The Hackers Conference is an annual invitation-only gathering of designers, engineers and programmers to discuss the latest developments and innovations in the computer industry.
History
The first Hackers Conference was organized in 1984 in Marin County, California, by Stewart Brand and his associates at Whole Earth and The Point Foundation. It was conceived in response to Steven Levy's book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which inspired Brand to arrange a meeting between the individuals, or "hackers", the book named. The first conference's roughly 150 attendees included Steve Wozniak, Ted Nelson, Richard Stallman, John Draper, Richard Greenblatt, Robert Woodhead, and Bob Wallace. The gathering has been identified as instrumental in establishing the libertarian ethos attributed to cyberculture, and was the subject of a PBS documentary, produced by KQED: Hackers - Wizards of the Electronic Age.
Conferences have been held every year since 1986, after someone (?) asked on The WELL, "Why not do it again?". Glenn Tenney became the event organizer at that time, along with an ever changing list of assistants, for this and each subsequent conference to this day.