As has been mentioned several times in this thread already, there is an unnecessary amount of confusion caused by common use of the acronym "VCF" across the federation, the festival, and the club. To clarify - the name "Vintage Computer Federation" is not going away. All that's changing is the name of our particular club, which has continuously existed since 2004, and became a member of the nascent VCFed when that was formed in 2015. The Federation currently consists of two clubs - our own VCF Mid-Atlantic (formerly MARCH, and hosts of VCF east) and Bay Area Retro Computer hobbyists (hosts of VCF west). There are also a number of clubs outside the purview of the federation - the Atlanta Historical Computer Society (hosts of VCF Southeast), Chicago Classic Computing (hosts of VCF Midwest), the Seattle Retro-Computing Society (former hosts of VCF PNW), the Retro Computing Society of Rhode Island, etc. Out of all of these clubs, ours is the only one which has incorporated the name "VCF". We are not unique in that we host a festival, or in that we are a member of the federation, or in that we are a retro-computing hobbyist club. There is no good reason to keep "VCF" in our name, and keeping it serves only to guarantee further confusion as to where the club ends and the festival/federation begins. As for the specific use of the name "MARCH" to replace VCF-MA, the most enticing factor is consistency. Most of our core, regular members still informally use the term 'MARCH' to refer to the club, as well as many of the other members of Infoage - our home in meatspace. Not to mention, the name 'Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists' already aptly describes where we are located (Our core members hail from the Virginias, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York - there is no regional term encompassing those states other than 'Mid-Atlantic') and what we are - Retro-Computing Hobbyists. There is no shame in having a hobby. The switch from "VCF-MA" back to "MARCH" would be quick, easy, and relatively painless compared to trying to come up with a new name that is just as apt and doesn't sacrifice the ability to be pronounced - and believe me, we have tried several times. Most of the results were quite vulgar. On Mon, Oct 28, 2024 at 11:24 AM Dan FitzGerald via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

I'll take this point and counter it (although I personally don't like the name MARCH): when I'm trying to talk about VCF Mid-Atlantic to people, I often (accidentally) conflate VCF Mid-Atlantic (the group) with VCF East (the event) and VCF (the umbrella organization). Heck -- even in my head VCF is VCF is VCF, except that they really are three different things.

(I will second you, though, on "VCF Mid-Atlantic" being a sensible name for the group as it regularly serves people from Virginia to Connecticut)

Regards, Dan FitzGerald They/Them or She/Her Classical Computing Laboratory at IBM Poughkeepsie http://www.vm.ibm.com/devpages/dfitzger

-----Original Message----- From: Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Reply-To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: Tony Bogan <thebogans@mac.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Announcement: Administrative and Policy Changes Date: 10/27/2024 05:57:51 PM