This Wednesday night will be The Event of The Year, as far as in-the-know techies are concerned. Oh sure there’s that Web 2.0 conference that costs like an arm and a leg to participate in, but not to worry, concerned netizen! There’s a much funner alternative to that stodgy forward-thinking fest. Merlin Mann, the man behind such cool-page-of-the-day sites like 43 Folders and 5ives, has organized the Web 1.0 Summit this Wednesday night (from 7 to 9 pm) at House of Shields in San Francisco. At Web 1.0, we’ll turn back the clock to the era of the dot-com boom. We’ll reminisce about cool page of the day awards, fake spinny counters, splash pages, the pronunciation of .gif (guh-if? or jif?), and of course, the <br> tag. And any time someone mentions “paradigm shift” or “monetize” everyone takes a drink. Fun.

And if you want to give a presentation of your own, check out the details on the Upcoming.org page. Lots o’ people will be there to join the revelrie — I know I will (along with other fellow Metbloggers, as well as Sean from LA). So come on out and make sure to bring that brick of a cellphone you carried in the ’90s (biggest phone wins free beer).