Gadget Show Live 2010
It's been a busy week preparing for the Gadget Show Live 2010. With the van finally loaded we travelled upto the NEC in Birmingham to get cracking on the stand.
It took 2 days to build and populate the stand with exhibits. We have kept the popular 70's, 80's and 90's feaures that we had last year and added Telephones Unplugged, Music on the Go, Photography goes Digital and Computing Gets Personal. We've also set-up to big screen versions of Pac-Man and Space Invaders and even an original Asteroids cocktail cabinet!
Wednesday
Wednesday was the press and preview day and as per last year we were inudated with visitors. Elonex have been great and donated an Elonex One laptop - the first sub £100 laptop on the market. It's on display as part of the Computing gets Personal display. We have had loads of great comments and lots of interest in the museum. Now it's even more important we get bigger premisis in case all these people who want to visit actually turn up! Thursday
OMG! - At 9:30am the tannoy system anounced "The Gadget Show Live is now open". There wa a huge cheer from the entrance hall and then a stampede of people came round the corner and mobbed the stand. It's fantastic!! We've had some great feedback from visitors to the stand throughout the day, many of which hadn't seen gadgets like the Merlin or Simon since they threw them away in the early eighties!! A real blast from the past ... Friday
Again, there was a huge number of people at the event and the stand was busy all day. We had some great chats with people about technology and computers and how it has changed our lives. We also had several generous donations offered to us which we'll follow up after the show. Gail Porter had a good look round the display and spent quite some time playing on the vintage toys like Simon and the Casio VL-1. Saturday
I'm trying to think of different ways in which to say that the stand was really busy all day, but I've run out. The weekend seems to have brought more families with it. It also seems to have brought Doctor Who and the Darleks with it. Doctor Who wandered around the stand and took his sonic screwdriver to our Furby. Strange! The Darleks just hovered around in the isle and accosted our visitors! The joystick on the Commodore 64 snapped from over use which is a bit of a shame, but to be expecxted bearing in mind the amount of use it has had. All in all another great day.
Sunday
The last day of the show. It has been quite eventful. We did an interview Radio 4, the Gadget Show Web TV crew came and done some filming, we had several offers of donations of vintage kit and although it was the last day it didn't make it any less busy! Come 5:30pm the tannoy system announced that the Gadget Show was now closed and again there was a huge cheer, but this time it came from the exhibitors!!! :-) All in all the event was fantastic. We gave out some 5,800 flyers and had a great time talking to people. The feedback we have had has been really positive and make it all worth while.
Thanks to all the volunteers that have helped on the stand throughout the last solid week : Andy Taylor, Saphron Proudfoot, Dave Moore, Lisa McGerty, Jason Sharp, Amanda Sharp, Steve Bryant and of course, Bob MacQueen from the Open University.
Special thanks to Chris from the Open University who organised the support of our event. We couldn't have done it without you Chris ... Thanks :-)
Looking forward to Gadget Show Live 2011 ... but we'll need a bigger stand!
Jason Fitzpatrick
Chief Geek - The Centre for Computing History
Comments :
I spent more time on the Gadget Hall of Fame than I did the rest of the event put together!
Andrew - http://usingwindowshomeserver.com/2010/04/11/the-gadget-show-live-2010/ Would go next year PURELY to see all those computers from different era's working and playable!
One of my favourite sections here at Gadget Show Live 2010 is the Gadget Hall of Fame. Dionne South - Gadget Show Presenter - http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/videos/other/hall-of-fame-gsl One of my favourite parts of the show was the ‘Gadget Hall of Fame’ Luke Davies - http://www.berkeleypr.co.uk/blog/the-gadget-show-live-2010-1788.html
Well done, that was truly amazing what you brought. And to believe that you only brought about 10% of what you have. [ed. Actually it's less that 1% !!] Alan Kane - Email
We really enjoyed the gadget show hall of fame and offerings from the Centre for computing history. Gadget Hall of Fame by The Centre for Computing History. Brill stand, lots of memories to be brought back!
Tweet by TheGadgetShow Check out the gadget hall of fame, that was great :)
Tweet by CallumRudd Date : 08-04-2010 |