This year will be the 25th KansasFest, the annual meeting of Apple II enthusiasts held in Kanas City, MO. It will also be the 35th anniversary of the release of two important parts of the classic Apple II experience: The Disk II drive, and Applesoft BASIC. It was these two innovations that played a major role in propelling the Apple II ahead of its contemporaries.
It is fitting that for this KansasFest, the keynote address will be given by Apple employee #6, Randy Wigginton. Wigginton helped Steve Wozniak with the software used to control the Disk II drive, and when Woz was too busy to write his own floating point BASIC, it was Wigginton who took the source code from Microsoft and adapted it to the Apple II, creating Applesoft BASIC.
To hear more about Wigginton, his time at Apple and afterwards, plan to be in KC this July, from the 23rd to the 28th! Check out their web site here.