Tiny Sharonville, OH, a suburb clinging to the northern fringe of bustling Cincinnati, was—for the first weekend in May—the site of an incredible national gathering of Sinclair home computing enthusiasts. It was the first to be staged since Boston’s legendary ZX/TS Celebration in late October, 1983.
For this two-day MIDWEST COMPUTERFEST, attendance (including family groups, dealers, and the press) approached five hundred. Representatives were there from both the east and west coasts, though the majority of attendees came from the heartland close to Cincinnati: Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
The event was well advertised in the midwest and in the national user publications. But the 13-person organizing staff that labored a whole year to produce the COMPUTERFEST was completely overwhelmed by the response, especially the number of people who just came in oft the street.
What occurred at the Sharonville Ramada Inn is difficult to faithfully describe. Try, however, to imagine a nonstop CATS meeting, 32 hours in duration, complete with well-informed speakers, timely topics, peripatetic participants, and a big 5,000 sq.ft. ballroom filled with highly-qualitied dealers in all things Sinclair.
Almost everything was available in the ballroom to satisfy even the most fanatic Sinclair freak. The QL and its peripherals were being numerous vendors, and displayed by to walk around it was possible the room and search out the absolutely lowest price. The Sinclair QL color monitor was a most impressive item, indeed—eight of the most vivid, solid “comic book’ colors you will ever see on any screen anywhere.
To the surprise of many of the vendors, however, it was software, hardware, and publications for the T/S 1000 that were the hottest items. Russell of Russell Electronics, Centre Hall, PA, sold all his T/S 1000 products by noon the first day. (Is there a message, somewhere in any of this?) And trading and talking were so vigorous on Saturday that the ballroom had to be kept open an additional hour because nobody really wanted to leave. Panels and individual presentations covered a wide topical spectrum and were held continuously in a separate meeting room during the whole COMPUTERFEST. All were well attended.
Representing CATS were, besides myselt, Ruth Fegley, Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Lewis, and Tom Bent, who was also there as part of the SYNCWARE NEWS conglomerate. A writer from the Wall Street JOURNAL interviewed Ruth Fegley at great length about the fatal fascination she has for Sinclair products generally.
A Sinclair user from Detroit and I got to comparing characteristics of Corvair-owners and Sinclair-owners (he has five Corvairs, I have one). Such folks are, we found, remarkably similar in makeup—tough, stubborn but good-natured, keen on value and extremely resourceful. They also have difticulty letting a good thing go.
The Ramada Inn was overall a most comfortable place—the staff was actually pleasant! Just a couple of blocks away was a restaurant row that made the fast food strip in College Park seem anemic by comparison.
I have always thought that if you go into an affair like this in a good frame of mind, good things will happen to you. The COMPUTERFEST really provided valid proof for this postulate.
E.G., at DCA, the airline let me get on a plane that had already been buttoned up! Also, after I checked out of the Sharonville Ramada, my housekeeper had me paged by radio and ran down eight floors to hand me the souvenir T-shirts I had left behind!
Two young people were seen promoting Sinclair software they had developed themselves. B.F. Kimbrough of Akron, OH showed a clever little in-memory operating system for the T/S 1000 family that takes the drudgery out ot the more common user operations. Jon Roketenetz, a 15-year-old Cincinnati member of the user group, was marketing his DRAW II color graphics program for the 2068. His company is called PEECH Il Productions. Their presence and the ingenuity they displayed were indeed encouraging.
All the national Sinclair-oriented publishers were on hand: SYNCWARE NEWS, TIME DESIGNS, SUM, CTM, & TS Horizons. It was a pleasure to meet and talk to these people from diverse parts of the country whose persistence and creativity have to a large degree been responsible for keeping the Sinclair spirit alive.
Looking back, it was hard to detect a negative note during any part of the whole affair. Everyone was as excited as children on Christmas morning. It was as if the continuous unfolding of an endless computing panorama was still just beginning, and everyone was simply grateful just to be there and to be a part of it.