclusive talk, Jeff Gomez, CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment and the world's leading producer of transmedia entertainment properties, recounts his personal journey from the inner city to the soundstages of the greatest movies and video games of the past decade. Jeff will recount how his understanding of the fundamentals of storytelling and interactive technology in the 1980s influenced his ability to foresee and develop the techniques of multi-platform narrative being used today in projects as diverse as James Cameron's Avatar and Microsoft's Halo, as well as the nation-building we are witnessing in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring.For more information:

Keynote Speaker - Jeff Gomez

We were also able to obtain Aram Friedman as a featured speaker this year. Aram was Director of Engineering of the Hayden Planetarium from 1998 through 2002. He has been involved with film, video, computer graphics, and special effects industries.

Lawrence O'Gorman
Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs
Murray Hill, NJ USA

"Tales in Multimedia Security - From Digital Libraries to Biometrics to Telepresence"

Abstract

This talk combines a retrospective of past technologies and a look forward to a new one, with the objective of identifying common factors in the path from research to success. All work described in this talk involves multimedia signal processing and security. Our retrospective begins with digital libraries. In the early days of the World Wide Web, content providers were reluctant to publish electronically for fear of theft of material, so technologists provided watermarking. How has this worked out for the content owners, the watermark technologists, and the speed of adoption of digital libraries? We next examine an anti-counterfeiting technology combining image processing with the then new technology of public key cryptography. This combination was innovative, but was it successful? Finally, we examine biometrics. How were early hurdles overcome leading to biometrics' surge in research activity and global adoption? With knowledge of these past successes and challenges, we examine current work in telepresence. Why, 46 years after AT&T's introduction of the Picturephone, do most of us still travel rather than meet via video conference? Although many people might propose that bandwidth and network issues are still the problem, we suggest a more user-centric challenge, video privacy. If that is so, how can we overcome this to achieve telepresence success?

Biography:

Larry O'Gorman is a scientist and new technology champion in areas including image processing, pattern recognition, speech and video analytics, and multimedia security. He is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, as well as an Adjunct Professor in the Computer Science Department at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University.

At Bell Labs, he works in the area of multimedia signal processing, including video, image, audio, and other sensors. He teaches on the topic of signal security, which includes biometrics, watermarking, telephony, etc. Previous to Bell Labs, Dr. O'Gorman worked at Avaya Labs Research on signal and system security, signal processing, and multi-media systems. Before this he was Chief Scientist and co-founder of Veridicom, Inc., a developer of personal fingerprint authentication systems. Prior to this he was at Bell Labs under the parent coroporations of AT&T and Lucent Technologies.

He has written over 70 technical papers, eight book chapters, holds 15 patents, and is co-author of the books, "Practical Algorithms for Image Analysis" published by Cambridge University Press, and "Document Image Processing" published by IEEE Press. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the International Association for Pattern Recognition. In 1996, he won the Best Industrial Paper Award at the International Conference for Pattern Recognition and an R&D 100 Award for one of "the top 100 innovative technologies of that year." He is (or has been) on the Editorial Boards of four journals (including IEEE Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, and Pattern Recognition), and a member of several technical committees. He has served on US government panels to NIST, NSF, and NAE, and to France's INRIA.

He received the B.A.Sc., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Ottawa, University of Washington, and Carnegie Mellon University respectively.

2010 Richard Stallman

"Free Software, Free Society".

Richard Stallman is one of the originators of the free software movement. Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software without limitation, interference or restriction. In furtherance of this concept, he helped found the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/). In 1985, Stallman published the GNU Manifesto, which outlined a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix. The name GNU is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix. Stallman was responsible for contributing most of the necessary tools needed to create the operating system that eventually emerged as GNU/LINUX. These tools include a flexible and powerful text editor (Emacs), a compiler (GCC), a debugger (gdb), and a build automator (gmake). All these tools are in daily use by untold thousands of programmers. Come hear Stallman's Keynote presentation. It is sure to be an interesting and thought provoking presentation by someone who is a true pioneer of modern software development and a philosopher of software development and dissemination through society.

2009 Dr. Alain Kornhauser

"The Robotic Car of the Future"

Dr. Alain L. Kornhauser is a Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at PrincetonUniversity. He is also Director of Princeton’s Transportation Research Program, Co-Director for the NewJersey Center for Transportation Information and Decision Engineering (NJ Tide) and Vice chairman NewJersey Commission on Science and Technology. He received PhD and MA degrees in Aerospace andMechanical Sciences from Princeton University, and MS and BS degrees in Aerospace Engineering fromPennsylvania State University. His research interests include Optimization of Flows in StochasticNetworks, Computer Vision and Automatic Control of Vehicles and Design of Decision Support Systemsfor Individuals. He was co-editor of several books and has authored over 100 scholarly papers. He wasTeam Leader for Princeton’s entry in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, which earned a 10th seed, and forPrinceton’s entry in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, chosen to participate in the National QualifyingEvent.

Dr. Kornhauser is founded and Board Chairman of ALK Technologies, Inc. ALK designs and builds realtimecustomized decision systems for major transportation companies and develops markets, maintains andsupports transportation routing software and databases. It's brand software products PC*Rail, PC*Milerand FleetCenter are leaders in the rail, motor carrier and logistics sectors. It also produces the CoPilotfamily of in-vehicle navigation systems for North America, Europe and Australia. CoPilot is wellrecognized industry leader in portable route guidance systems winning numerous awards including the2006 LBS (Location Based Services) Challenge Grand Prize. ALK employs 120 professionals at itsheadquarters in Princeton, NJ and 60 in it European headquarters in London with smaller offices in Paris,Munich, Madrid and Taipei.

2008 David Perry

"Identity Theft"

David is Global Director of Education for Trend Micro, an antivirus software company. He is a leading authority on computer security and virus prevention. He has more than 25 years in the technical support and education field and is a top-rated industry speaker having appeared at numerous industry trade shows including RSA, EICAR, AVAR and has even spoken at the White House. He has also been featured on television and radio and in print media interviews. David has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, ZDNet and other publications. He has appeared on TV and radio all over the world, including Good Morning America, BBC News, Fox News and ABC News. He is one of the most quoted experts in the field of computer viruses, malware and security education. At the end of 1999 during the Y2K vigilance, he was on hand in Washington D.C. providing his services as a computer virus expert for the President’s Task Force on Y2K Issues. Before joining Trend Micro he worked at Norton on Norton Antivirus, and at McAfee.

[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Perry_%28Trend_Micro%29 and from GreatLakesGeek.com]

Constantine Kaniklidis

"Vista Exposed"

Constantine Kaniklidis, President of TES (Technology EducationSupport), is an industry-recognized expert in Data and InternetSecurity, Microsoft OS (Windows XP/Server 2003/Vista/Longhorn(2007)), Web Development and Web Services, among others. Over the past 25 yearshe 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 theSpecies"

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

Sol was aProfessor 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 MSfrom Rutgers University. He alsotaught in the Rutgers University Graduate School of Computer Science and was avisiting lecturer at other Colleges and Universities. Sol is the author of 16books, most of them on Personal Computer hardware and software design. Manyhave been translated into several foreign languages. He has authored over 300magazine articles that have appeared in more than 30 different magazines andjournals. He was a monthly columnist in Byte magazine (for many years theleading Personal Computer magazine) for six years, beginning in 1976 and wasthe Editor of Microsystems Journal (a magazine for computer hardware andsoftware 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 3electrician. He graduated from Ridgefield Park High School,Ridgefield Park, New Jerseyin 1962. After being written off as a failure by teachers due to poor grades inhigh school, Gregory Olsen planned to join the United States Army until he wascounseled to try college for several months. Through an IBEW Local 3scholarship, Olsen attempted college, kept his grades high, and graduated magnacum laude with multiple degrees from Fairleigh Dickinson University.He later graduated with a PhD from the University of Virginia.

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

2005 Dr. Brian Kernighan

"Computers: What Matters, and Why"

Brian Kernighanreceived his BASc from the University of Toronto in 1964 and a PhD inelectrical engineering from Princeton University in 1969. He was a memberof the Computing Science Research center at Bell Labs until 2000, and is now aprofessor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton.He is the author of 8 books (including the well known "white book" onC with Dennis Ritchie) and some technical papers, and holds 4 patents. Brian'sresearch areas include programming languages, tools and interfaces that makecomputers easier to use, often for non-specialist users. He is also interestedin technology education for non-technical audiences.

2004 Dr. Rebecca Mercuri

"Computers, Public Policy and You"

Dr. Rebecca Mercuri became an overnight national celebrityin 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 successfullydefended her Doctoral Dissertation "Electronic Vote Tabulation: Checks andBalances" at the University of Pennsylvania, and then found herself defendingthe Democratic Recount Committee in the now-legendary Bush v. Gore case workingits way through the court system. Hertestimony was presented to the U.S.11th Circuit Court of Appeals and referenced in the briefs to the U.S. SupremeCourt. Since then, she has providedformal testimony on voting systems to the House Science Committee, FederalElection 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 arefrequently cited by the media, and she authors the quarterly "SecurityWatch" column in the Communications of the Association for ComputingMachinery. She is currently at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy Schoolof Government, as a research fellow in their Belfer Center for Science andInternational Affairs. Dr. Mercuri isalso a popular TCF lecturer and long-time attendee.http://www.notablesoftware.com/rmercuri.html

2003 Marge and Bruce Brown

"Wireless Networking, Realities and Promises"

Marge and Bruce have tested, evaluated, and written about literally 100s ofnetworking 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 hybridnetwork technology testing, including the effectiveness of combining multiplewireless technologies. Bruce and Marge have also written many shorter tutorials involving installing and usingwireless networks.

2002 Ari Kaplan

"HowWireless Will Revolutionize Lives"

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

2001 Emmanuel Goldstein

"Hacking and Computer Security"

Emmanuel Goldstein (emmanuel@2600.com) has been publishing2600 Magazine, The Hacker Quarterly since 1984. He traces his hacker roots to his college daysat SUNY Stony Brook in the late seventies. He led the movementto free famed hacker Kevin Mitnick from prison and stop a film that portrayedhim in an inaccurate light. He recentlycompleted a film of his own ("Freedom Downtime"), a documentary thatfocuses on stopping the other film ("Takedown"), the Free Kevinmovement, and the hacker world. Lastyear, Goldstein was sued by the Motion Picture Association of America forprinting source code on the www.2600.comwebsite that enabled DVDs to be controlled by their owners. The case is currently being appealed. He also hosts America'slargest (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 andBusiness"

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 fivefilms for the 48-Hour Film Project in five entirely different cities in only 72 days. Four of thosefilms earned places in the "Best Of" screenings for their respective cities. Bill is now the mostfrequent 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 speechesfor 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 onthree continents before settling in Pennsylvaniain 1971. His involvement with hacker culture began in 1976 and he contributedto his first open source project in 1982. Since then, his open source softwaredevelopment activities have included maintaining the fetchmail email client,contributing editing modes to the Emacs editor, co-writing portions of the GNUncurses library, and contributing to giflib/libungif, libpng, and some of thePython standard library. Meanwhile he has written a number of HOWTO documents,including much of the Linux Documentation Project corpus. Raymond suffers froma mild form of congenital cerebral palsy.

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

After 1997 Raymond became a prominentvoice in the open source movement and was one of the founders of the OpenSource Initiative. He also took on the self-appointed role of ambassador ofopen source to the press, business and mainstream culture. He is a giftedspeaker and has taken his road show to more than fifteen countries on sixcontinents. He is routinely quoted in the mainstream press, and as of 2003 hasprobably achieved more public visibility than almost any other open sourceadvocate.

Raymond and his supporters havecredited his tactics with a number of remarkable successes, beginning with therelease of the Mozilla (then Netscape) source code in 1998, and he is widelycredited with having taken the open source mission to Wall Street moreeffectively 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 ofPretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software inthe world. He was the first to make asymmetric, or public key, encryptionsoftware easily available to all. This led the US Customs to make him thetarget of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held thatUS exportrestrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread allaround 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 isalso a fellow at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet andSociety.

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 computerscientist and the College of Engineering Chair Professor of Computer Science atTexas A&M University. He is most notable fordeveloping the C++ programming language. A rough English attempt atpronunciation of his name would be "B-yar-ne Strov-stroop".

Stroustrup, in his own words,"invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its firstimplementation... chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designedall its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extensionproposals in the C++ standards committee." Stroustrup also wrote what manyconsider to be the standard text for the language, The C++ ProgrammingLanguage, which is now in its third edition. The text has been revised twice toreflect the evolution of the language and the work of the C++ standardscommittee.

Stroustrup is cand. scient. (theDanish 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 thehead of AT&T Lab's Large-scale Programming Research department, from itscreation until late 2002. He currently works at Texas A&M Universityas Professor and holder of the College of Engineering Chair in ComputerScience.

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 bornin 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 trulysuccessful program for the personal computer (in a commercial sense) and gaveaccess to word processing to the general population for the first time. In someways he might be called the typewriter killer.

Rubenstein began his involvementwith microcomputers as director of marketing at IMSAI. Prior to this, he was aTV 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 EmbeddedControl Systems guru. From his "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar" column inBYTE magazine to his own magazine Circuit Cellar, he is an inspiration for therest 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 programminglanguage. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions tomathematical notation and programming language theory.

The Iverson Award forcontributions to APL was named in his honor.

He received his Bachelor's degreein Mathematics and Physics in 1951 from Queen's University, Kingstonin Canada. At Harvard University, he received hisMaster's degree in 1951 in Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in1954.

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

He later developed the Jprogramming 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 Desktopgraphical user interface, and founder of Digital Research, Inc.

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

In 1973, Kildall began work on adisk operating system in order to create a host development environment forPL/M on microcomputers, and ended up with CP/M. He founded Digital Researchafter his resignation from NPS in 1976 and continued work on CP/M, which heoriginally sold in classified ads in the back pages of computer magazines. Withthe release of the Altair 8800 in January 1975 there was a commercial systemcapable of running CP/M, and before the end of the year a number of clones hadappeared with disk drives that required it. By 1977, it was the most popularmicrocomputer operating system in existence, running on nearly every Intel 8080or Zilog Z80 based computer.

In 1980, IBM approached DigitalResearch for a version of CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC. Legend has it thatKildall snubbed the IBM representatives by going flying in his Pitts Special(an aerobatic biplane) for several hours. Although widespread, the story isgenerally not accepted to be true because it was Kildall's wife, Dorothy, whohandled business negotiations, not Kildall himself. Another story has it thatIBM representatives wanted Dorothy to sign their standard non-disclosureagreement, which Dorothy considered overly burdensome. Kildall associate GordonEubanks has said that the non-disclosure was signed, but that Kildall was notenthusiastic about porting CP/M to the IBM PC's 8088 processor[1]. IBM returnedto 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 ofSeattle Computer products, licensed it to IBM, and MS-DOS/PC-DOS was born.

The possible infringementproblems between PC-DOS and CP/M have been the source of much speculation, withsecondhand accounts of threatened lawsuits and secret deals, but none of theparties involved ever spoke publicly. Kildall wrote a 226-page memoir shortlybefore his death in 1994 that contained his account, but the memoir to date hasnot been published, although it served as source material for a chapter aboutKildall and CP/M in the 2004 book They Made America by Harold Evans.

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

When the IBM PC was introduced,IBM sold the operating system as an unbundled (but necessary) option. One ofthe 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 dueto the substantial price difference, PC-DOS became the preferred operatingsystem. IBM's decision to source its favored operating system from Microsoftwas the beginning of the end of Digital Research's days as the world's largestmanufacturer of software for microcomputers.

After CP/M, concerned by theproliferation of BASIC on microcomputers, Kildall created PL/I-80, a ANSIstandard subset of the full PL/I programming language, to run on CP/M basedmicrocomputers. He also went on to create a variety of experimental projects,including an implementation of the Logo educational programming language andinterfaces between computers and CD-ROM drives and videodisc players. Hecreated a CD-ROM version of Grolier's Encyclopedia. He left Digital Research in1991 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 andBuilt a New Microcomputer"

Adam Osborne (March 6, 1939 thru March18, 2003) was a British author, book and software publisher, and computerdesigner who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere.

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

Osborne was known to frequent thefamous Homebrew Computer Club's meetings around 1975. He was best known forcreating the first portable computer, the Osborne 1, released in April 1981. Itweighed 23.5 pounds (12 kg), cost US$1795, just over half the cost of a computerfrom other manufacturers with comparable features and ran the popular CP/M 2.2operating system. At its peak, Osborne Computer Corporation shipped 10,000units 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 andFounder of Helmers Publishing, Inc. He earned his BS in Physics withdistinction from the University of Rochesterin 1970 where he also learned to appreciate chamber music. From 1975 to 1980Carl was founding editor of BYTE, the first personal computer magazine. He alsofounded the trade magazines: Bar Code News (1981), Sensors (1984, He sold hisSensors magazine division to another publishing company in July 1999.),SETIQuest (1994, started and published 15 issues of SETIQuest, the magazine ofSETI 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 73Magazine, Byte, CD Review, Cold Fusion and dozens of other magazines. He is aninternational speaker as well as being a guest speaker on popular radio showsincluding Art Bell's late night program. Waynespeaks about amateur (ham) radio, health, nutrition, wealth, world travel,politics, cold fusion, submarines, education, new/future technologies, unusualbooks, 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 FirstDigital Computer

John William Mauchly (August 30,1907 - January 8, 1980) was an American physicist who, along with J. PresperEckert, 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 theUnited States. Together they started the first computer company, theEckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) and pioneered fundamental computerconcepts including the stored program, subroutines, and programming languages.Their work, as exposed in the widely read "First Draft of a Report on theEDVAC" (1945) and as taught in "The Moore School Lectures" (1946) influenced anexplosion 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.