New group forming in Seattle region
gsteemso
in the Seattle area. I expect the user base will centre somewhere
north of the city proper because there is already at least one retro
group in Tacoma that people in the south end can attend.
I had originally planned to focus on one or two types of old micro
(Commodores and Apples), but I’ve had trouble locating vintage-Apple
fans, and so few Commodore people in town have any interest in meeting
face-to-face that I have broadened the focus to include any sort of
computing (hardware, software, or development efforts for same) older
than roughly 15-20 years. That said, I really doubt there will be much
interest in Windows 95.
While several candidate locations have been lined up, no specific
meeting place or time has yet been set; I figured it would make sense
to find out what parts of town people will be coming from before
trying to fix that in stone.
Lastly, the all-important detail of the new group’s name: I am torn
between
North End Retrocomputing Devotees’ Society (N.E.R.D.S.)
and
Retrocomputing Enthusiasts’ Society Of Northern Seattle (R.E.S.O.N.S.,
the particles reality is fictionally made of — dog Latin for
“thingies”)
Don’t worry if these annoy you, they and any other suggestions made
will be put to a vote when we get a proper meeting together.
Regards,
Gordon Steemson (gsteemso on mail domain commodore128.org ; gsteemso
via AIM, YM and Skype)
nyder
If i wasn't anti-social i might go. but I am.
but in case i might change my mind, which part of north seattle?
gsteemso
> If i wasn't anti-social i might go. but I am.
>
> but in case i might change my mind, which part of north seattle?
As I said in my previous post, no location has been chosen yet, and
none will be until we find out where people tend to come from. So far,
the few responses admitting some sort of neighbourhood or geographic
area have been received from various points in central Seattle (say
within 5 miles of downtown), the north end of Lake Washington (Kenmore
and Bothell), and the Eastside (Bellevue and Redmond). It's kind of
vexing, really; naïvely interpreted, we'd have to meet in the middle
of the lake to approximate being centrally located for our potential
members.
People seem to be reluctant to volunteer information about geography,
even in confidence -- which is, bluntly, silly. I don't know or care
what anyone's home address is, I just want to know approximately what
part of town to hold meetings in so they'd consider it to be "close
enough to local for government work." Most people seem to be of the
opinion that they will ignore the whole business until a meeting is
actually scheduled, presumably hoping the venue will turn out to be
somewhere convenient for them purely by luck.
A number of possible meeting places have been proposed, but the major
difficulty with the ones I have examined so far is difficulty of
access. Wherever we end up meeting needs to have at least minimal bus
service even late at night, because a lot of retrotech enthusiasts
(especially in Seattle) are of extremely limited means, but it will
also need a good amount of free parking near the building because (a)
people will visit from far away (I've had great interest from people
at meetings in Pierce County), and (b) people will have bulky or heavy
gear to demonstrate that will need to be laboriously toted in from
trunks and back seats.
Oh well, the search continues. Please help me narrow things down; to
the nearest five miles or so, what part of town are you in, nyder?
Feel free to reply by email.
Gordon
nyder
Pretty much I-5 and E. Denny in Seattle.