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Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest 2020: Come join us!

mbbrutman

Associate Cat Herder
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Come join us March 21st and March 22nd in Seattle at VCF PNW 2020! Look forward to:

  • 24 Exhibits featuring big-iron, classic 8 bitters, replicas, and even new machines!
  • 6 Presentations including Bil Herd and Joe Decuir, IEEE Fellow!
  • Take part in our very first Vintage Computer Typing Contest! Win not-so-valuable prizes!
  • Buy (or sell) treasure in the consignment area!
  • Enjoy our host, the world-renowned Living Computers:Museum+Labs!

This year at VCF PNW we will be celebrating and exploring computing history with twenty-four exhibits and six presentations spread over two days. VCF exhibits are interactive; we want you to experience them, not just gaze upon them. Our host, Living Computers:Museum+Labs, provides an excellent backdrop for the event.

Exhibits are brought to you by enthusiasts from the United States, Canada and Australia. Exhibits include big-iron, homebrew machines, workstations, replicas, modern enhancements, classic machines and even new machines inspired by the classics. Come feel the heat of the VAX cluster, play Doom on a Unix workstation, experience a BBS, learn how to repair a PDP-8, jam on an early software based synthesizer setup, see random numbers generated by LAVA® lamps, and more!

Our speakers and topics this year include Bil Herd (Commodore history), Dr. Zbigniew Stachniak (MCM/70 emulation), Darius Kazemi (Internet RFCs), Jon Philpott (ArcAS: an arcade action programming game), Scott Swazey (PDP-11/45 and the Star Wars Death Star graphics sequences), and Joe Decuir (Amiga history).

The event is free with paid museum admission. For more details head over to http://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw/. We hope to see you there!View attachment 59280
 
Have you folks thought about postponing or canceling this year's event? King county appears to be the national hotspot for Covid-19 (6 dead as of today). Several professional conferences scheduled for the Seattle area have already announced cancellation.

Sorry for being a wet blanket. :(
 
We've discussed it - there are no changes planned.

Everybody has to weigh the risks for themselves. If you read the recent news Kirkland, WA (where I work) is actually probably the regional epicenter for the virus and has been for weeks. At-risk people and people who live with them need to be careful but for most people this is just another nasty virus.

We always have hand sanitizer at the events. This year we'll have even more and we'll have cleaning wipes too. Schools are still open, businesses are open, and the museum has not had any problems. People should wash their hands often & thoroughly and avoid touching their faces. People who are showing symptoms of anything should just stay home and spare the rest of us. These have always been good things to do.
 
Sorry to hear it, but I figured that would be the next step.

I was surprised to see that my optometrist's office has been hit by a raft of cancellations--and we're 280 miles from Seattle. I had my choice of same-day appointment times.

People are scared.
 
It's a lot of work to organize an event. Losing the museum still stings a few years later, and that's just a statement on the museum itself. Losing both the museum and our venue really hurt.)

I've tried to start a conversation about future events here in this Google group: https://groups.google.com/g/vintage-computing-pnw . That conversation died two years ago; maybe it's time to try again.

Stephen Jones is putting together an event in October: https://sdf.org/icf/


-Mike
 
I've brought it up a few times on slashnet's #VC before (the most recent was late last night, actually!)

There's absolutely potential for an event somewhere between Portland, Vancouver and Calgary. There is a fairly diverse crowd up here of hobbyists, Microsoft alumni, LCM retirees, and tech industry specialists who are all fairly invested into the hobby, plus multiple Youtube tech personalities and VIP's who have attended previously in 2018 and 2019 and live in the area. Mbbrutman still has a lot of resources from when he was mainly in charge of the local operations and vcfed is there in the background, somewhere.
The problem is that everyone I know who would like to participate cannot take the time out of their daily routines to help locate a new venue, deal with site specifics and site materials such as equipment rentals, advertising, merch and communication with the team out East and to do so for weeks or even months before the doors actually open. This is not a one ot two-person job. Mbbrutman can attest that it's also not "pleasant" at times. ;-o
Even the venue rental can be a non-starter without some sort of assurance that the funding is secured or at least partially subsidized. The rental cost for even a two-day event is incredibly more expensive here than a similar length event at a seedy hotel in the suburbs of Chicago. Do we aske vcfed to chip in? does this get paid through admission? Is this coming out of our pockets and being reimbursed later?
Even I won't come forward and say I'll help make it happen simply because without a team it's setting up for failure.
 
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That's a better question for the board of directors of the museum.

After 3+ years of being closed, I doubt it is coming back. And if it does, it will be quite different as the original staff that made the magic had to move on.
 
To NeXT's comments ...

It's not a lot of money, and I've thought about fronting the money myself next time. The organization ahead of time can be (and was) done by one person. However, it does take a lot of work from many volunteers during the event to make it happen, including dealing with last minute glitches.

Finding a friendly venue would help things greatly. Otherwise, we'll need to be at a conference center or hotel ballroom in the outskirts of a major city in the region to keep it affordable. (It was called VCF PNW so that I didn't tie it to one specific city.)


In general ...

If I ever organize another event I want to try to do it outside of the VCFed umbrella and with a more relaxed format that more closely resembles a conference. Open to the public is fine, but I think an event more tailored toward the people in the hobby would be more enjoyable. Compared to the previous VCF PNW events I want to do less public outreach and have more of a program that meets the needs of the participants.


-Mike
 
Thanks for the responses everyone. Are there any written Guidelines for what's needed to host an event like VCF PNW? Mike, you mentioned that you're interested in getting out from under the VCFed umbrella. Can you expand on your reason why? Does VCFed provide any support for an event? Or is it up to some committee of individuals to locate a venue, negotiate contracts, pay the deposits, etc.?

-JP
 
The current board of directors can probably answer your questions if your interested in volunteering to run an event. I can give you my experience with the VCF PNW events.

Personally I'm a big supporter of VCFed and I was on the board of directors for a few years. For the next event I just want to try something a little different.
 
That's a better question for the board of directors of the museum.

After 3+ years of being closed, I doubt it is coming back. And if it does, it will be quite different as the original staff that made the magic had to move on.
Thanks. I was just curious if anyone here knew the reason.
 
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