Netter’s Dinner Declares Success, Shuts Down
One of the longest-running traditions in the Macintosh world — the 27-year run of the annual Netter’s Dinner at Macworld Expo (now Macworld/iWorld) in San Francisco, has called an end to the festivities, based largely on the fact that, with most Mac users on the Internet and able to interact in real time, the event has clearly done its job of connecting all the right people.
Organized primarily by Mac developer Jon Pugh, the Netter’s Dinner launched in 1986 as a way for early Mac users on the nascent Internet to meet in person. When I first attended in 1992, I remember being amiably mocked by Jon during his often lengthy and always amusing audience survey — at some point in the middle, he mugged for the crowd and asked “And how many people read TidBITS?” only to be greeted with quite a number of raised hands. (And just imagine how life would have been different if the question had been met with only puzzled looks!) Other questions would reveal just who had been on the Internet the longest (a few had participated in its creation), who had the most bandwidth in their house (networking guru Bill
Woodcock always won that one), who had the most storage online (I remember answers in the terabytes back when hard disks were measured in hundreds of megabytes), and so on.
The attendees at the Netter’s Dinner were a veritable Who’s Who of the Macintosh community through the 1990s and 2000s. Marshall Clow, who worked on StuffIt Deluxe and Eudora, among much else, is the only person to have attended all 27 Netter’s Dinners, but many others were nearly as regular. Kee Nethery, who worked on the Apple Internet Servers and moved on to start the Kagi payment service, handled the money since 1995. Then there was Mark Johnson, who was responsible for starting Apple’s first Internet server (ftp.apple.com) on a Mac IIci under his desk in 1989. And until the last few years, Leonard Rosenthol, one of the main guys behind Aladdin Systems and now
the PDF Architect at Adobe, was a mainstay.
While I could never hope to list all the other wonderful people I’ve enjoyed eating with over the years at the Netter’s Dinner, it’s also impossible to avoid thinking of folks like Tim Holmes (an Apple evangelist now running his own coffeehouse), Jon Callas (who later co-founded PGP) and his wife Tamzen Cannoy (who worked with Jon on an early virtual meeting space program), Richard Ford (the Open Transport product manager, now managing his own iOS device stands and case company), Amanda Walker (then an Internet app developer at InterCon, now a security guru at Google), Alan Oppenheimer (one of the creators of AppleTalk, now the co-developer of the Art Authority iOS app), David Shayer (then a disk recovery utility developer, now
working on iOS at Apple), Raines Cohen (a BMUG stalwart), Martin Minow (a SCSI guru at Apple who died in 2000 — see “The Passing of Martin Minow,” 1 January 2001), and Tom Weyer (an Apple networking evangelist and system engineer). At its peak, the Netter’s Dinner hosted about 200 people; attendance in subsequent years dropped significantly, as the Apple industry evolved and people moved on to different pursuits.
One of the nice things about the Netter’s Dinner was how it was always the same. We’d gather in a large group as the show was closing, and then walk 1.2 miles to the Hunan on Sansome and Broadway. It’s surprisingly amusing to walk in a large group of geeks through crowded city streets, and for a few years when Jon Pugh couldn’t make it (and before there were GPS apps or even good Internet mapping services), I had the terrifying task of leading the way. After everyone had gotten drinks, Betty from the Hunan would open up the buffet-style service, and we’d jostle into line to load our plates with hot and spicy Chinese food. Once the eating slowed down, Jon or I would launch into the audience survey, taking questions from the
crowd and playing the audience for as many laughs as possible. Eventually we’d run out of questions, and everyone would trickle out to walk or cab back.
Marshall Clow summed it up nicely when we were making the decision to wrap it up this year: “A lot of fun was had; a lot of Szechuan food was consumed.”
So long, everyone, and see you on the net. I think it’s going to be more than just a geek fad.
Thanks, Adam, for this great remembrance. I was lucky enough to attend a few of these, and you captured it wonderfully.
Ah yes, I still remember that one where you were wearing the lampshade by the end. Never figured out where you found it. :-)
So glad that I had the opportunity to attend one of these. It was an intense gathering. I liked Adam's description of the walk (which I recall being fast-paced — must have been a year when Adam was leading it).
I've been to many of them and it was always a great time. I was wondering if there was going to be one this year, since there was no announcement.
What a nice tribute to a great tradition.
I made it to some in the mid 2000's, and although I wasn't a Mac luminary, I was made to feel as welcome as anyone; it was truly an egalitarian gathering.
There was the year we did the QTVR. And the year Amanda bought us all InterCON shirts. The year with the delicious fish on a platter. The year I flew past SF to LA and missed it. The year I met the Storm guys, who later hired me. The year Marshall signed up first (oh wait, that was ALL of them).
Let's not forget Betty, who fed us for all those years. She was sad to hear that we weren't coming, and she would welcome us back in a second.
When we started, the Hunan on Sansome at Broadway was right off the Broadway exit of the Embarcadero freeway, which came from the Bay Bridge. When that fell down in the 1989 earthquake, they got more isolated and appreciated us greatly.
If you find yourself in SF, stop in and let them warm you up with their spicy Hunan style.
Yep, Betty was always extremely hospitable and welcoming, and remembered us every year. It's not often a single restaurant has such a run either!
Wifey and I only made it one Macworld Expo San Francisco, so I only made it to one Netter's Dinner (with a copy of Tron on DVD, as it happened).
This article makes me sad.
Thanks for an excellent history, and thanks to you, and others, for the hard work in making the dinners possible.
I never attended Netters, but it brought back memories of MAUG on Compuserve, and its ringleader, a guy named Neil something I think. I was 76136,1457. There were MAUG get-togethers around then also, I do remember going to a couple of those. And I remember my first web experience running a text-based browser on my Mac SE using a protocol for IP over dial up whose name escapes me.
I went to just one of these in my early days as a developer. It was my first exposure to a group of Mac intellectuals and I was fascinated and encouraged.
I made it to these every year I attended Macworld, which was pretty much every year from 1993-2008. Alas, change in timing of MacWorld sealed it for me. However, I did take my Chinese wife (who is from Hunan) there to eat when we visited San Francisco in 2009.
Not sure how we were allowed in the door, but my partner and I made it to a couple of Netter's Dinners and had a really fun time. We were doing stuff with Stone Design at the time, and also involved with Mac User Groups.