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dows, and the Mac. Dale was wondering himself where the Web was going, and felt he could find out, and perhaps also help people make it go somewhat sensibly, by getting everyone together.

About twenty-five of the early Web developers gathered at O'Reilly's offices in Cambridge. There was Lou Montulli, who had adapted Lynx for the Web, and his boss; a group from NCSA including Eric Bina, Marc Andreessen, Chris Wilson, who was porting Mosaic to the PC, and Alex Totic, who was porting it to the Mac; Tom Bruce, author of Cello; Steve Putz from Xerox PARC, of map server fame; Pei Wei, author of Viola; and others. The focus of the meeting was on defining the most important things to do next for the Web development community. In his friendly, encouraging way, Dale got us all talking. I brought up the general idea for a Web consortium. We discussed what it could be like, whether it should be consortium or an organization or a club. At one point I put the words Club Web up on the whiteboard. . . . Well, it was an option. I led a brainstorming session to list the needs for the next few months, covering the walls on all sides with ideas grouped to make some kind of sense.

The event was quite a bonding occasion for some members of the community. Even for hard-core devotees of the Internet it's fun to meet face-to-face someone you have communicated with only by e-mail. During the meeting several people commented on how surprised they were that Marc, who had been so vocal on the Internet, was so quiet in person. A few of us were taking photos, and Marc was the only one who basically refused to be photographed. I managed to sneak a picture of him with a telephoto lens, but for all his physical size and lack of hesitation to come out blaring on the www-talk newsgroup, he and the others from NCSA were remarkably self-conscious and quiet.

I returned to CERN with a clearer vision that a consortium was needed. Then one day the phone in my office rang. It was reception saying there were four people from Digital Equipment Corporation to see me. Now, CERN was not a place where people