Please note that VCF West is happening as planned. The Computer History Museum recently announced that they will be reopening to the public on September 1st. This is for their exhibits. Their rental space, such as the one the VCF is using, will be open earlier and VCF West will go on as planned on August 7th and 8th.
We will be closing Exhibit Registrations immediately after the July 4th weekend. All registrations must be completed by July 6th to be accepted.
Please note: We have the opportunity to support analog phone lines at this year’s event. Please let me know if that is something you want to take advantage of.
Speaker schedules and other particulars will be announced shortly.
Hi!
Will the museum be open for attendees to explore, or closed off from visitors?
-John
Hello John,
Unfortunately the general museum (CHM) will be closed until September 1. We are however trying to arrange for someone to do a demo of the PDP-1 and IBM 1401 at scheduled times.
Thanks! That would be amazing if it could be arranged.
Less than 3 weeks away now. Hope it all comes together after all that’s happened with the Covid stuff. Thanks, California, for getting vaccinated!
Yes. Things are looking good for the planning of the show. We were able to get more space and now will have the auditorium for our talks and speakers!
Hey VCF-West Attendees and Visitors,
I’m trying to put together my exhibit and talk. It would help if I knew what you would like to hear about. I’m the only participant this year with an emphasis on education so it could be challenging to connect with the vintage hardware and software folks. You can see the 1st Apple 1 and Apple ][ #10 but there’s a lot more to the story. Leave me a message here, or emailed to lizaloop@loopcenter.org, to suggest topics you’d like me to touch on related to learning, teaching and computing. Also, I want to hear your stories and thoughts about what you think is important as we harness computing for learning in the future. What did you learn way back when and what do you want to learn tomorrow?
Thanks, Liza
Liza, please talk about your Learners In The Center vision. I am particularly interested in how you see large scale vocational education projects like LinkedIn Learning might adapt it to provide more effective learning engineering.
I’m also interested in your view of MOOCs, in particular whether massively increasing class sizes is reasonable when so much research correlates smaller class sizes with better performance.
Liza,
I recognized your name among the exhibitors because you were mentioned in Margaret O’Mara’s “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America”. So I’d be interested in your thoughts on how you fit into that account of the origins of the computer industry.
Probably more germane to education is Clifford Stoll’s “Silicon Snake Oil – Second thoughts on the information highway” in which he expresses skepticism about the value of computers for education – especially for young children. What’s changed since 1995 when that book was published? What did we learn from a couple of years of Zoom in a pandemic?
This may be an especially interesting time for discussion of the role of computers in education!
Hi: thanks again to the organizers of this VCF-West event. It was a great success. Just wondering: when do you expect the replays of the talks to be made available ?
Hello Curtis,
Thanks for volunteering! We value every volunteer that was there. The recordings of the talks have been copied from SD card to external hard drive. We need to make a backup and then get them into the hands of our video processor. Then we will make available on YouTube.
Jeff
Thanks for the update, those videos are eagerly awaited. I’m especially looking forward to Michael Steil’s talk on the 1541!
The videos have been processed and now are pending review before released to the general public. Right now they are on a private YouTube list and will be released within a week or two.
when do you expect the replays of the talks to be made available ?
The videos have been processed and I’m currently reviewing them before they are released on YouTube in the Vintage Computer Federation Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/VintageComputerFederation501c3
I’ve already released one talk: Tic Tac Toe in Computer History — Bob Roswell – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sDYK4hDwAM
OK. Everyone. I have made all the recordings of the VCF West 2021 talks public. Let me know if there are any questions or issues.
Enjoy!