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Bay Area Vintage Computer Club

Ok. I have a verified place for us to meet. It is in Oakland, at the Museum of Digital Art and Entertainment. They are a non-profit organization and are offering us the space at no charge but will accept donations.

There is easy access from the 19th Street BART station and from the 980 freeway.

I am thinking that we can meet there twice a month, and perhaps donate $5/meeting each to them as a thank you for use of the space, what do you guys think?

Lets get a sound off on what days work best for all of you out there that are interested?
 
strollin said:
Wow! That's 67 miles 1 way for me
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Yeah, 26mi for me, but considering how hard it is to find any place to meet at all, it would be impossible to find a place close and convenient for everyone. But we'll try to make it interesting and worth the drive though. Can't you jump on Amtrak or something?
 
Count me in for this. Weekends are best for me, but weekday evenings can generally work. Thanks very much in tracking down the meeting place.
I liked the idea that someone mentioned of finding a few locations in the greater bay area, so we can rotate around and make things accessible for geographically disparate people. This is a great start, I'll look into things on the peninsula side for other possible places.
 
Ok guys. We have a location as said in this thread that will work to get us started. Eventuallly I am hoping to get some other locations in the bay area so that we can bounce around for the convenience of the people involved.

But before we get there, we need to get a regular group going, to that end I have some questions:

Who is actually interested in attending, and will do so?

What do you guys want to see this club achieve or do? Do we want to focus on a guest speaker type thing, or perhaps a show off out prize possessions or as a general support type thing (ie someone comes in with a problem unit and people brain storm a solution)?

Thanks for the feedback.
 
lutiana said:
Ok guys. We have a location as said in this thread that will work to get us started. Eventuallly I am hoping to get some other locations in the bay area so that we can bounce around for the convenience of the people involved.

But before we get there, we need to get a regular group going, to that end I have some questions:

Who is actually interested in attending, and will do so?

What do you guys want to see this club achieve or do? Do we want to focus on a guest speaker type thing, or perhaps a show off out prize possessions or as a general support type thing (ie someone comes in with a problem unit and people brain storm a solution)?

Thanks for the feedback.
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I suggest starting a listserve for your new group. Use a site like Freelists, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, etc.
 
lutiana said:
Ok guys. We have a location as said in this thread that will work to get us started. Eventuallly I am hoping to get some other locations in the bay area so that we can bounce around for the convenience of the people involved.

But before we get there, we need to get a regular group going, to that end I have some questions:

Who is actually interested in attending, and will do so?

What do you guys want to see this club achieve or do? Do we want to focus on a guest speaker type thing, or perhaps a show off out prize possessions or as a general support type thing (ie someone comes in with a problem unit and people brain storm a solution)?

Thanks for the feedback.
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I'm definitely interested and could attend.
I've been thinking about names for the club, and allow me to make a suggestion:

B.A.S.I.C. :
Bay Area Society for Immemorial Computing

The "I" word is a bit of a stretch, but the BASIC acronym seemed too good to pass up..

All of your suggestions sound good for group activities. My personal interests lean toward repair of ailing systems and building new hardware for old machines, so I could certainly be involved on that side of things. So I guess I would be interested in an interactive workshop type event where we could play around with/fix/develop for the old computers.
But I'm open to other suggestions as well..
 
So now that we have a meeting location, when will we have our first meeting? How many people have shown interest, is the group large enough to warrant a regular meeting place? Maybe while starting out, if the group is small to begin with, we could start with a "meet & greet" kind of thing at a coffee shop or other establishment where we could meet each other and plan out what type of activities we would like.

One activity I'd like to see is a swap and or for sale table where we could display parts/systems we want to swap/sell.

As far as the name of our group, I like the BASIC acronym but suggest it to stand for: Bay Area Society for Inveterate Computing
 
A swap and for sale table is a great idea.

Well since we got a location there are only 3 people that have actually shown interest (myself, strollin and gubbish). One of which won't come unless it has real value (rightly so since he is quite a ways away, can't blame him on this one). Honestly, I am not prepared to put in the effort for 3 people.

So, I am going to create a listserve as was suggested and try to promote this all over the place and get some interest going. Once we have more than 6 or 10 members on the list then we can talk about an in-flesh meeting to flush out our goals.
 
I suspected there might be as few as 3 of us, that's why I suggested maybe we meet in a coffee shop somewhere just to start working on ways to promote the group. No reason you have to do that all by yourself lutiana.
 
Both a listserve and a coffee shop meeting sound good to me. I know a few others in the area who may be interested, I'll make some inquiries.
 
I just (finally) noticed this thread, and I might be interested in some sort of semi-regular Bay Area Vintage Club. Oakland is a little bit of a stretch location-wise from where I am in the South Bay but I might be able to attend the occasional meeting.

(I know at least one other person that may be interested as well, perhaps if enough folks were to get on board it would be possible to rotate the venue between a few different spots to spread the pain around.)
 
Eudimorphodon said:
(I know at least one other person that may be interested as well, perhaps if enough folks were to get on board it would be possible to rotate the venue between a few different spots to spread the pain around.)
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Rotating the venue around the bay area is the ultimate goal, but before that happens we need to get a regular group together. The thinking is that if we have enough people show up regularly to Oakland then we can dig deeper into it. I'd love to have 4 meetings per month, one in each of the bay area quadrants (North, South, East and SF itself), but finding locations is actually a significant hurdle and is the major reason why this has taken so long to get this far.

So for now it is Oakland, and I am thinking once a month. I think our initial meeting should be a swap meet/meet and greet, and should be sometime in March. The space in Oakland is offering the space to us for free, so there really is no real reason to meet at a coffee shop initially.

I have setup a Yahoo Group for now. I will use this mostly to announce meetings and keep track of who is in the group, check it out at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sfvintagecomputers/
 
Will do.

Do me a favour and when you join group can you add your name to the profile on the group, even if it is just your first name. It will be easier to remember who is who by their name as opposed to their yahoo id. And if possible maybe a reference to your forum name...
 
Joined the group under "mikegubbish".
I'm looking into possible meeting places in SF and the peninsula, so will let you know if I find anything promising. Also spoke to another person interested in the meetup and I know a few others I could contact.
 
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