Trenton Computer Festival

The Trenton Computer Festival is the longest continuously running personal computer show in the World. It was started in 1976 at Trenton State College by Sol Libes and Allen Katz. TCF has attracted attendees from across the United States and Canada. It moved to Mercer County Community College as it grew larger, and in 1999 moved to the NJ Convention Center in Edison, NJ. In 2005, TCF returned to The College of New Jersey, formerly Trenton State College, to celebrate its 30th Anniversary. In 2006 TCF was extended by David Soll to include an Information Technology Professional Conference on the Friday before the Festival. In 2010 the ARRL NJ State Convention started co-locating with TCF. Also in 2010 was the start of STEM seminars and STEM Outreach, scheduled by TCNJ's Susan Donohue.

TCF, Inc. is a non-profit educational corporation under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

TCF is run by volunteers from the following non-profit organizations. Funds from TCF are used to support their operations:

• Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey
• The College of New Jersey
• New York Amateur Computer Club
• Mt. Airy VHF Radio Club
• Delaware Valley Radio Association
• IEEE Region 1
  • Princeton Chapter - ACM / IEEE Computer Society
  • IEEE Princeton Central Jersey Section

The show features the following:

• On Friday - An Information Technology Professional Conference conducted by Princeton ACM/IEEE Computer Society
  • IT Professional Conference Founded and Chaired by David F. Soll in 2006
• On Saturday & Sunday the following:
  • An indoor flea market
  • An indoor retail market
  • User group displays
  • Exhibits by national vendors (i.e. Creative Labs, Microsoft, Intel)
  • Many of seminars and talks by experts on a variety of topics
  • Special events
  • On Saturday evening, a banquet dinner including a featured banquet speaker.
  • The 2011 ARRL NJ State Convention - Talks, Demos and Mentoring
  • Amateur Radio License Exam Ham Cram on Saturday
  • Amateur Radio License Exams on Saturday and Sunday
• On Saturday Only
  • Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC)
  • Full Day Arduino Developer/User Tutorial/Workshop
• On Sunday Only
  • STEM Community Outreach for Students K-12 from 1 pm to 4 pm

The 2006 31st TCF was held on the weekend of April 22 & 23 at The College of New Jersey.

The 2007 32nd TCF was held on the weekend of April 28 & 29 at The College of New Jersey.

The 2008 33nd TCF was held on the weekend of April 26 & 27 at The College of New Jersey.

The 2009 34th TCF was held on the weekend of April 25 & 26 at The College of New Jersey.

The 2010 35th TCF was held on the weekend of April 24 & 25 at The College of New Jersey.

The 2011 36th TCF will be held on the weekend of April 2 & 3 at The College of New Jersey.

Past Keynote Speakers

• 2010 - Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation, "Free Software, Free Society" (Keynote)
• 2010 - Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation, "Free Software - The Inside Story" (Banquet)
• 2009 - Dr. Alain Kornhauser, Princeton University, "DARPA Challenge - Cars that Can Drive Themselves. The Robotic Car of the Future." (Keynote)
• 2009 - Dr. Alain Kornhauser, Princeton University, "Computers in Transportation: From Navigation to Automation." (Banquet)
• 2008 - David Perry, on Identity Theft (Keynote); Also gave Banquet Talk
• 2007 - Constantine Kaniklidis, Vista Exposed (Keynote)
• 2007 - Sol Libes, TCF Co-founder, on The Origin of the (Computer Hobbyist) Species; (Banquet Talk)
• 2006 - Gregory Olsen, Entrepreneur and the 3rd private citizen in space.
• 2005 - Brian Kernighan, co-author of first book on the C programming language
• 2004 - Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, Electronic Voting
• 2003 - Bruce and Marge Brown, PC Magazine contributing editors
• 2002 - Ari Kaplan, CEO of Expand Beyond Corporation
• 2001 - Emmanuel Goldstein, Publisher of 2600 Magazine, The Hacker Quarterly
• 2000 - Jeff Waldhuter, Director of Bell Atlantic (Verizon) Network Services Strategy
• 1999 - Mike Elgan, Editor, Windows Magazine
• 1999 - Eric Raymond (Banquet Speaker) Open-source-software evangelist
• 1998 - Stacy Horn, Founder of Echo, an online community
• 1997 - Dennis Hayes, CEO and Founder, Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc.
• 1997 - Phil Zimmermann, Creator of Pretty Good Privacy
• 1997 - Bjarne Stroustrup, AT&T Researcher and Designer of the C++ Language
• 1996 - Robin Raskin, Editor-in-Chief of Family-PC Magazine
• 1995 - Bill Machrone, Technology VP for Ziff-Davis Publishing
• 1994 - Steven Levy, Editor of Wired and MacWorld Magazines
• 1993 - Gordon E. Eubanks, CEO Symantec Corporation
• 1992 - Paul Grayson, Micrographix and National Chair for Missing Children Alert
• 1991 - Alfred Poor, PC Magazine ???
• 1990 - David House, Senior VP, Intel Corp.
• 1989 - Bill Gates, CEO and co-Founder of Microsoft Corp.
• 1988 - Chris Rukowski from Rising Star??? Not sure of year
• 1987 - Claudia Choi, Editor-In-Chief of Family Computing Magazine (only banquet)
• 1986 - Philip Lemmons, Editor of BYTE Magazine
• 1985 - Seymour I. Rubinstein, Originator of Wordstar
• 1984 - Steve Ciarcia, Ciarcia’s Circuit Cellar columnist, Byte Magazine
• 1983 - Dr. Ken Iverson, IBM, Creator of APL
• 1982 - Dr. Gary Kildall, President of Digital Research Inc., Creator of the CP/M Disk Operating System
• 1981 - Dr. Adam Osborne, Author – "Microcomputer Tunnel Vision or Why I Designed and Built a New Microcomputer"
• 1980 - Carl Helmers, Executive Editor of BYTE Magazine
• 1979 - Wayne Green, Publisher of Kilobaud Microcomputing and 73 Magazines – Remarkable Opportunities for the Hobbyist
• 1978 - David Ahl, Publisher of Creative Computing Magazine – "The State of the Art in Computer Games"
• 1977 - Mr. and Mrs. John W. Mauchly, Co-Inventor of the first large-scale general-purpose electronic digital computer - "The Circumstances Surrounding the Invention of the First Digital Computer"
• 1976 - None

External links

• Official website
• article about the original 1976 festival from the NY Times