Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 19:50:29 -0500 From: Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire
Big thanks to you, Chris F., and Todd G. for representing us there! Generally speaking how did it go?
Here's my report from the show (slightly modified from a previous version of the report I sent to Evan, Doug and Chris)! I had a nice long talk with Gabe (co-founder of The Young Innovators Fair), he told me how much he appreciated us being there. He thought our booth was a gigantic hit, and said he thought we were one of the busier stand-alone/standard-sized booths at the event. As of ~2 pm (??? it's all a blur) on Sunday when I talked with him, they were far in excess of 20,000 (!!!) tickets sold for the weekend NOT INCLUDING something like a few thousand (rumored) free/donation/charity tickets that they gave out. Apparently those "free" tickets went unaccounted-for. Saturday was definitely the busier day, but Sunday proved to be a strong contender. I also need to brush up on my rollerskating skills, as Gabe had the brilliant idea to wear roller skates at the event. Definitely helps him get around the place in an expedient fashion. Some of my favorite moments, a dad stopped at the booth while walking by with his family, comes over to me and says "If you had asked me this morning if anything here would make me stop dead in my tracks, I'd have said 'No Way'. This is amazing and has definitely stopped me in my tracks". We also received tons of positive feedback from the booth guests. There was a girl at our booth for nearly the entire day on Saturday, she was 16 and "wants to be an engineer". She was so knowledgeable about all things computer and was really digging our booth. She was extremely smart and was chatting with us off and on all day. I also had a great long talk with a gentleman who indicated his son had two apps in the Apple App Store, had been programming since he was 8, was probably 13 or so by my guess now. He had never programmed in BASIC, so I gave him some brief instruction. He took to it like a duck to water. His first program in BASIC? "Hello World". I only told him to "Put whatever you want the computer to display inside the quotes." A few people commented how much they appreciated that our booth was "something different". I also directed a few people to actually join VCFed based on discussions I had. One guy had a bunch of Apple equipment set up on display in his basement, said he curates and restores it. He expressed interest in improving his restoration skills (participation in workshops) and really seemed interested in our group in general. He had mentioned he has no idea a group like ours existed. I also lost count of how many parents told us "how old we were making them feel", told me the story about how "Drexel made us buy that Macintosh" (at least 20 people told me some variant of this story), and indicated to their kids when we showed them the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disk props we had at the table how "they used to store all of their high school/college work on those" while the kids just looked as us with a blank stare. There was definitely an interesting combination of "parent-types" being attracted to our booth, with their children in tow explaining to them how these were the old computers they used to use. The other side of that was kids being attracted to the games we had up and running and then being suckered into listening to their parents wax nostalgic once they realized what hardware was running the games. The only failure we had at the VCF booth was our KayPro II. The floppy disks were warm when we pulled them out, but letting the machine cool down didn't "fix" the problem. Who knows, it was a long two days and this computer probably isn't used to that kind of workload. The one at the booth wasn't mine, but I still feel bad that it gave up the ghost. Funny side story, my wife is tired of hearing me curse and complain about working inside of my KayPro II. To prove it, I sent a text to her and said "Hey, the KayPro at our booth died". Her reply was "Why, did you yell at it too much?". To put this into perspective even more, my wife doesn't know many of the names of the computers I work on. So that tells you how excellently engineered the innards of the KayPro are that she knows what it's called and has heard me bitch about it that much. The venue wasn't so lucky... Apparently their failures were numerous, including the credit card processing at the concession stands failing, the ATM machines logically emptying shortly thereafter, and to top it off the vending machines emptying by around 11 am on Saturday. Apparently their credit card processing never came back online throughout the rest of the weekend. Between that and the ATM machines being empty, who knows how much potential revenue they lost due to our "cashless society". We didn't have an Apple II with us, turns out that was a bit of an error as we got lots of flack from people... "Where's Oregon Trail?", "Where's Loadrunner?". Surprisingly, the TRS-80 Model 4 was the star of the show in my opinion. I would have expected the Macintosh SE/30 to garner more attention but it did not (ran a close second though). So many people commenting "Oh I had one of these in college" (about the Macintosh) or "this was the computer I learned to program on" (about the TRS-80). I was also pleasantly amused by the sheer number of people walking up to the table and yelling "Oh my gosh a Trash 80!". I was also asked many, many times how in the world we had a working TRS-80 of any variety. Seems they have a reputation of some sort for being troublesome or something. All-in-all, a great time! I was so tired Saturday and Sunday night, tired stretched into Monday. But I'd do it again tomorrow, that's how much fun we had. :) Special thanks to Doug and Chris with whom this wouldn't have been possible. And of course Evan for putting it all together for us. See ya! -Todd
Thanks for posting, Todd. Everyone -- as I said before (I forget whether it was in public or just to Doug / Todd / Chris), I had NO IDEA this event is so big, otherwise we would have planned a larger exhibit. Next year! On Jan 5, 2016, Todd George via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 19:50:29 -0500 From: Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire
Big thanks to you, Chris F., and Todd G. for representing us there! Generally speaking how did it go?
Here's my report from the show (slightly modified from a previous version of the report I sent to Evan, Doug and Chris)!
I had a nice long talk with Gabe (co-founder of The Young Innovators Fair), he told me how much he appreciated us being there. He thought our booth was a gigantic hit, and said he thought we were one of the busier stand-alone/standard-sized booths at the event. As of ~2 pm (??? it's all a blur) on Sunday when I talked with him, they were far in excess of 20,000 (!!!) tickets sold for the weekend NOT INCLUDING something like a few thousand (rumored) free/donation/charity tickets that they gave out. Apparently those "free" tickets went unaccounted-for. Saturday was definitely the busier day, but Sunday proved to be a strong contender. I also need to brush up on my rollerskating skills, as Gabe had the brilliant idea to wear roller skates at the event. Definitely helps him get around the place in an expedient fashion.
Some of my favorite moments, a dad stopped at the booth while walking by with his family, comes over to me and says "If you had asked me this morning if anything here would make me stop dead in my tracks, I'd have said 'No Way'. This is amazing and has definitely stopped me in my tracks". We also received tons of positive feedback from the booth guests. There was a girl at our booth for nearly the entire day on Saturday, she was 16 and "wants to be an engineer". She was so knowledgeable about all things computer and was really digging our booth. She was extremely smart and was chatting with us off and on all day. I also had a great long talk with a gentleman who indicated his son had two apps in the Apple App Store, had been programming since he was 8, was probably 13 or so by my guess now. He had never programmed in BASIC, so I gave him some brief instruction. He took to it like a duck to water. His first program in BASIC? "Hello World". I only told him to "Put whatever you want the computer to display inside the quotes." A few people commented how much they appreciated that our booth was "something different". I also directed a few people to actually join VCFed based on discussions I had. One guy had a bunch of Apple equipment set up on display in his basement, said he curates and restores it. He expressed interest in improving his restoration skills (participation in workshops) and really seemed interested in our group in general. He had mentioned he has no idea a group like ours existed. I also lost count of how many parents told us "how old we were making them feel", told me the story about how "Drexel made us buy that Macintosh" (at least 20 people told me some variant of this story), and indicated to their kids when we showed them the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disk props we had at the table how "they used to store all of their high school/college work on those" while the kids just looked as us with a blank stare.
There was definitely an interesting combination of "parent-types" being attracted to our booth, with their children in tow explaining to them how these were the old computers they used to use. The other side of that was kids being attracted to the games we had up and running and then being suckered into listening to their parents wax nostalgic once they realized what hardware was running the games.
The only failure we had at the VCF booth was our KayPro II. The floppy disks were warm when we pulled them out, but letting the machine cool down didn't "fix" the problem. Who knows, it was a long two days and this computer probably isn't used to that kind of workload. The one at the booth wasn't mine, but I still feel bad that it gave up the ghost. Funny side story, my wife is tired of hearing me curse and complain about working inside of my KayPro II. To prove it, I sent a text to her and said "Hey, the KayPro at our booth died". Her reply was "Why, did you yell at it too much?". To put this into perspective even more, my wife doesn't know many of the names of the computers I work on. So that tells you how excellently engineered the innards of the KayPro are that she knows what it's called and has heard me bitch about it that much.
The venue wasn't so lucky... Apparently their failures were numerous, including the credit card processing at the concession stands failing, the ATM machines logically emptying shortly thereafter, and to top it off the vending machines emptying by around 11 am on Saturday. Apparently their credit card processing never came back online throughout the rest of the weekend. Between that and the ATM machines being empty, who knows how much potential revenue they lost due to our "cashless society".
We didn't have an Apple II with us, turns out that was a bit of an error as we got lots of flack from people... "Where's Oregon Trail?", "Where's Loadrunner?". Surprisingly, the TRS-80 Model 4 was the star of the show in my opinion. I would have expected the Macintosh SE/30 to garner more attention but it did not (ran a close second though). So many people commenting "Oh I had one of these in college" (about the Macintosh) or "this was the computer I learned to program on" (about the TRS-80). I was also pleasantly amused by the sheer number of people walking up to the table and yelling "Oh my gosh a Trash 80!". I was also asked many, many times how in the world we had a working TRS-80 of any variety. Seems they have a reputation of some sort for being troublesome or something.
All-in-all, a great time! I was so tired Saturday and Sunday night, tired stretched into Monday. But I'd do it again tomorrow, that's how much fun we had. :)
Special thanks to Doug and Chris with whom this wouldn't have been possible. And of course Evan for putting it all together for us. See ya! -Todd
I was one of those Drexel University students who had to buy a Macintosh when I entered as a Freshman. Mine was an SE/30. Also yah! Someone not only knowing what Lode Runner was, but *requesting* it! They missed the Atari/Commodore/Android I had running it at Maker Faire. I would be happy to bring it there next year! :-D On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 9:33 PM, Todd George via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 19:50:29 -0500 From: Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire
Big thanks to you, Chris F., and Todd G. for representing us there! Generally speaking how did it go?
Here's my report from the show (slightly modified from a previous version of the report I sent to Evan, Doug and Chris)!
I had a nice long talk with Gabe (co-founder of The Young Innovators Fair), he told me how much he appreciated us being there. He thought our booth was a gigantic hit, and said he thought we were one of the busier stand-alone/standard-sized booths at the event. As of ~2 pm (??? it's all a blur) on Sunday when I talked with him, they were far in excess of 20,000 (!!!) tickets sold for the weekend NOT INCLUDING something like a few thousand (rumored) free/donation/charity tickets that they gave out. Apparently those "free" tickets went unaccounted-for. Saturday was definitely the busier day, but Sunday proved to be a strong contender. I also need to brush up on my rollerskating skills, as Gabe had the brilliant idea to wear roller skates at the event. Definitely helps him get around the place in an expedient fashion.
Some of my favorite moments, a dad stopped at the booth while walking by with his family, comes over to me and says "If you had asked me this morning if anything here would make me stop dead in my tracks, I'd have said 'No Way'. This is amazing and has definitely stopped me in my tracks". We also received tons of positive feedback from the booth guests. There was a girl at our booth for nearly the entire day on Saturday, she was 16 and "wants to be an engineer". She was so knowledgeable about all things computer and was really digging our booth. She was extremely smart and was chatting with us off and on all day. I also had a great long talk with a gentleman who indicated his son had two apps in the Apple App Store, had been programming since he was 8, was probably 13 or so by my guess now. He had never programmed in BASIC, so I gave him some brief instruction. He took to it like a duck to water. His first program in BASIC? "Hello World". I only told him to "Put whatever you want the computer to display inside the quotes." A few people commented how much they appreciated that our booth was "something different". I also directed a few people to actually join VCFed based on discussions I had. One guy had a bunch of Apple equipment set up on display in his basement, said he curates and restores it. He expressed interest in improving his restoration skills (participation in workshops) and really seemed interested in our group in general. He had mentioned he has no idea a group like ours existed. I also lost count of how many parents told us "how old we were making them feel", told me the story about how "Drexel made us buy that Macintosh" (at least 20 people told me some variant of this story), and indicated to their kids when we showed them the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disk props we had at the table how "they used to store all of their high school/college work on those" while the kids just looked as us with a blank stare.
There was definitely an interesting combination of "parent-types" being attracted to our booth, with their children in tow explaining to them how these were the old computers they used to use. The other side of that was kids being attracted to the games we had up and running and then being suckered into listening to their parents wax nostalgic once they realized what hardware was running the games.
The only failure we had at the VCF booth was our KayPro II. The floppy disks were warm when we pulled them out, but letting the machine cool down didn't "fix" the problem. Who knows, it was a long two days and this computer probably isn't used to that kind of workload. The one at the booth wasn't mine, but I still feel bad that it gave up the ghost. Funny side story, my wife is tired of hearing me curse and complain about working inside of my KayPro II. To prove it, I sent a text to her and said "Hey, the KayPro at our booth died". Her reply was "Why, did you yell at it too much?". To put this into perspective even more, my wife doesn't know many of the names of the computers I work on. So that tells you how excellently engineered the innards of the KayPro are that she knows what it's called and has heard me bitch about it that much.
The venue wasn't so lucky... Apparently their failures were numerous, including the credit card processing at the concession stands failing, the ATM machines logically emptying shortly thereafter, and to top it off the vending machines emptying by around 11 am on Saturday. Apparently their credit card processing never came back online throughout the rest of the weekend. Between that and the ATM machines being empty, who knows how much potential revenue they lost due to our "cashless society".
We didn't have an Apple II with us, turns out that was a bit of an error as we got lots of flack from people... "Where's Oregon Trail?", "Where's Loadrunner?". Surprisingly, the TRS-80 Model 4 was the star of the show in my opinion. I would have expected the Macintosh SE/30 to garner more attention but it did not (ran a close second though). So many people commenting "Oh I had one of these in college" (about the Macintosh) or "this was the computer I learned to program on" (about the TRS-80). I was also pleasantly amused by the sheer number of people walking up to the table and yelling "Oh my gosh a Trash 80!". I was also asked many, many times how in the world we had a working TRS-80 of any variety. Seems they have a reputation of some sort for being troublesome or something.
All-in-all, a great time! I was so tired Saturday and Sunday night, tired stretched into Monday. But I'd do it again tomorrow, that's how much fun we had. :)
Special thanks to Doug and Chris with whom this wouldn't have been possible. And of course Evan for putting it all together for us. See ya! -Todd
I *have* an old Drexel Mac (not originally mine) but has the guys P.H.D. Thesis paper on it. Would print it out if I could get a working ribbon for my ImageWriter II. LOL On Tuesday, January 5, 2016, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I was one of those Drexel University students who had to buy a Macintosh when I entered as a Freshman. Mine was an SE/30.
Also yah! Someone not only knowing what Lode Runner was, but *requesting* it! They missed the Atari/Commodore/Android I had running it at Maker Faire. I would be happy to bring it there next year! :-D
On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 9:33 PM, Todd George via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org <javascript:;>> wrote:
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 19:50:29 -0500 From: Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net <javascript:;>> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire
Big thanks to you, Chris F., and Todd G. for representing us there! Generally speaking how did it go?
Here's my report from the show (slightly modified from a previous version of the report I sent to Evan, Doug and Chris)!
I had a nice long talk with Gabe (co-founder of The Young Innovators Fair), he told me how much he appreciated us being there. He thought our booth was a gigantic hit, and said he thought we were one of the busier stand-alone/standard-sized booths at the event. As of ~2 pm (??? it's all a blur) on Sunday when I talked with him, they were far in excess of 20,000 (!!!) tickets sold for the weekend NOT INCLUDING something like a few thousand (rumored) free/donation/charity tickets that they gave out. Apparently those "free" tickets went unaccounted-for. Saturday was definitely the busier day, but Sunday proved to be a strong contender. I also need to brush up on my rollerskating skills, as Gabe had the brilliant idea to wear roller skates at the event. Definitely helps him get around the place in an expedient fashion.
Some of my favorite moments, a dad stopped at the booth while walking by with his family, comes over to me and says "If you had asked me this morning if anything here would make me stop dead in my tracks, I'd have said 'No Way'. This is amazing and has definitely stopped me in my tracks". We also received tons of positive feedback from the booth guests. There was a girl at our booth for nearly the entire day on Saturday, she was 16 and "wants to be an engineer". She was so knowledgeable about all things computer and was really digging our booth. She was extremely smart and was chatting with us off and on all day. I also had a great long talk with a gentleman who indicated his son had two apps in the Apple App Store, had been programming since he was 8, was probably 13 or so by my guess now. He had never programmed in BASIC, so I gave him some brief instruction. He took to it like a duck to water. His first program in BASIC? "Hello World". I only told him to "Put whatever you want the computer to display inside the quotes." A few people commented how much they appreciated that our booth was "something different". I also directed a few people to actually join VCFed based on discussions I had. One guy had a bunch of Apple equipment set up on display in his basement, said he curates and restores it. He expressed interest in improving his restoration skills (participation in workshops) and really seemed interested in our group in general. He had mentioned he has no idea a group like ours existed. I also lost count of how many parents told us "how old we were making them feel", told me the story about how "Drexel made us buy that Macintosh" (at least 20 people told me some variant of this story), and indicated to their kids when we showed them the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disk props we had at the table how "they used to store all of their high school/college work on those" while the kids just looked as us with a blank stare.
There was definitely an interesting combination of "parent-types" being attracted to our booth, with their children in tow explaining to them how these were the old computers they used to use. The other side of that was kids being attracted to the games we had up and running and then being suckered into listening to their parents wax nostalgic once they realized what hardware was running the games.
The only failure we had at the VCF booth was our KayPro II. The floppy disks were warm when we pulled them out, but letting the machine cool down didn't "fix" the problem. Who knows, it was a long two days and this computer probably isn't used to that kind of workload. The one at the booth wasn't mine, but I still feel bad that it gave up the ghost. Funny side story, my wife is tired of hearing me curse and complain about working inside of my KayPro II. To prove it, I sent a text to her and said "Hey, the KayPro at our booth died". Her reply was "Why, did you yell at it too much?". To put this into perspective even more, my wife doesn't know many of the names of the computers I work on. So that tells you how excellently engineered the innards of the KayPro are that she knows what it's called and has heard me bitch about it that much.
The venue wasn't so lucky... Apparently their failures were numerous, including the credit card processing at the concession stands failing, the ATM machines logically emptying shortly thereafter, and to top it off the vending machines emptying by around 11 am on Saturday. Apparently their credit card processing never came back online throughout the rest of the weekend. Between that and the ATM machines being empty, who knows how much potential revenue they lost due to our "cashless society".
We didn't have an Apple II with us, turns out that was a bit of an error as we got lots of flack from people... "Where's Oregon Trail?", "Where's Loadrunner?". Surprisingly, the TRS-80 Model 4 was the star of the show in my opinion. I would have expected the Macintosh SE/30 to garner more attention but it did not (ran a close second though). So many people commenting "Oh I had one of these in college" (about the Macintosh) or "this was the computer I learned to program on" (about the TRS-80). I was also pleasantly amused by the sheer number of people walking up to the table and yelling "Oh my gosh a Trash 80!". I was also asked many, many times how in the world we had a working TRS-80 of any variety. Seems they have a reputation of some sort for being troublesome or something.
All-in-all, a great time! I was so tired Saturday and Sunday night, tired stretched into Monday. But I'd do it again tomorrow, that's how much fun we had. :)
Special thanks to Doug and Chris with whom this wouldn't have been possible. And of course Evan for putting it all together for us. See ya! -Todd
-- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?
participants (4)
-
Evan Koblentz -
Jeffrey Brace -
Joseph Oprysko -
Todd George