I've gotten some griping about my selection for the location of the first
VCF East.
No doubt, a good majority of folks will be quite happy with the selection.
This is no accident. The site was chosen based on the demographics I
collected. Most of the attendees will be coming from Massachusetts and
surrounding areas.
As with any sensible business decision, it was based on what will
hopefully bring as many attendees to the event, which in turn means I will
be able to recoup expenses and will therefore want to continue to do
Festivals on the east coast.
I received over 150 responses to the VCF East survey. Here is a summary
of the results:
This chart shows the number of responses received from each state, sorted
by number of attendees in descending order.
State Count
----- -----
MA 27
NY 15
PA 12
NH 8
MD 7
OH 5
NJ 4
FL 4
CT 3
VT 3
GA 3
RI 2
VA 2
NC 2
IN 2
IL 2
MN 2
ME 1
WV 1
MI 1
WI 1
IA 1
MO 1
TX 1
- Nearly 25% of potential attendees will be coming from MA alone
- 40% of potential attendees will be coming from the New England area
- If you include NY, PA and NJ with New England, nearly 70% will be coming
from this combined northeast region
There was also a strong desire to keep the event close to the Rhodes
Island Computer Museum and the Retro-Computing Society of Rhodes Island so
that tours to those facilities could be organized. Providence is only
about 45 minutes from Worcester. There are also several other museums
that I hope to get involved with the event, including the MIT and
Harvard museums and the Computer Museum in Boston.
Worcester is still within only a few hours of where most of the potential
attendees will be coming from. I don't know how you east coast folks
perceive distance, but I've lived in California all my life and a 6-hour
drive from the San Francisco bay area to the Los Angeles area is no big
deal to me. I made the round-trip in one day a couple weekends ago to
pick up an old computer. Driving a couple to three hundred miles should
not be a major ordeal for most folks.
So there you have it, the reasoning behind the selection of the location
for VCF East 1.0. I know it won't please everyone, but the unhappy folks
need to realize it has to be held where it makes the most sense.
I really look forward to VCF East, and I hope you easterly folks do too :)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
Received on Tue Apr 10 2001 - 02:07:30 BST