C4 was a Macintosh

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

 software developer

Software developer

A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...

s conference held in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. The conference ran from 2006 through 2009. It was created by Jonathan Rentzsch after the demise of MacHack

MacHack (convention)

MacHack was a Macintosh software developers conference first held in 1986 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The final MacHack conference took place on June 19-21, 2003. In 2004 the conference was renamed ADHOC...

. In May 2010 Rentzsch announced that he would no longer operate the conference due to a dissatisfaction with Apple's policies toward iPhone OS development and the lack of a strong negative reaction from the Apple developer community.

C4[0]

The first C4 conference was a two-day event held at the University Center in downtown Chicago. It was held on October 20 and October 21, 2006, with an optional trip to Adler Planetarium

Adler Planetarium

The Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum in Chicago, Illinois was the first planetarium built in the Western Hemisphere and is the oldest in existence today. Adler was founded and built in 1930 by the philanthropist Max Adler, with the assistance of the first director of the planetarium, Philip Fox...

's TimeSpace

Timespace

Timespace may refer to:* Timespace – The Best of Stevie Nicks, a greatest hits album by Stevie Nicks* In physics, the concept of spacetime...

 show for attendees on October 22. Due to that year's Chicago Marathon

Chicago Marathon

The Bank of America Chicago Marathon is a major marathon held yearly in Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Alongside the Boston, New York, London and Berlin Marathons, it is one of the five World Marathon Majors. Thus, it is also an IAAF Gold Label race...

, attendees unable to stay downtown were provided free passes to the Chicago 'L'

Chicago 'L'

The L is the rapid transit system serving the city of Chicago and some of its surrounding suburbs. It is operated by the Chicago Transit Authority...

 railway system for the weekend (an arrangement referred to as "Plan 'L'").

Presenters

• Steve Dekorte, software developer
• Drunkenbatman, blogger, organizer of Evening@Adler (held at Adler Planetarium)
• Brian W. Fitzpatrick, developer of Subversion, Fire
  Fire (instant messaging client)
  Fire is the first instant messaging client for Mac OS X , that can access IRC, XMPP, AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, and Bonjour. All services are built on GPL’d libraries, including firetalk, libfaim, libicq2000, libmsn, XMPP, and libyahoo2. Fire supports OS X v10.1 and higher.The latest version...
  
   and Apache Portable Runtime
  Apache Portable Runtime
  The Apache Portable Runtime is a supporting library for the Apache web server. It provides a set of APIs that map to the underlying operating system . Where the OS doesn't support a particular function, APR will provide an emulation...
  
  
• John Gruber
  John Gruber
  John Gruber is a writer from the greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area of the USA. Gruber received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel University. He worked for Bare Bones Software from 2000 to 2002 and Joyent from 2005 to 2006...
  
  , coauthor of Markdown
  Markdown
  Markdown is a lightweight markup language, originally created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz allowing people "to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML "...
  
   and influential blogger (see Daring Fireball
  Daring Fireball
  Daring Fireball is the web site of John Gruber, an Apple enthusiast and writer. Daring Fireball hosts Gruber's opinions in the form of a blog, and also some of Gruber's software...
  
  )
• Gus Mueller, creator of VoodooPad
• Jonathan Rentzsch, software developer
• Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire
  NetNewsWire
  NetNewsWire is a news aggregator for Mac OS X and iOS, and was one of the first desktop RSS readers on any platform.- History :NetNewsWire was developed by Brent and Sheila Simmons for their company Ranchero Software. It was introduced on July 12, 2002, with NetNewsWire Lite, a free version missing...
  
  
• Aaron Hillegass
  Aaron Hillegass
  Aaron Hillegass started programming at the age of 10. After graduating university he took his first full time job, working for the Mitre Corporation in their Advanced Signal Processing Lab. He went on to develop NEXTSTEP application software for Wall Street. Between 1995 - 1997 he was employed at...
  
  , software developer and Cocoa
  Cocoa (API)
  Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface for the Mac OS X operating system and—along with the Cocoa Touch extension for gesture recognition and animation—for applications for the iOS operating system, used on Apple devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and...
  
   instructor at Big Nerd Ranch
• Paul Kafasis, software developer and founder of Rogue Amoeba
  Rogue Amoeba
  Rogue Amoeba Software, LLC is a Macintosh software company that produces audio software, specializing in applications for audio capture. Rogue Amoeba's best-known products are Audio Hijack and Audio Hijack Pro. The Audio Hijack programs allow for users to capture and record audio from any program...
  
  

Notable attendees

• James Duncan Davidson
  James Duncan Davidson
  James Duncan Davidson is an American photographer and former software developer. While a software engineer at Sun Microsystems , Davidson created Tomcat, a Java‐based webserver application and the Ant Java‐based build tool.He was raised in Oklahoma and Texas, and is currently self‐employed as both...
  
  , former Sun Microsystems
  Sun Microsystems
  Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
  
   engineer, creator of Tomcat
  Apache Tomcat
  Apache Tomcat is an open source web server and servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation...
  
   and Ant
  Apache Ant
  Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to Make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects....
  
  

C4[1]

The second C4 conference was held at the Chicago City Centre Hotel on August 10–August 12, 2007. Like the first conference, C4[1] was organized by Jonathan Rentzsch.

Presenters

• Tim Burks, RubyObjC
  Ruby (programming language)
  Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...
  
   developer
• Drunkenbatman
• Adam Engst, publisher of TidBITS
  TidBITS
  TidBITS is an influential electronic newsletter and web site dealing primarily with Apple Computer and Macintosh-related topics.-Internet publication:...
  
  
• Bob Ippolito, PyObjC
  PyObjC
  PyObjC is a bidirectional bridge between Python and Objective-C. It allows Python scripts to use and extend existing Objective-C class libraries....
  
   developer
• Daniel Jalkut, developer of MarsEdit
  MarsEdit
  MarsEdit is a weblog editor for Mac OS X. It supports posting to many popular blogging services, such as blogger, Movable Type, Tumblr and WordPress.-Features:* Bookmarklets for sending a page from your browser to MarsEdit.* Image and file uploading....
  
   (acquired from Brent Simmons)
• Jonathan Rentzch
• Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic Inc.
  Panic (company)
  Panic is an Oregon-based American software company that specializes in shareware applications for Mac OS X. It was founded by Steven Frank and Cabel Sasser....
  
  
• Wil Shipley
  Wil Shipley
  William "Wil" Jon Shipley is a Macintosh software developer, best known for co-founding and heading The Omni Group in 1991, where he did consulting work and developed software for the NeXTSTEP operating system, Rhapsody and later Mac OS X...
  
  , creator of Delicious Library
  Delicious Library
  Delicious Library is a media cataloguing application for Mac OS X, developed by Delicious Monster to allow users to manage collections of books, movies, CDs, and video games....
  
  
• Shawn Morel, VMware
  VMware
  VMware, Inc. is a company providing virtualization software founded in 1998 and based in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2004, and operates as a separate software subsidiary ....
  
   developer working on Fusion
  VMware Fusion
  VMware Fusion is a virtual machine software product developed by VMware for Macintosh computers with Intel processors. Fusion allows Intel-based Macs to run x86 and x86-64 "guest" operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris as virtual machines simultaneously with Mac OS...
  
  

Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons is an American writer. He was a senior editor at Forbes magazine and is now a writer at Newsweek.-Career:He has written a book of short stories, The Last Good Man , a novel, Dog Days , and a fictional biography, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody...

, senior editor at Forbes

Forbes

Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

magazine and writer of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs under the pseudonym "Fake Steve Jobs", was scheduled to speak at C4 but was unable due to an illness.

C4[2]

The third C4 conference was held at the Chicago City Centre Hotel on September 5–September 7, 2008. Like the previous conferences, C4[2] was organized by Jonathan Rentzsch. He announced the conference via Twitter feed on April 23, 2008.

Presenters

• Alex Payne, developer for Twitter
  Twitter
  Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
  
  
• Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire
  NetNewsWire
  NetNewsWire is a news aggregator for Mac OS X and iOS, and was one of the first desktop RSS readers on any platform.- History :NetNewsWire was developed by Brent and Sheila Simmons for their company Ranchero Software. It was introduced on July 12, 2002, with NetNewsWire Lite, a free version missing...
  
  
• Buzz Andersen, creator of PodWorks
• Craig Hockenberry, creator of Twitterrific
  Twitterrific
  Twitterrific is a Mac OS X and iOS client for the social networking site Twitter. The client, created by The Iconfactory, lets users view in real time "tweets" or micro-blog posts on the Twitter website as well as publish their own.-Added value:...
  
  
• Mike Lee, former developer for Delicious Monster
  Delicious Monster
  Delicious Monster is a software company based in San Francisco, California that sells the shareware software program Delicious Library. Its founders are Wil Shipley, one of the three co-founders of The Omni Group, and Mike Matas, who worked as an interface designer at The Omni Group...
  
   and Tapulous
  Tapulous
  Tapulous, Inc. is an American software and video game developer and publisher headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company as part of the Disney Interactive Media Group...
  
  
• Rich Siegel, founder of Bare Bones Software
  Bare Bones Software
  Bare Bones Software is a Bedford, Massachusetts, USA software company developing software tools for the Apple Macintosh platform. The company is best known for its BBEdit text editor, marketed under the registered trademark "It doesn't suck," and has been mentioned as a "Top-Tier Mac developer" by...
  
  
• D. Richard Hipp
  D. Richard Hipp
  Dwayne Richard Hipp is the architect and primary author of SQLite as well as Fossil SCM. He and his wife, Ginger G. Wyrick, currently live and work in Charlotte, North Carolina. He also authored the Lemon Parser Generator and CVSTrac. CVSTrac became the inspiration for Trac. He is also a member of...
  
  , architect and primary author of SQLite
• Thomas Ptacek
• Troy Gaul
• Wil Shipley
  Wil Shipley
  William "Wil" Jon Shipley is a Macintosh software developer, best known for co-founding and heading The Omni Group in 1991, where he did consulting work and developed software for the NeXTSTEP operating system, Rhapsody and later Mac OS X...
  
  , founder of Delicious Monster
  Delicious Monster
  Delicious Monster is a software company based in San Francisco, California that sells the shareware software program Delicious Library. Its founders are Wil Shipley, one of the three co-founders of The Omni Group, and Mike Matas, who worked as an interface designer at The Omni Group...
  
  

C4[3]

The fourth C4 conference was held at the DoubleTree Chicago from September 25 to September 27, 2009. It sold out within eight hours of the initial announcement. This year's version featured Blitz talks, talks held between the conference's standard presentations. In these talks, speakers were held to 5 minutes per presentation, with each slide having a maximum of 20 seconds on screen.

Presenters

• Augie Fackler, Google engineer
• Christopher Lloyd, creator of Cocotron
• Dave Dribin, founder of BitMaki
• John C. Welch
• Jonathan Rentzsch
• Matt Drance
• Michael Lopp, author of Rands in Repose
• Peter Wayner
  Peter Wayner
  Peter Wayner is a writer known for his books on technology and his writing for publications like The New York Times, InfoWorld, and Wired magazine. His work on mimic functions, a camouflaging technique for encoding data so it takes on the statistical characteristics of other information, is an...
  
  
• Patrick Thomson

External links

• C4[0] schedule
• Jonathan Rentzsch's blog posts about C4
• Photos of C4 by attendee James Duncan Davidson
  James Duncan Davidson
  James Duncan Davidson is an American photographer and former software developer. While a software engineer at Sun Microsystems , Davidson created Tomcat, a Java‐based webserver application and the Ant Java‐based build tool.He was raised in Oklahoma and Texas, and is currently self‐employed as both...
  
   at Flickr
  Flickr
  Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
  
  
• Photos of C4 by presenter John Gruber
  John Gruber
  John Gruber is a writer from the greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area of the USA. Gruber received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel University. He worked for Bare Bones Software from 2000 to 2002 and Joyent from 2005 to 2006...
  
  at Flickr