> Andy Hertzfeld talks about holding meetings for the "Hackers Conference" on a houseboat in Sausalito

Hertzfeld: Yeah, I actually helped organize The Hackers Conference. Stewart Brand was the driving
force behind it. Actually, his close collaborator, Kevin Kelly, is also a great guy. Had read Steven Levy's
book called Hackers, and his insight, Steven Levy talks about the three generations of hackers, you
know, the MIT Model Railroad Club, you know, all the way up to the Mac, I guess. But Kevin Kelly
thought, “Well, here's these three different cultures of hackers. They've never met each other. Let's see if
we could get a meeting where all three of them, three different strains, generations of hackers, could all
meet each other.

Hsu: So, it was directly motivated by the book.

Hertzfeld: Yes, directly motivated by the book. And then so Kevin Kelly told this idea to his collaborator,
Stewart Brand. And Stewart had the idea, well, let's have a conference. Let's have The Hackers
Conference. And then Stewart is very, very smart and wise in how to organize people. He's thinking,
“Well, if we're going to create the Hackers Conference, we need a bunch of hackers who are going to
figure out what the Hackers Conference is.” And I was one of them. We met on his houseboat in
Sausalito once a week for nine weeks or eight weeks, and we developed an agenda. And then my next
job of it was they needed to recruit the hackers to go to The Hackers Conference, and I was responsible
for getting the Apple community to come. And I did really, just about every important person on the Mac,
as well as like Woz, came to The Hackers Conference. And it was tremendous fun. I think it convened
like, at midnight or something like that. Everyone went around, every person, there were over 100 people,
all saying what they did and stuff, and then let us loose to just have fun with each other. I had just gotten
Switcher working, so it had a lot of buzz to it. I was just demo, demo, demo for two straight days. And
then, of course, there's a lot of crazy hacker characters who are fun to meet.