My favorite part of setup was Grainger. We rented an oversized sound system for Woz's talk, and the Grainger staff was gracious enough to let us Play Real Loud. I was never able to play Pink Floyd's Sorrow loud enough... until that point. In addition to setting up A/V and chairs in Grainger for the keynote speech, we also setup the tables and networking for the Conference Employment Fair. In DCL, lecture halls were setup, walk-in registration and t-shirt sales were conducted and information packets were published. In Beckman, CAVE tours were organized. At about 9 pm, Woz arrived, laying aside the anxieties of the Conference Committee, who hadn't heard from him since August. Unlike EOH, we managed to wrap everything up before daybreak.
The Conference events were a resounding success. Everybody who helped out deserves recognition: Professor Francis and his CAVE crew pulled through in a pinch and demonstrated just how cool NCSA can be to participants from across the midwest; Charley Kline not only gave a talk with Jon Roma on the history of CSO/UIUCNet but also led tours through the underground bunker that houses Node1. Professors Andrew Chien, Rajesh Gupta, Ralph Johnson, and Dan Reed gave talks on a variety of relevant subjects in addition to talks by David Jeske, Ron Rice and Chuck Thompson. MechMania was perhaps the most successful event of the conference. Eight teams from across the Midwest competed, and all were profoundly impressed by the concept and API that Jay Kreibich and Brian Swetland built. Don Ray and the Computer Science Department as a whole deserve our profound thanks for their help with the programming contest and the conference as a whole. We must also, of course, thank all our corporate sponsors, including AIS, Andersen Consulting, BALR Consulting, Citrix, Compuserve/Spry, Enterprise Integration Technology, FactSet, Hughes Information Technology, IBM, SEI Information Technology, Silicon Graphics and Symantec.
Woz's talk was, in a word, great. He spoke about the process that he went through during his whole life (from 5th grade on) to build the Apple computer. Mr. Wozniak was a more dynamic speaker than anyone expected. We thanked Steve in the most profound way we could, with the gift of an official ACM@UIUC coffee mug. This article wouldn't be complete if we didn't acknowledge Alan Braverman's stunning performance that evolved from a simple sound check before Woz's talk to a whole pregame show. The latter bit of Alan's tomfoolery, in addition to the keynote speech was captured on DAT, SVHS BetaCam, as well as being blasted out over CCTV and the MBONE. Mr. Wozniak has agreed to allow free distribution of his talk, and we will be making copies available next semester, once we assemble the footage into a consumer-friendly format (VHS). With the "First-Annual Midwest Regional ACM Chapter Conference" complete, planning is already in motion for next year's event. If you are interested in joining the committee or just seeing what it's all about, mail conference@acm.uiuc.edu and you'll be added to the list.
Conference '95 Committee:
Norbert Burger, John Criswell, Ryan Daulton, Ben Gross, Joel Jones, Max R. Levchin, David Morgan, Amy Ryan, Jill Smith, Jonathan Stark, Brian J. Swetland, and Jeff Thompson.Conference '95 Volunteer Staff:
Jeffrey Absher, Scott Banister, Alan Braverman, Andrew Todd Brown, Charles Clark, Michael James Eakes, Greg Fast, Joe Gross, Dave Jeske, Greg Kaiser, Edward Kang, Jay Kreibich, Kenyon Lee, Dan Norris, Daniel Sachs, Chris Seguin, Stephen Sprunk, David Thanairongroj, Brett Trimble, Paul Watts, and Dan Wellman.