KANSAS CITY, MO — December 18, 2008 — Technology historian and documentarian Jason Scott will be the keynote speaker at KansasFest 2009, the world’s only Apple II computer convention. Scott, whose documentary about dial-up bulletin board systems was presented at KansasFest 2007, brings with him a comprehensive insight into the Apple II and its role in the development of the personal computer.
“I’ve been wanting to attend KansasFest for years,” said Scott. “That there’s still an Apple II conference going on after all this time is just wild.”
Scott is the creator and webmaster of TEXTFILES.COM, a Web site dedicated to collecting the files and related materials from the era of the dial-up bulletin board systems. This Web site, originally built from files he collected as a BBS user in his early teens, has expanded to many gigabytes of data and now receives thousands of visitors a day. Inspired to create “the ultimate BBS list” from the hundreds of lists on his Web site, he suddenly started receiving dozens of stories from BBS users and operators who found their old BBSes listed. Recognizing a missing piece in the story of computers, Scott traveled roughly 25,000 miles to record 250 hours of footage, from which he created the five-and-a-half-hour final product, BBS: The Documentary. Having completed this project in 2005, Scott has since begun work on Get Lamp, a new documentary about text adventures, as well as Arcade, a film about coin-operated pinball and video game arcades.
Scott has been a featured speaker at events such as hacker conference DEF CON; the Internet meme conference ROFLCon; and the Vintage Computer Festival. His cat, Sockington, currently has more than 4,000 followers on microblogging site Twitter, where he’s been nominated for a Shorty Award for best content producer in the Humor category.
KansasFest 2009, the 20th annual Apple II conference, is set for July 21st through July 26th at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri. KansasFest was originally hosted by Resource Central and has been brought to you by the KFest Committee since 1995. Any and all Apple II and Macintosh users, fans, and friends are invited to attend this year’s “summer camp for geeks.” Registration details will be announced on the KansasFest Web site in early 2009. For photos, schedules, and presentations from past year’s events, please visit the event’s official Web site at https://www.kansasfest.org/.
CONTACT:
KansasFest 2009
https://www.kansasfest.org/
http://twitter.com/kansasfest/