Growing the hobby

Hello cctalk'ers, We at the Vintage Computer Federation would like to thank everyone for making 2016 an incredible year. Most of you know us by now, but just in case you don't -- we're a 501(c)3 non-profit created a year ago to organize the Vintage Computer Forum, VCF East, VCF West, and the official VCF Museum (at our NJ headquarters). Our goals are simple -- to empower collectors and spread awareness of computer history. We accomplished great things in 2016. We doubled the size of our museum, hosted the 11th edition of Vintage Computer Festival East, resurrected the former Vintage Computer Festival West, and joined forces with the Vintage Computer Forum. Now we?re asking for your help to keep the momentum going. Can you make a tax-deductible gift to us this holiday season? Over at our contributions page you?ll find four options ? Binary ($10.00), Phreaker ($26.00), 555 Timer ($55.50), S-100 ($100), and Variable (enter your own amount). If you?d like to do something truly awesome, and you happen to live in or will be traveling to the San Francisco / Silicon Valley area, then bid on lunch with Lee Felsenstein through our friends at CharityBuzz (https://www.charitybuzz.com/catalog_items/lunch-for-3-with-personal-computi…). Lee is a technical and social media legend ? he was a spark behind Community Memory, moderator of the Homebrew Computer Club, and a top engineer for both the Processor Tech Sol-20 and Osborne-1. Bring a few friends, have lunch with Lee at your mutual convenience, and we?ll pay the bill! Where will your money go? We are planning even more things for 2017 and beyond. Vintage Computer Festival East XII will be held March 31 through April 2 at our museum. We are currently planning Vintage Computer Festival West XII and will announce the dates soon. We?re considering expansion of the Festival to other cities, we?re looking to incubate additional regional chapters, we are planning to offer more resources online, and we?re preparing a slew of improvements to the physical museum. If you thought we were active this year, then 2017 is going to exhaust us ? but we love every minute of it! If you want even your news even more frequent and granular, then you?ve got options! Read our blog at vcfed.org, join the discussion forum there, like us at facebook.com/vcfederation, and follow us through twitter.com/vcfederation. Finally, if you have questions or comments, then please feel free to contact me directly. Thank you, Evan Koblentz Director, Vintage Computer Federation Evan at vcfed.org