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Gadget Show Live 2009 – Awesome!

Here is a copy of a news item posted on the Computing History website. Make sure you take a look at their website and help support this museum in any way you can.

Source : http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/news/4058/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 !!

We arranged the exhibits in decades starting with the 1970’s and classic retro gadgets like the Akai reel to reel, the Sony Colour TV, the Apple II and Commodore PET computers. Each decade had two featured games consoles at the front on the stand. For the 70’s we had a Binatone PONG game and the classic Atari 2600 games console.

For the 1980’s we featured the awesome BBC Micro, the original Apple Mac, the Osborne 1, Asteroids and Simon hand held games and the Betamax video recorder. The two games machines featured were obviously the Sincair Spectrum and the Commodore 64!

Lastly, the 1990’s featuring the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Apple iMac, Psion Organisers, Kodak DC-120 Camera and a Toshiba Satellite laptop. Representing gaming gadgets were the Atari Jaguar and the fantastic Sony Playstation.

The show was buzzing with excitement and thoughout the three day event we had a great live backing track thanks toCraig 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 thier 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 thier 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 museum of computing history stand was really interesting.”
http://www.avforums.com/forums/shows-events/928597-gadget-show-17-19th-april-nec-3.html

“It was by far the MOST popular booth at the Gadget Show.”
http://www.cpu3d.com/article/7577-2/the-gadget-show-live-birmingham-nec/the-retro-zone.html

“People of Centre for Computing History are very nice and they have a Sinclair C5. Someone sponsor their museum.” – Jane Douglas – MSN Tech
http://msnuktech.spaces.live.com/

“A really, really interesting trip through 30 years of computing.”
http://mrteabelly.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/go-go-gadget-show/

“Thank you so much for coming along and putting in so much effort to create an amazing experience for our visitors. I know everyone was really impressed and it was definitely one of the most popular stands/features at the show.” – Iain Wood – Upper Street Events (Show Organiser)

“You guys easily have the coolest stand here”
A guy from the PC World stand!

“One of the main attractions at the show is the Centre for Computing History”
ENT TV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en-GB&v=jfrLLT-RZaM&gl=GB
“The Gadget Show Live lived up to the hopes of being UK’s largest interactive technology event”
http://www.weirdandbeard.com/features/2009/4/gadget_show_20093
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 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 …
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  1. Pingback:Gadget Show Live 2009 - Awesome! « Andys Retro Computers | ClassyComp.Com

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