In his own version of technological archaeology, Andy offers a glimpse at unique examples of creative genius from the past. He then turns his sights to the future and look at collaboration technologies that are flowing our way. Because as we all know, business health requires that you always drink upstream from the herd. This evening session will make you laugh, make you cry, and doggone it, it'll make you think. Much like an Oprah's Book Club selection, except you don't have to pretend to read anything.

Andy Ihnatko describes himself as America's 42nd Most-Beloved Industry Figure, because "It's vaguely credible-sounding but impossible to really prove or disprove, and thus is exactly the sort of tag I'd been looking for."

A regular columnist for Macintosh magazines for over a decade (and currently Macworld's opinion columnist), Andy has been named to the Power 25 list of the Macintosh industry's most influential people every year since the list's inception, and has written two books. He has also contributed to "Playboy," "Yahoo! Internet Life" and "too many online publications to rationally count." His writings have been incorporated into college curriculum and been licensed by NASA.

Though proud of the above accomplishments, Ihnatko is nonetheless resigned to the fact that he'll probably be best-known for creating "The Original MacQuarium," a 50-page book of plans and instructions for converting any Classic-style Macintosh into a functional 2.5-gallon aquarium. Published in 1993 as one of the Internet's first e-Books, it's provided Ihnatko with a steady stream of emails from new and happy MacQuarium builders.

Ihnatko is The Chicago Sun-Times' technology columnist. He lives in Boston with his two goldfish, Click and Drag. His website (and well-thumbed blog) can be found at www.andyi.com.

This session is one of many from the IT Conversations archives of the Mac OS X Conference presented by O'Reilly Media, October 25-28, 2004.