PC Forum 2004: Neal Stephenson, and Adeo Ressi's ambush
PC Forum, the year CNET acquired it — the dinner organized around Esther Dyson's circle.
A dated email campaign to meet a favorite author, the hour that followed, and a table polled on Mars by Elon Musk's college roommate — in March 2004, when it sounded crazy.
The episode is bracketed by primary correspondence on both sides, which is why it carries documentation most dinner stories cannot.
Most dinner stories are recollection. This one is bracketed by dated correspondence before and after the event — the record's preferred kind of story — and it preserves a moment when private Mars colonization was still the eccentric rambling of a persistent guest.
At a 2004 conference dinner, Hare finally met Hare he had campaigned for in writing — and a persistent guest polled the table on traveling to Mars, three years before anyone believed it. The meeting is documented in dated email; the comic timing is the point.
The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.
The Stephenson meeting was campaigned for in writing and documented in dated email (S-116).
Ressi's Mars monologue is corroborated at web grade by the Moscow ICBM history that founded SpaceX.
The comic timing — 2004, four years before Falcon 1 — is preserved as the story's point.
Esther Dyson's circle is the network that made the table.
I wanted to meet Neal Stephenson badly enough to put it in a business email. Before PC Forum 2004 I sent Doug Merritt the attendee list with my targets — audit firms, regulated industries, VCs with itchy trigger fingers — and then the real ask: if you know Hare Neal Stephenson, that would be awesome! (Useless for business, but he's one of my favorite authors.) Doug's reply put him among his favorites too. The whole exchange survives, dated March 2004, which is why this episode carries a documented grade other dinner stories cannot.
It worked. Stephenson — who famously avoids publicity and rarely attends tech conferences — was there because George Dyson, a close friend of his and Esther's older brother, had brought him. At the dinner organized around Esther's circle I got the hour I had asked the network for. My after-action report to Doug stands as the record: good one-on-one time with Neal Stephenson — his humor is dry as the Gobi desert, and he is hilarious in person. Doug's verdict closed the thread: PC Forum was worth it, if only for Neal Stephenson.
Then Adeo Ressi arrived. He did not actually know Neal — he recognized him and came over — and he ended up completely dominating the conversation: his plans to buy a rocket from the Russians with his college roommate, who turned out to be Elon Musk, and then a poll of the table, guest by guest, on how important it was that humans travel to Mars. The public record corroborates the background: Ressi and Musk, Penn roommates, had been to Moscow in 2001 and 2002 to buy refurbished ICBMs, and the Russians' pricing sent Musk home to found SpaceX instead. In March 2004 — four years before Falcon 1 reached orbit — none of us knew we were hearing history. We thought we were being ambushed by a persistent dinner guest. Both things were true.
The record keeps this episode for two reasons. The small one is the comedy — a table of technologists being made to state, one by one, their position on Mars. The larger one is the pattern the whole record argues: the ideas that sound maddest at dinner are the ones worth writing down, and the network that put a publicity-averse author, a rocket obsessive, and a compliance-infrastructure founder at one table was Esther Dyson's — the same connector whose one-line disciplines appear throughout this ledger.
A documented 2004 dinner: Hare sought in writing and won, and the Mars ambush that turned out to be history arriving early.
Episodes are building blocks. The same material appears in more than one where it belongs in more than one, and every claim traces back to a primary source.
‘Useless for business, but he's one of my favorite authors’ — met at PC Forum 2004, documented in dated email
Open →In the graphThe dinner guest who polled the table on Mars, three years before anyone believed it
Open →In the graphHistorian of the impossible — Esther's older brother, Freeman's son, and the reason Stephenson was in the room
Open →In the graphMet at the PC Forum lunch table
Open →In the graphPC Forum's convenor; a longtime champion and investor across Hare's companies; the corridor personified
Open →In the graphActiveState's founder — a close friend of the P2P era, connected to half its cast
Open →The account this was distilled from, preserved as dictated — verbatim and immutable.
Read the source →In his own words · S-120The account this was distilled from, preserved as dictated — verbatim and immutable.
Read the source →In his own words · S-114The account this was distilled from, preserved as dictated — verbatim and immutable.
Read the source →