[SIGCIS-Members] Vintage Computer Festival, revisited

[Meyer, Peter - BLS]

I did go to this festival last week and it was great!   

We heard speakers who had worked inside of UNIVAC (physically) and programmed it.  We heard from early computer society and store founders of the 1970s, and what the scene looked like to them at the time.  (Bill Gates was too young ; the Apple I was no better than the other platforms but the Apple II was remarkable ; etc.)  

The stories of the old-timers are really interesting.  I talked at length with an early Homebrew Computer Club member who is researching some of the early companies.  Exhibitors included many people who knew the guts of early Apples, Ataris, Osbornes, and many other early computers.  It's neat to see what they can do.  

The whole thing was quite electric, memorable, and worthwhile.
I'm glad to know also of the InfoAge Science Center.

Thanks, Evan!  I'll be back!

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 3:13 AM
To: members at sigcis.org
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Vintage Computer Festival, revisited

Hi all,

I never seem to get much interest from SIGCIS people for the Vintage Computer Festival, but the upcoming edition (VCF East 7.0) might appeal more to this group than in years past.

This year's speaker line-up includes Ruth Lewart, who worked on Bell Labs' TRADIC; Vincent Pogorzelski and Donald Caselli, who both worked at Monroe Calculator and specifically worked with the Monrobot XI; Joe LaViola and Al Rollin, both of UNIVAC/Unisys; and Michael Holley, who was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and is an expert on Southwest Technical Products.

Also this year, we're having a panel discussion about the New York City / New Jersey / Philadelphia region in the mid-1970s, including Roger Amidon (of Xitan / Technical Design Labs, which were S-100 companies), Dick Moberg (founder of the Philadelphia Area Computer Society and the
1978 Philadelphia Computer Music Festival), and Larry Stein (owner of Computer Mart of Iselin, N.J., which was one of the first computer stores in the state.)  For this panel we also invited (but have not yet received confirmations from) John Dilks, who produced the Atlantic City
PC'76 show; Sol Libes, who produced and still runs the Trenton Computer Festival and the Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey (possibly the longest-running user group); and David Ahl, who published Creative Computing magazine.

And that's just in the morning sessions.  Afternoons at our event feature the exhibit hall, a build-your-own transistor-logic circuit workshop, book sale, consignment, and museum tours.

Our venue is the InfoAge Science Center, located in Wall, New Jersey.

Our event is a wonderful opportunity to hear from people who worked in the field and (most important of all) to see vintage computers boot up and run again!

Our event site is http://www.vintage.org/2011/east/ and we're on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/vcfeast7 .

- Evan

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