It was May 15, 1974. The Merritt Conference Room on the Third Floor of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. About two dozen guys had responded to a notice from Lou Katz and Reidar Bornholdt. It was headed:

UNIX USERS MEETING

The "meeting" began at 10:30am and ran till about 5pm. The big feature was "Ken Thompson Speaks."

At a time, over 30 years later, where there are well over 100 Linux
User Groups in Canada, and I can't count how many UNIX (BSD or OS X), and FLOSS groups there are worldwide, this may not seem like much. But it was, indeed, the acorn from which we have all sprouted.

Lou is now in the SF Bay Area; I think Reidar is in Oregon.

Thank you both.