[vcf-midatlantic] Ken Thompson video - a new dawn

Andrew Diller dillera at gmail.com
Wed Nov 11 12:11:46 EST 2020


I am going to weigh in with my thoughts, addressing some of the issues and conjecture presented the past day and ignoring others.


tldr; VCF Mid-Atlantic today is still awesome, you should show up and you will have fun.


First, I am a current member of the VCF MidAtlantic Steering Committee. My seat is not up for re-election this year. I was invited to join the SteerCo as it's final, and tie-breaker member. I was excited and honored to accept and never looked back!

I'm glad we had this airing of grievances before Festivus, fwiw.

My history in VCF is short, but exciting. I was a lurker on the VCF forums for years, and one day in the waning of 2018 I decided to get involved. Wall NJ isn't that far from Philly, where I live. I joined the mailing list and found out about the upcoming Festivus.

I enjoyed a wonderful year of Festivus 2018, VCF East 2019, the monthly repair workshops and Festivus 2019. I tried to attend every workshop, and I managed to almost do that. I often used them as a venue to git rid of a lot of my excess vintage gear, to talk and socialize, learn about VCF @ Info age oh and sometimes work on something I had. Camp Evans itself is a fascinating piece of history full of interesting groups, people and artifacts. All willing to share and talk if you take the time.



Since being part of the SteerCo I have seen transformational changes in VCF-MA (i.e. the parts in Camp Evans (aka InfoAge). Those changes have happened for a simple reason- there were now a core group of _seven_ (steerCo + Corey and Jeff) people who were dedicating ridiculous amounts of their time (and even funds) to assess, prioritize, and execute on projects that needed doing. Not just one person, but seven. 


And we are setting up a transparent and accountable process to let everyone know what and how the steerco is going to do things and also to ensure outreach and ensure that any interested member can contribute. Even seven people isn't enough to make VCF a better place as fast as we wanted.


I truly feel that anyone can contribute just as much or more than any steerCo member by doing a simple thing- showing up!


Not only will you be able to meet and make some good friends you will be able to help in the myriad of jobs/tasks that we still need to get done to make VCF Museum an even more inviting place and a richer nexus for visitors and members alike.


VCF-MA is more than ever involved in cooperation with other local orgs with similar mandates.


Those are my thoughts and I'm sticking to them,
-andy





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