VCF 9.0

I haven't seen anything about VCF yet, so thought I would put down a few comments. It was a fun time as usual at VCF, and I met a lot of interesting people there. I got a chance to put some faces with names, and that is always a lot of fun. The majority of my time was spent taking care of my vendor booth, and so I didn't take a lot of time to spend in other areas. One of the neat additions was the kit building workshops. Several people got their Apple I replica kits signed by Woz. It seemed like the number of vendors and exhibitors were down, but the number of people attending were up. One of the exhibits I liked was the Apple Lisa. The exhibitor, who goes by Lisa :), was very knowledgeable and I learned a number of things from her regarding collecting Lisas. For those that don't know me, I do have a perverted sense of humor. I had brought a Chisholm computer that I think might be a prototype of the first IBM battery operated portable (later licensed to Olivetti) to see if anyone knew anything about it. Evan will hopefully be doing an interview with the company president, and I mainly brought it for him to see. But after watching people ignore it, I put a $2000 price tag on it ... and that got it a little more attention :). But people still didn't ask about it though they took more notice of it. And no, I don't think it is worth anywhere near that much money. I was talking to Sellam, and it would have been a good place to at least mention the Vintage Market Place for selling/trading/buying/etc. vintage computer stuff. And I also think this and Eric's listservers should also have been mentioned. If we are to help build this hobby, it might be a good idea to let people know where to get more information :).