Conferences/Exhibitions (Was: DECUS PDP-11 SPACE WAR?

[Adrian Stoness]

neat you should scan those and put em up on bit savers or somthing

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 3:56 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

> On Sat, 8 Dec 2018, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
> > were the decus confrinces ever held in multi level parking garages? keep
> > hearing a story of one that was so big it took over one. door prize was a
> > rainbow 100 my dad won in 79 80?? tells me he got a membership when he
> was
> > a teen i the early 70's after hanging out with the nasa guys in the 60's
> in
> > town who used to run experiments up in northern manitoba
>
> Congratulations.  THAT is a great prize!
>
>
> I never attended any confrinces, but a lot of conferences and exhibitions.
>
>
> National Computer Conference was one of the first ones, started in 1951,
> under the name Joint Computer Conference.
> 1968 was Engelbart's "The Mother Of All Demos"
> In 1973, it became National Computer Conference.
> Anaheim in 1983 was a big one.  S'posedly a couple of people died from the
> heat in the "tents" (temporary buildings, because it overflowed the
> convention facilities)
>
>
> CeBIT (Hanover Germany) was the largest.  Started in 1970; ended? in 2018.
> Sorry, I have little or no information about it; I never got a chance to
> go.
>
>
> One of the next early ones was "The West Coast Computer Faire".
> Started by Jim Warren (also known for Silicon Gulch Gazette, and role
> in starting mumerous other publications)  Jim Warren used to roll around
> the show on roller skates.
>
> First one of WCCF was in 1977 in Brooks Hall and Civic Auditorium in San
> Francisco.  It included intro of AppleII and Commodore PET.
>
> (All discussion of "FIRST" between TRS80, Commodore PET, and APPLE2 is
> essentially meaningless, as they were for all practical purposes TIED, and
> "FIRST" is based on WHICH aspect you consider important.)
>
> Second was in San Jose, (1978)
> Third was in Los Angeles, (1978)
> Fourth was back in SF.  (1979) (first one that I exhibited in), and intro
> of VisiCalc
> Fifth (1980) included intro of Microsoft SoftCard
> Sixth (1981) included Osborne 1
> A spin-off was the West Coast PC Faire.
> But, Apple stopped exhibiting at WCCF, and "any show [other than Comdex]
> that also has PC-based exhibits".
> In 1983, Jim Warren sold out to Prentice Hall, who sold to Shelly Adelson
> (Comdex, and Las Vegas hotels).  WCCF declined.
> At "SOG" ("Semi-Official Gathering" put on by Micro-Cornucopia), we
> presented Jim Warren with a pair of skates and told him that it was time
> to put them back on.
> WCCF declined rapidly and ended with 16th in 1991?
>
>
> Comdex started in 1979 (Las Vegas), by Shelly Adelson, and by the mid
> 1980s, Comdex Las Vegas became the largest USA show.
> It filled ALL of the convention halls of all of the hotels that had
> convention halls, with shuttle buses between them (Hilton, Riviera, MGM,
> Sahara, Tropicana, Caesar's Palace, Sands, etc.)
> $39.95 hotel rooms bumped their rates to $140+ and sold out.
> Smallest booth size was 10x10.  But, because of an ERROR in drawing the
> floorplan, a couple of years, I was able to get a 7x7!
> Some, including Microsoft, set up micro-booths within their
> "pavilion" booths to rent out to many small affiliated companies.
> It spun-off Spring Comdex (Atlanta?) and some international shows.
> It declined, and Travel complications for international attendees were BAD
> in 2001 (post 9/11), and the show RAPIDLY declined and closed in 2003.
> I still have some miscellaneous copies of the show guide/directory from a
> number of years.
>
>