Author: Jeffrey Brace

Hello everyone,

VCF East 2022 was a great success! Initial reports indicate that financially we recouped our large expenses this year. Everyone that I ran into seemed very pleased with all aspects of the show and thanked me for all my hardwork and dedication for making this show great. The talks were diverse and top notch, the consignment was very profitable and great treasures to be found, the food on site was appreciated, the exhibits were incredibly exciting, lots of cool VCF Swag to be bought and the comradery was fun.

I want to thank everyone who volunteered and helped me with the planning, setup and breakdown of the show. I spent countless hours planning for this show over the weeks and months before the show. Despite the huge amount of time and dedication that I put into this show by myself, I would not be able to make this show happen without the volunteers. The quality of the show has been improved due to the volunteers such as the Sea Cadets and all the individuals who made my job easier and improved the quality of the show overall. For me, this is a part time job in the months leading up to this show and a full time job the week before the show. I want to thank Bill and Rick who helped me plan for hours every week ahead of the show. Bill is my right hand man who helps set up the signs, docenting at the museum and with anything that I need, before, during and after the show. Rick helped with the planning and the survey as well as setup, docent duty and breakdown after the show. The Sea Cadets were incredibly helpful with crowd management and helping in all areas of the show. I want to thank Alex for organizing the volunteers and running the consignment. They brought consignment up to a new level with a Point of Sale System, setting up storage carts for a less crowded room, labeling for items, spreadsheet inventory and many other tweaks. Thanks to Corey for running the front desk, helping with setup and breakdown of it. I felt relaxed to know that he would have everything running there smoothly. Jason was great in setting up the tables, managing the exhibitors and for making the campus map as well as Lawson for making the exhibitor map. Ethan O and crew for bringing the A/V to an even higher level of professionalism. They were so good last year, but were even better this year! Thanks to Adam and Tony for setup and teaching and all the instructors for doing the Apple 2 classroom. It was very successful. Glitch had another incredible workshop and adjusted nicely due to lack of kits by making it an S-100 repair workshop. Chris L for helping where I needed at the front gate, breakdown, etc. Chris F for being the speaker coordinator and all the other people who helped with the day before, during and after the show. I was very glad to be able to go home “early” on Sunday by 10PM due to help with breakdown. I’m usually there until 2AM and come back Monday for several hours to clean up.

Thanks to all the great speakers for such diverse, interesting and enjoyable talks. Thanks especially to Bil Herd for wrangling 12 Commodore speakers together in one spot. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see so many of them in one spot. Thanks to all the Commodorians who came. You will never see this happen again. Thanks to Burger Becky for such incredible talks. Thanks to Kathy Kleiman for a fun interactive talk. Thanks to Stephen Edwards for moderating the technical talks with the Commodore folks. Thanks to all the in-person and virtual speakers who had diverse and fun talks.

All the steamed talks were made private so that we have a chance to clean up the videos and release them as separate talks. We need some time to edit and process them before releasing them.

Our next year’s show will be April 14, 15 and 16, 2023 back at InfoAge. There will be two themes for this show. The first is: Computing in Education. The second theme will be announced shortly.

For those that attended the show, please fill out this survey so that we may improve the show: https://bit.ly/vcfe2022post.

I hope to see everyone again next year for an incredibly fantastic show!

Jeff Brace

Showrunner for Vintage Computer Festival East

VCF East is April 22, 23, 24 from 8AM to 5PM. Look for information here: https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

We are doing Discord channels again this year for VCF East 2022. We created three sections this year for anyone to discuss the talks and the exhibits. The three sections are:

1. VCF East 2022 Talks
2. VCF East 2022 Exhibits
3. VCF East 2022 Vendors

Channels were created for each individual talk and each exhibit. We setup a channel q-and-a-for-speakers channel available for questions for the speakers, however we cannot guarantee the questions will be asked due to lack of available volunteers to monitor the channel. For those interested in joining our Discord, here is our server invitation: https://discord.gg/32maJ6gddU

We ask that you consider donating to the Vintage Computer Federation. These funds will help us continue our work of preserving and sharing computer history. It will also enable us to continue to offer high quality shows and events, as well as improvements and upgrades to our facilities. You can send donations to paypal@vcfed.org or a check to our mailing address: P.O. Box 417, Eatontown, NJ 07724.