[vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire

[Douglas Crawford]

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 at vcfed.org
> (646) 546-9999
>
> www.vcfed.org
> facebook.com/vcfederation
> twitter.com/vcfederation
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