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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org