KansasFest welcomes back one of its alumni. Though 2018 will mark Wagner’s third time as a keynote speaker for the event, most current attendees haven’t had the opportunity to hear him speak because his last appearance was 23 years ago. He has deep roots in the Apple II community, back to the beginnings of the platform. In 1978, Wagner started his own software publish-ing company, Southwestern Data Systems (SDS), as a vehicle for some of his first software products for the Apple II, Programmer’s Utility Pack and Apple-Doc, sold on cassette. He also wrote a word processor for the Apple II, The Correspondent.

During the years he also wrote articles for the major publications of the day, including Call-A.P.P.L.E., Nibble, inCider, A+ Magazine, and GS+. Wagner is best remembered for his long-running Assembly Lines column in Softalk, teaching that first generation of Apple II users how to write software in 6502 assembly language.

He later renamed his software company to Roger Wagner Publishing and continued to provide quality software for both the 8-bit Apple II and the 16-bit Apple IIGS. His most famous contribution to the IIGS was the HyperCard-inspired program, HyperStudio, which linked pictures, audio media, and text with clickable links, a foretaste of the hyperlinked web that was to later arrive in the 1990s.

Source video: archive.org/details/KansasFest_2018_Roger_Wagner_K…