Why weren't the rest of you there? (ICONference summary)

[rwifall@NMSU.edu (Richard Wifall)]

ICONference '94
aka Kansas-fest

	The following article documents most of my experiences at
Kansasfest this year including a brief summary of the material
discussed in the conferences I attended.  Since each attendee has an
experience that is unique I will not merely cover the conference but
my whole trip to Kansas City.


Tuesday, July 19 -

	After getting off work tuesday afternoon I started packing for
my trip to Kansas City.  My plans were to drive up to Albuquerque
where I would spend the night with my parents.  Then, on up to Denver
where I was to meet with Jawaid and Erik and drive the remainder of
the trip to Kansas City.
	I packed my tower GS, so that I would be able to show off some
of the things that I had been working on lately, along with the normal
things a person would bring on a trip.  (Despite the excitement of
going to Kansas-fest I still managed to remember to bring my clothes.)


Wednesday, July 20th -

	The trip to Albuquerque and then up to Denver was for the most
part uneventful so I won't bore you with recounting each and every
stretch of I-25 that was having the road repaired.
	I arrived at Jawaid's apartment in Littleton and after
greetings were exchanged we repacked the car in a more efficient
manner so that we could fit additional computer equipment and luggage.
After the car was packed the three of us (Jawaid, Erik and I) headed
up to Sequential Systems so that Jawaid could swap some drives and
pick up some material to bring along.  (He still forgot to pick up
some copies of discQuest to sell and flyers to hand out but SS mailed a
box to him at the conference so everything turned out great.)
	Finally, after stopping for munchies and gas we hit the road
for KC.  The driving went quite well until the sidewall of one of the
tires started seperating from the lower layer.  We stopped at the next
town where (of course) all the places were either closed or didn't carry
the right size tire.  We settled with a slightly larger tire and
continued our trek.
	By this time the sun was threatening to go down so Jawaid
decided that he should get started on his roast of Mike Westerfield
that he had to deliver Thursday night.  Erik and I helped him
brainstorm and cranked out some quite humorous material.  The sun
going down put a halt to writing down notes for it so our discussion
turned toward non-computer-related topics.  (Like my apparent lack of
a decent background in movies.)
	We arrived at the dorms at around 2am and alot of people were
still up and around.  I wandered around to get an idea of who was
around and started matching faces with names.  A few people had
gathered in Brian Tao's room so I brought over the GS<>IRC Music Disk
#2 to show off.  By this time it was already getting pretty late so I
crashed for the night.


Thursday, July 21st -

	Thursday was the real start of ICONference so Tom Weishaar
gave a short speech welcoming everyone and then got things underway.
	The first session had "Unix and the Internet" by Jim Maricondo
placed against "Soldering for Beginners: Which End of the Iron is
Hot?" by Dave Ciotti.  I went to Jim's conference, but I heard that
Dave's conference was quite informative.  Jim started with a general
view of the history of the internet.  From there he briefly discussed
various internet utilities that allow you to search for and gather
files and information from around the net.  The conference was aimed
at people who did not have any previous internet experience but
several of the Internet people asked semi-technical questions just to
give Jim a hard time. :)
	The next session was the "Launch of the Mensch Computer" by
Bill Mensch and Nick Dazio.  Bill introduced the people doing work on
the computer and briefly pointed out their qualifications.  The
computer itself is a little portable box thing.  It is battery powered
and has an LCD display and reminded me more of a PDA then a portable
computer (except it had a detachable keyboard).  The computer comes
with MenschWorks in the firmware but I did not have a chance to find
out what capabilities MenschWorks had.  It also has the ability to
switch off the firmware so that you can bypass MenschWorks if you want
to write your own software.  Bill talked about why he choose the 6500
series of chips which was basically because of power consumption,
capabilities and price in comparison to other processors.  He wants
people to start developing software for the computer but doesn't
appear to have any plan or incentive that would attract developers.
He wants the Mensch computer to be a home appliance like a VCR or
toaster but it seemed to me that he wanted someone else to figure out
how to get it into that market.  It won't run any variety of Apple II
software, although an emulator would be possible to write.  The
computer is supposed to go on sale on the anniversary of Mensch
retiring from Motorola which was in August I think.  I left my Mensch
folder with my dad but I think the price is going to be $895.
	The next item on the agenda was lunch.  Although it was
typical cafeteria fare it was still food.  They also held computer
Jeopardy during lunch but I wandered off to the dorms with a few other
people.
	Following lunch the conferences were "Macintosh System 7.5 Overview"
by Mike Pruneau and "Development Tools for the Mensch Computer" by
Jihad Jaafar and Larry Hittel.  I decided go harass.. err I mean
listen to the Apple speaker and his system 7.5 demo.  The main
features I remember were a new boot thermometer and the Apple Guide.
The new boot thermometer was one of a few features that led the crowd
to yell out "just like the GS" after Mike said "7.5 comes with feature
xxx".  The Apple Guide is apple's new help system.  It looked quite
usable and included such things as circling in red items on the screen
that were involved in the procedure you were getting help about.  In
all Mike gave a good presentation and didn't get frustrated with an
audience that was pointing out how the mac wasn't better then the GS
at any possibility.
	At 2:10 "Animasia 3-D" by Michael Lutynski was paired up
against "Unix and the Apple IIgs: GNO/ME" by Jim Maricondo.  I had
seen Animasia at kansas-fest '92 so I decided to go to Michael's
conference to see what he had done since then.  Michael showed how to
create several 3d objects with Animasia and also showed a demo
animation he had created.  All I can really say is that Animasia looks
to be an awesome program.  It can import Autocad DFX files.  It has an
impressive array of tools including lathe, donut, extrude, and more.
It creates fill mode paintworks animations.  It is simply incredible.
Michael said that he is going to try to be shipping by the end of
August by he hasn't started the manual yet.  He expects the retail
price to be in the $99 range and I personally think it will be worth
it.
	The next set of presentations was "All About the PowerPC" by
Mike Pruneau and "Apple II Interfacing: How to Control Real-World
Devices" by Erick Wagner.  I watched the PowerPC conference.  He
showed some real time rendering that was cool. Not much else to say
really.  Its a real fast Macintosh.
	The final set of conferences for the day was "Multimedia
Authoring with CD-ROM" by Greg Nelson and "Looking Good In Print" by
Joe Kohn.  I didn't go to either of them because I was heading back to
the dorms to test some other people's modems with my fax software.  It
turns out the lines in the dorms were so poor that I couldn't get any
of the faxmodems to connect.
	After messing around with the modems for awhile it was time
for the ICONcatenation Buffet and Celebrity Roast.  This years roast
was of Mike Westerfield of Byteworks fame.  Before the roast took
place I had the opportunity to introduce myself to Joe Kohn and talked
with him and a few other people for a little bit.  The roast started,
with Jawaid Bazyar, Burger Bill, and someone else roasting Mike
Westerfield.  I say "someone else" because I didn't stay for all the
roast either.  I figured that I could get a copy of the tape of what I
missed so I headed over to the debug lab to help get things setup.  I
took my GS down there and Mike Horwath had his Linux box setup.  Mike
was showing off Xmosaic and I showed off my fax software, GS<>IRC Music
disk #2, and some other things.
	The remainder of the night consisted of talking with people
until I finally went to sleep sometime late again.  


Friday, July 22nd -

	Friday was the second day of the conference.  Randy Brandt had
the poor luck of having his keynote address "Confessions of a
Primordial Programmer" early in the morning and before a windows
conference.  "Preview Of Microsoft Windows 4.0" by Pat Wilson,
Microsoft was placed against "The Ins and Outs of Telecom Scripting"
by Nathaniel Sloan.  I guess none of the conferences interested me
enough to convince me to wake up early, so I slept till lunch.
	After lunch was over the next two conferences were
"Hyperstudio as a Development Environment" by Roger Wagner and
"Microsoft Office for Windows, Part 1" by Pat Wilson, Microsoft.  I
didn't go to either, so I must have been up in the dorms.
	The next set of conferences was "Quick Click Calc with Publish
and Subscribe Programmer Details" by Mike Westerfield and "Microsoft
Office for Windows, Part 2" by Pat Wilson, Microsoft.  Needless to
say, I went to the Quick Click Calc presentation.  Quick Click Calc is
a spreadsheet program by Byteworks if you didn't know.  It looked to
be full featured with graphing, formulas, encryption, publish and
subscribe, formatting features, and more.  Mike gave a good
introduction to publish and subscribe which I can't summarize easily
here.  Basically they are relational links.  He also mentioned that
Byteworks is planning on releasing two more productivity products for
the GS in the future.  He wants input from the users as to what kind
of product they would like to see.  (Personally I would like a
database program myself :)
	The next conference was "All About the Internet" by Joe Kohn.
I only heard the beginning of the conference because I was dragged
away to the dorms by someone.  What I did hear sounded like it had
some goood information.
	The finally set of conferences were "3D Technology Featuring
3D-Logo" by Mike Westerfield and "Programming the Newton" by Josef
Wankerl.  I went to the newton conference which was quite interesting.
The newton runs a Newton Script interpreted language ontop of the main
operating system.  Josef covered frames, parent-child relationships,
soups and how they were used on the Newton.  There wasn't enough time
to go into much detail but it was a good overview of what programming
for the Newton is like.
	After the conference finished a group of us wandered over to
the cafeteria but the hadn't started serving dinner yet so we wandered
back over to the dorms.  The remainder of the evening consisted of
general socializing, pizza (Provided by Roger Wagner.  Thanks!), and
Nerf Wars.  The Nerf weapons were acquired from the local HyperMart and
Nathaniel Sloan led a well armed group to ambush Dean Esmay.  With
that mission accomplished infighting broke out in the Nerf Legions in
the form of duels.  Eventually people started wandering back to the
dorms for more socializing and sleep.


Saturday, July 23rd -

	The final day of the conference was an unstructured day and
featured a miniexpo where exhibitors could set up a table to show off
their stuff.  I set up next to Joe Kohn and was taking shareware fees
on DeskTracker and EasyOpen.  I was also showing off sample output
from my fax program as well as handing out GS/Mail and AudioZap 2.0
flyers (for James Brookes and Ian Schmidt who couldn't make the
'fest).  Joe Kohn was on my left and was taking subscriptions to
Shareware Solutions II, his excellent Apple II magazine.  On my right
Mike Horwath and Chris Shepard were showing off Xmosaic and other
internet programs.  Next over was Brian Tao who took over handing out
(and demonstrating) GS/Mail after he got set up.  The next table over
was between the doors and had Jim Maricondo selling Twilight II and
Jawaid Bazyar demonstrating Comptons Encyclopedia.  On the other side
of the room Michael Lutynski was demonstrating Animasia 3D.  Next to
him was the Mensch computer design team showing off a prototype and
some other hardware.  The last table on that side of the room was a
company selling home automation hardware.
	The front of the room had tables of hardware and software for
sale by resource central.  Back on the left side of the room was Mike
Westerfield and Byteworks selling Quick Click Calc and his whole line
of Orca programming products.  Next to him was Auri Rahimzadeh
demonstrating PowerGS #3 (And playing the same song over and over
again too loudly.)
	The expo lasted till 4pm and at that time Jawaid, Erik and I
started packing to leave Kansas City.  After getting all packed up we
joined everyone else and headed to KC Masterpiece for dinner.  They
weren't able to handle the number of people that we had so we ended up
getting split into groups of 4-6 people.
	After a good dinner we said our goodbyes and hit the road for
Denver.  The rest of the trip to Denver was for the most part
uneventful except for the 50mhz GS we designed and built out of used
Pepsi cans. ;)
	After getting five or six hours of sleep at Jawaid's apartment
I once again hit the road alone on my way back here.  Except for the
used tire, that we had bought on the way out to Kansas City, losing
its tread, the trip went pretty well.

	I probably have left out or forgotten some things that
happened during the festival, and I might have even mixed up and
gotten some things wrong.  ICONference was a whirlwind of activity and
fun so I apologize if I made any mistakes in this retelling.

	Now I am back at school and more excited about the Apple II.


	- Richard Wifall   July 26th, 1994


This article is Copyright 1994 by Richard Wifall.  This article may be
reproduced freely in part or full as long as this notice is included
and I am sent a copy of the publication.  All other rights are reserved.

Richard Wifall
11500 Tahiti Pl. NE
Albuquerque, NM  87111
--
Richard Wifall - rwifall@nmsu.edu - http://starship.nmsu.edu:6502/
"We are children of the Mensch."