Many thanks to all of the folks who made the trek to the Dayton DMA Computerfest at the end of August. Carol and I were pleased to see many old friends and to make some new ones. A great deal of people showed up, and many who said they would be there..were not! Human nature is so hard to figure out. At times this reminds me of asking a girl out on a date and being told she has to wash her hair that weekend!?! Still a lot of fun was had by those in attendance, and for UPDATE Magazine and Mechanical Affinity, both found it a financial success.
After the long and arduous loading up and making of the trip (first making sure that the dogs and cats were well cared for), we arrived at the Red Roof Inn in Dayton, only to be told we had had many people call looking for us. It is nice to have friends. The poor girl at the motel desk was glad we had finally arrived. In the lobby were Gene Wilson and Toby Radloff of Cleveland, Paul Holmgren and Bill Angel of Indianapolis, Don Lambert of Auburn (home of the Cord for you auto buffs), and we later ran into Jeff Taylor and Rene Bruneau of the Toronto area, Mark Stuber of Sharp’s, Bill and John Pedersen of Grand Rapids, and Tim Swenson and Manuel Quintero of the D.C. area. From that point on, whenever we went to supper or breakfast…we went in mass groups. At the show of course we ran into many other friends, such as D.G. Smith and son, Bill Heberlein, Neal Schultz, Mel Laverne, Bill Bell, Doug Gillespie and Dave Bennett, to name just a few.
We went over on Friday, the night before the show, and set up our 4 tables (which really was not enough room to display all that we had for sale) and got to visit with some of the Dayton users, led by their trusty leader, Gary Ganger. Contrary to what we had been told, we were placed exactly in the same location as the year before. This made it easy for folks to find us, if they had been there last year. As for booths that were devoted to Sinclair products, there was Bill Angels flea market, SMUG of Milwaukee, T/Snug (who shared space with Chicago, but Chicago was a no show), DMA’s Timex Sinclair SIG and a booth of D.G. Smiths. I hope I have not missed anyone. If so, pardon my error in advance.
I spent the next couple of days selling books, hardware, software and browsing other booths to find programs to feed to my other computer, my Amiga. Sometime I hope to find the spare time to see if I can Network my QL and Amiga. Just a side note on the Amiga! I have an improved, by the fine folks of Colorado thanks to Andy Hradesky, QL emulator for use on the 68000 series of Amigas. Soon, it should also be set to run on the other accelerated Amigas. If you are interested in getting a copy of this, get in contact with me.
We were told that about 27,000 people attended this years Computerfest, which would make the show a definite success. Last year the attendance was figured at just over 15,000. I would have liked to have seen it advertised more by the Dayton group to Sinclair users. I would also have liked to have at least seen mention of it in the Sinclair user group newsletters. I know that they all heard about it. They just failed to pass on the word to the readers of their newsletters. When there are so few of us, it ill behooves any of us to act in petty ways. When ever there is any event that concerns the use of Sinclair or Cambridge computers, anywhere in North America, that is the kind of news that belongs in all of our user group newsletters. We should all give the information to our readers and allow them to decide on an individual basis if they wish to attend. The event was still good.