Chris/Todd/Doug are representing VCFed at the Young Innovators Faire (a small Maker Faire clone) tomorrow and Sunday at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, 100 Station Ave., Oaks, Pennsylvania. Bring your kids and say hi to them! ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit evan@vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation
Well we did it. Unfortunately we had to do it without Todd, as he was too close in on the delivery of his first child! ...Which is due any time now if not already here. Anyway, Chris and I set up a massive double-decker 16ft exhibit with a 32" presentation TV. And a 16 ft banner at the top that you could see 360 degrees around the entire floor. (we were the only one that was true of) Also had brand new placards to place around the computers regarding the machines and the games. Roughly one third was 1980s commodore workhorses playing popular as well as obscure C= releases. 2 VIC 20s 1 C128 and 4 C64 breadboxes. with a line of other oldies- TRS-80 model III running Galixie Invasion PET 4016 running Space Invaders Mac SE30 running Crystal Quest IBM PC running Mummies and PC-Train (simulator) Apple II running Prince of Persia. ... and my Sears Tele-Games SuperPong IV on a Pansonic TV. The innovation for this show was periodic conversions of 3 side-by-side C64s into programming instruction stations. We had a one page tutorial to follow, which we led people through. If we had more than one person, I sat behind them on a stool and led them through it with a microphone, and used a C64 emulator and wireless keyboard and mouse on the 32" monitor. It was a big hit. Kids who had been to coding schools or otherwise had tried other languages liked it too. NO ONE got up and walked away disappointed as far as we can tell- pretty much proves to us interactive BASIC still engages young minds. Photos: http://imgur.com/a/PIlqm (Note their curtains match the VCFed color scheme!) A bit of video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDGDmaJWyII We did a lot of new stuff, and learned some new things. Still some refinement to go the process. But it was a big hit again and a lot of fun. On 6/9/2017 4:23 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Chris/Todd/Doug are representing VCFed at the Young Innovators Faire (a small Maker Faire clone) tomorrow and Sunday at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, 100 Station Ave., Oaks, Pennsylvania. Bring your kids and say hi to them! ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit
evan@vcfed.org (646) 546-9999
www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation
On Jun 15, 2017, at 6:04 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: Well we did it. Unfortunately we had to do it without Todd, as he was too close in on the delivery of his first child! ...Which is due any time now if not already here. Anyway, Chris and I set up a massive double-decker 16ft exhibit with a 32" presentation TV. And a 16 ft banner at the top that you could see 360 degrees around the entire floor. (we were the only one that was true of) Also had brand new placards to place around the computers regarding the machines and the games. Roughly one third was 1980s commodore workhorses playing popular as well as obscure C= releases. 2 VIC 20s 1 C128 and 4 C64 breadboxes. with a line of other oldies- TRS-80 model III running Galixie Invasion PET 4016 running Space Invaders Mac SE30 running Crystal Quest IBM PC running Mummies and PC-Train (simulator) Apple II running Prince of Persia. ... and my Sears Tele-Games SuperPong IV on a Pansonic TV. The innovation for this show was periodic conversions of 3 side-by-side C64s into programming instruction stations. We had a one page tutorial to follow, which we led people through. If we had more than one person, I sat behind them on a stool and led them through it with a microphone, and used a C64 emulator and wireless keyboard and mouse on the 32" monitor. It was a big hit. Kids who had been to coding schools or otherwise had tried other languages liked it too. NO ONE got up and walked away disappointed as far as we can tell- pretty much proves to us interactive BASIC still engages young minds. Photos: http://imgur.com/a/PIlqm (Note their curtains match the VCFed color scheme!) A bit of video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDGDmaJWyII We did a lot of new stuff, and learned some new things. Still some refinement to go the process. But it was a big hit again and a lot of fun.
On 6/9/2017 4:23 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote: Chris/Todd/Doug are representing VCFed at the Young Innovators Faire (a small Maker Faire clone) tomorrow and Sunday at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, 100 Station Ave., Oaks, Pennsylvania. Bring your kids and say hi to them! ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit
evan@vcfed.org (646) 546-9999
www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation
Thanks for the great write up, partner! It was a great experience. I love engaging the kids and teaching them something new. I also love when I see someone walking by stop, open their eyes really big, point their finger, and start walking faster toward us, followed by the statement, "that was my first computer" or other similar statement. Saw that happen all weekend. I heard one of the organizers say that we were as popular as the drones and 3D printers! So much fun and so worth it. Chris
Wow Doug! Such great ideas and sounds like such a great exhibit! I have been dying to do something similar at other events. I'm all about trying to get a class together to teach kids BASIC on C64s. On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 6:04 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Well we did it. Unfortunately we had to do it without Todd, as he was too close in on the delivery of his first child! ...Which is due any time now if not already here.
Anyway, Chris and I set up a massive double-decker 16ft exhibit with a 32" presentation TV. And a 16 ft banner at the top that you could see 360 degrees around the entire floor. (we were the only one that was true of) Also had brand new placards to place around the computers regarding the machines and the games.
Roughly one third was 1980s commodore workhorses playing popular as well as obscure C= releases. 2 VIC 20s 1 C128 and 4 C64 breadboxes.
with a line of other oldies- TRS-80 model III running Galixie Invasion PET 4016 running Space Invaders Mac SE30 running Crystal Quest IBM PC running Mummies and PC-Train (simulator) Apple II running Prince of Persia.
... and my Sears Tele-Games SuperPong IV on a Pansonic TV.
The innovation for this show was periodic conversions of 3 side-by-side C64s into programming instruction stations. We had a one page tutorial to follow, which we led people through. If we had more than one person, I sat behind them on a stool and led them through it with a microphone, and used a C64 emulator and wireless keyboard and mouse on the 32" monitor. It was a big hit. Kids who had been to coding schools or otherwise had tried other languages liked it too. NO ONE got up and walked away disappointed as far as we can tell- pretty much proves to us interactive BASIC still engages young minds.
Photos: http://imgur.com/a/PIlqm (Note their curtains match the VCFed color scheme!) A bit of video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDGDmaJWyII
We did a lot of new stuff, and learned some new things. Still some refinement to go the process. But it was a big hit again and a lot of fun.
On 6/9/2017 4:23 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Chris/Todd/Doug are representing VCFed at the Young Innovators Faire (a small Maker Faire clone) tomorrow and Sunday at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, 100 Station Ave., Oaks, Pennsylvania. Bring your kids and say hi to them! ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit
evan@vcfed.org (646) 546-9999
www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation
-- ======================================================== Jeff Brace ========================================================
Doug/Chris -- this is AMAZING work. You represented us astoundingly well. Thank you for doing it.
Unfortunately we had to do it without Todd, as he was too close in on the delivery of his first child! ...Which is due any time now if not already here.
Congrats Todd!
(Note their curtains match the VCFed color scheme!)
How thoughtful of them. :)
You are welcome. Its almost as hard as a VCF exhibit and will continue to be unless we can standardize the setup for a while. That high up sign was Chris's idea by the way- getting that name up there were EVERYONE could see it. :) On 6/15/2017 9:01 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Doug/Chris -- this is AMAZING work. You represented us astoundingly well. Thank you for doing it.
Unfortunately we had to do it without Todd, as he was too close in on the delivery of his first child! ...Which is due any time now if not already here.
Congrats Todd!
(Note their curtains match the VCFed color scheme!)
How thoughtful of them. :)
participants (4)
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Chris Fala -
Douglas Crawford -
Evan Koblentz -
Jeffrey Brace