Since 2010, the KansasFest Committee has recognized members of the Apple II community who have made significant contributions to the Apple II, either in promoting or developing for the platform during its active years, or in helping to advance or preserve the Apple II since its production had been discontinued.
At KansasFest 2014 last July, we announced this year’s winners:
- Margot Comstock was the co-founder and editor of the much-loved Softalk magazine. At its peak, Softalk had 250,000 readers and uniquely offered broad and deep coverage of everything Apple II related, including programming, game playing, business use, and home use. She gave the keynote speech at KansasFest 2014.
- Al Tommervik was the co-founder and publisher of Softalk magazine with Margot Comstock.
- Michael J. Mahon is a respected expert on Apple II sound and distributed computing, and he routinely advances the capabilities of the Apple II. He created AppleCrate II, a parallel processing system built from 17 Apple IIe’s, and he developed NadaNet, a networking technology underlying the AppleCrate. Mahon has also worked on sound synthesis projects, including the drum sequencer “DMS Drummer” in collaboration with 8 Bit Weapon and ComputeHer. He contributes his expertise to the community through extensive documentation and Usenet.
- Andrew Roughan is a leader in the Australian Apple II community. He has helped organize OzKFest, an Australian Apple II gathering, and is an accomplished programmer specializing in telecommunications software. He is a contributor to Juiced.GS and to Marinetti, the TCP/IP stack for the IIgs.