To add to some historical context, the 1997 meeting was inspired in large part by the "gap day" that was organized between the International Conference on Undergraduate Physics Education (ICUPE 1996) and the AAPT meeting held in College Park, MD at the University of Maryland. The ICUPE itself was fabulous success, with a large 2 volume conference proceedings with some fabulous papers - but people also recognized that there were problems with the conference-based publishing model (see below). I should say that the 1996 ICUPE (and this mindset of PER-focused conferences) was preceded by the 1991 Bremen conference (again, really influential conference proceedings in the 90s) and the 1992 or 1993 conference on the use of computers in physics. 

Among other things, the first ad hoc organization of grad students in physics education research was put together during the ICUPE/AAPT "interval day." You can see that history at http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/gsper/gsper.htm in a hilariously 90s web page.

The interval day was also a place for a very important discussion about journals for PER, which planted the seeds for the Physics Education Research Supplement in AJP, which then started up soon after and was seen as a bridge to something, nobody knew what, but eventually became with Phys Rev PER. 

Given the success of the 1996 interval day, a PERC seemed possible (and the cut-off of 65 people was so ambitious! were there even 65 who could attend?!). I am sure I have notes and stories from all the early PERCs, being lucky enough to have been in Joe Redish's research group at the time. If you want more of the historical context of the PERCs, he's definitely one to ask about the precursor meetings. It was a fun time to be in PER. There's more on this broader picture at https://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/history/AAPT-History-PER.cfm for those who want to know more.

It's also crazy fun to go to https://www.per-central.org/perc/ and click on the conference websites for each of the early PERCs. I was struck by the content of the 1999 meeting, but the others are just as good...

Tags: PERC  conference  history  

— Michael Wittmann, UMaine PER and RiSE Center

At the grad student session, I remember Andy Johnson (then at San Diego State U) saying he was thinking that his dissertation topic would be "how do people learn?". We, his fellow grad students, suggested he work on focusing that down a little. It still makes me smile to think of this.