VCF East 2024 is coming! April 12, 13, 14 @ InfoAge

Happy New Year everyone!

Streaming live: VCF East updates on Saturday, January 13 at 6:30PM EST

VCF East 2024 planning is into motion! We will still be at InfoAge. Dates are April 12, 13, 14.

Some important links:

Exhibit Registration

Vendor Registration

Speaker Registration

Volunteer Registration

Hotel Blocks

Consignment registration is coming soon. We are redoing the consignment process and it will be even better than last year! Also we have a new location for consignment that is twice as large!

More updates to come!

 

Vintage Computer Festival 6 talks recovered!

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It’s been 20 years now since VCF 6.
VCF 6 took place October 11-12th, 2003 at the Computer History Museum
Due to the extraordinary efforts of Kay Savetz, Clay Cowgill, and Josh Malone over the past two years, some of the talks from Vintage Computer Festival 6 have been recovered!
The recordings were in very poor condition and took extreme measures to recover. The audio is often not good. Sometimes it is very bad. But this is the best that they could do from very bad recordings.
C. H. Ting, Jef Raskin, John Ellenby, and Gary Starkweather are dead now, so these are voices from those who passed.
They have the audio of the five recoverable sessions from VCF 2003 up at Internet Archive.
Len Shustek – Computer History Museum
Bruce Damer – The Joys and Trials of Computer Collecting
David Jaffe / C. H. Ting / Kevin Appert / Dwight Elvey – Forth
Jef Raskin – Apple and the Humane Environment
John Ellenby / Gary Starkweather / Dave Robson / Peter Deutsch / Charles Simonyi – Xerox Alto panel
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Jeff Brace
VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President
Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner
VCF Mid-Atlantic Event Manager
Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity

Introducing VCF SoCal!

Introducing VCF SoCal!

We’re pleased to announce the newest addition to the Vintage Computer Festival lineup – VCF SoCal in Orange, California on Presidents’ Day weekend, February 17-18, 2024.

Tickets will be on sale shortly, but hotel rooms are available to be booked now. Visit VCFSoCal.com for more details.

The city of Orange is in the heart of Orange County, minutes from Disneyland, beaches and skiing – with easy access to John Wayne airport.

Reserve your spot at the retro-filled, inaugural weekend in SoCal!

We’ve come a long way, but we’re set for another edition of VCF West, 20+ years removed from the picture above!

Please join us on Friday August 4th and Saturday August 5th at the Computer History Museum for what promises to be an amazing show!

We’ve set records for exhibitors (56!) and speakers with our first, the amazing Jeri Ellsworth, kicking off festivities at 10:00 AM on Friday!  Gates will open at 9:30 to get everyone seated in time! Book your tickets now!  Or pay at the door when you arrive.

If you’re a collector looking to add or subtract from your collection it looks like our consignment space will be overflowing with goodies! Sellers need to sign up in advance, so please hit that link above!

See you soon!

VCF West 2023 Update

Planning for VCF West 2023 is moving along nicely!  This is a good thing since there is less than a month left!

The show will take place on FRIDAY AUGUST 4th and SATURDAY August 5th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

Please note that this year’s show is Friday and Saturday. There is no event on Sunday for 2023.

The Exhibitor list has been posted and registration is now closed. Amazingly, we have more exhibits than we’ve ever had before!

If you missed the deadline please contact us via the link on the Exhibitor page and we’ll do our best to accommodate.

For those already registered, look for an email containing our standard set of Exhibitor instructions in the coming days.

Our cast of Speakers is absolutely outstanding this year! This will be finalized along with a schedule in the very near future. Thanks to Bil Herd and others we have a packed speaker schedule with tons of exciting talks!

We have a new space for Consignment this year!  We’ll have lots more room and a more streamlined system. This will, however, require some extra help from those participating in consignment. The instructions on our page will be updated very soon.

Thank you all for the encouragement and support.  This show can’t happen without you all. 

VCF West 2023 is a GO!

It has been a long time coming, but we’ve finally made arrangements to have a 2023 VCF West.

I’ll share some of the boring details later, but, for now, I want to encourage everyone interested in this year’s show to get ready for a great event, but one with a very short runway.  So get those exhibits prepared and registered, get those talks planned and free up your time for FRIDAY AUGUST 4th and SATURDAY August 5th.

Yes, you read that right.  One of the big hang-ups with getting 2023 off of the ground was that our traditional, and preferred, venue, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, is not available for Sunday on our normal show weekend.

So this year’s event will be Friday and Saturday with setup on Thursday.

While this scheduling issue was the main holdup to getting the show off of the ground – It took a while to come to terms with the CHM for the rental, dates, etc. and that’s on me – the good news is that the CHM are very excited to have us back and they will help us promote the show, hopefully increasing our attendance even with the awkward days.

That said I do apologize profusely for the delays and inconvenience this will cause.  I also apologize for “ignoring” most of the emails from folks asking about our progress.  I really wasn’t sure until just today that the show would even go on and I didn’t want to spur a rumor mill in advance of an announcement.

Thankfully the announcement is a positive one!

Exhibitor registration is now open.  Because of the short timelines I’m encouraging everyone to sign up ASAP.

The same goes for speakers.  If you’d like to speak at the show please let me know soon.

Thank you all for the encouragement and support.  This show can’t happen without you all.  Once again I apologize for compressing all of the planning.  This won’t happen again.

VCF East 2023 is coming! April 14, 15, 16.

VCF East 2023 will be again at The InfoAge Science and History Museums in Wall, NJ.

The dates are April 14, 15, & 16. Updated information can be found here: https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

We will have a great lineup of speakers and exhibitors!

Click here for the VCF East main page: https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

Exhibitor Registrationhttps://forms.gle/iKZNPqFPSeobjnau5
Vendor Registrationhttps://forms.gle/zGsPxCcuDQBXm3fb7
Volunteer Registration:  https://forms.gle/UEbiFYvgEiBk9MS27
Speaker Registrationhttps://forms.gle/yvV311ucBEWXzqpx9

 

VCF West 2022, Aug 6 & 7! Great speakers, exhibits and consignment!

VCF West is breaking records for VCFs with more exhibits and more speakers than ever! We won’t have 12 original Apple 1s, as in this photo, but there will be several there for you to see, including the first ever! There will be lots of other great exhibits with the current list here. Speakers are selected and can be found here. Lee Felsenstein will be there to give a talk about his Pennywhistle along with almost a dozen other speakers. Consignment, as always, will be very active with more space than ever with lots of sellers bringing lots of awesome stuff. If you are interested in consignment, look here.

The show will be August 6 & 7, 2022 at The Computer History Museum. Show information can be found here. Tickets can be pre-bought on Eventbrite. The first 100 Two day ticket buyers get a unique custom badge for this event.

Other VIPs who will be at the show include Liza Loop and Dan Kottke.

Vintage Computer Festival Turns 25! VCF West 2022

The Vintage Computer Festival started in on October 25, 1997 at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, California. Founded by Sellam Abraham after posting to cctalk (Classic Computing) Discussion List. By 2006 it found it’s home at the Computer History Museum. Stopping in 2007 and rebooted in 2016.

VCF West 2022 is fast approaching!

Held again at The Computer History Museum in Mountain View California on August 6 & 7.

Exhibit registrations will be closing after the July 4th holiday and speaker slots are just about full!
If you’re planning on exhibiting please sign up ASAP here.
If you’d like to speak please email me at erik@vcfed.org with your ideas and availability.
Volunteers are always needed to help at our front desk, in consignment, with set-up and tear down and or with any number of other tasks that keep the show running smoothly.  Students are welcome to volunteer and we will sign or otherwise document this for volunteer hours.
And, finally, tickets are on sale at Eventbrite – tell your friends and forward this information far and wide!

VCF East 2022 Wrap up

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