WELL Tales
A place where community members are welcome to drop in and add to our growing collection of stories about The WELL and its lengthy history. Activity here is sporadic, and contributions are generally added when we’re celebrating a major anniversary or other WELL-related milestones.
WELLTales was originally born on April 1, 1995 to mark our 10th anniversary, to swap stories and to honor the growth of the community that has made this place unique in the world. We reopened the conference for our 14th birthday, with members contributing even more stories to enrich our collection of WELL history.
In 1995, the conference was hosted by Tina Loney (onezie); Leha Blaney (foggy); John Beattie (jcbeat); and Cliff Figallo (fig). They described the purpose as a “collage of anecdotes, myths, queries and critiques of what was, what wasn’t and what could have been; where those who booted up the first VAX, those who have just begun their adventure, and everyone in between, engaged each other in an oral history of our shared experience here. The friendship, the romance,the scandal, the comedy: The WELL.”
When the conference reopened in 1999, it was ably hosted by Eric Rawlins (woodman) and Erik Van Thienen (levant).
For our 20th Anniversary on April 1, 2005, we re-opened WELL Tales again, with Alan Turner (arturner), Diane Stanislaw (zzzcat), Elaine Richards (booter), and Robin O’Donnell (ode), serving as hosts.
Time Line — the first ten years of The WELL
Historical Photos – early members of The WELL
Hosted by: WELL Conferencing Team (confteam)
Shortcut: g welltales