Gadget Show Live 2009 - Awesome!
We're back from a long 5 days at the NEC in Birmingham. As much hard work as it was and although most of us feel like we've been run over by tank it was all completely worth it !!
The show was a huge success with over 31,000 visitors flooding through the doors - literally ...
We spent Wednesday and Thursday building the 110 square metre stand. A luton van full of equipment was unloaded and set-up. Computers and gadgets were cleaned, the Asteroids machine was polished and the Sinclair C5 was revved up.
Then Friday happened. The official opening at 10 o'clock came and within minutes the stand was inundated with visitors all which had huge grins and pointing fingers claiming "I had one of those!". It was absolutely brilliant.
You could hardly see the stand for people !!
The show was buzzing with excitement and throughout the three-day event we had a great live backing track thanks to Craig Blundell on the Roland V-Drums stand!! [ Video ] Across the avenue Silverline tools were racing electric power tools [ Video ] and to our left Pacemaker dancers were great to watch. [ Video ]
This is the first exhibition we have ever attended and we met every objective in doing so. It gave us the chance to complete a poll of interest in the project (thanks to all those who filled in the questionnaire), and it gave us the chance to make important contacts within the IT industry. We were especially pleased to be approached by Elonex who have asked us to preserve their first sub £100 laptop and by Western Digital who asked "how can we help?" !! .. and if that isn't enough our convictions were boulstered by the shear enthusiasm of the thousands of people that visited the stand pointing and exclaiming "I had one of those!!" ...
Jason Fitzpatrick said, "The Centre for Computing History is a real labour of love. We have some great volunteers that help run and maintain the project but sadly there is only so much that can be done for free! The centre really needs financial support from the big names in computing, after all, it's their history we're preserving. We had a fantastic response at the Gadget Show Live, the stand was inundated with people telling stories of how the computer they had changed their life, and that's exactly what the museum is about. It's about telling the story of the computer age and how it has affected our society."
We've had some great feedback online about our stand :
The show was a huge success, not only for us, but the show in general. Excellent organisation, great atmosphere and an event well remember for a long time. Just a shame the Gadget Show presenters didn't come and see us !! :-(
Hey ho, we're looking forward to the Gadget Show Live 2010 - We'll have a whole new decade on show and some great new interactive exhibits ... See you there ...
Special thanks to Craig Blundell [ www.craigblundell.net ] for creating a soundtrack for the video especially for us. Hopefully we'll be working together soon to create a track based around vintage computers ... watch this space ... Story By: Jason Fitzpatrick Date : 20-04-2009 |
