The future: "Virtual RISC OS Shows?"

Bryan, yes, you are quite right about the SAS AUG website being out of date. I have mentioned the out-of-date venue to our webmaster and just hope he is reading your post of 11 hours ago. Perhaps he will respond to your post?

I forgot to add that SAS AUG meet in the Black Jug pub (RH12 1RJ) which is a 5-minute walk from Horsham station. We meet most months on the second Monday at 8pm in the pub. You should check with myself or Neill before coming to ensure we are actually meeting to save a wasted journey. You can contact us via the links on our website. If you are coming to the SW show I will get there about 12:35 and you can ask me about SAS AUG.

Yes, I also looked at RiscOSM for a walking route and have printed it out. I made it 2.1km or 1.3 miles along the main road; but then, unlike Matthew, I didn’t go via a load of pubs. :-) I expect he was influenced by Steve Pampling’s post.

:)
Merely pointing out that using local resources often speeds things up, especiallly when a block of “research” has already been done. Pubs with food being a common question.
There’s one of the people listed on the page, I’ll spare his blushes, who will be very familiar with places to eat. I’ve known him for many years and he’s not one for missing meals. :)

As an aside regarding asking the right questions:
A number of years ago when working on an event in Leeds a fellow CAMRA member took a walk, like the rest of us, out to the Spread Eagle.
We arrived within 30 minutes, he took several hours but when asked how his route had differed the question put was “how many pubs and what names did you pass on the way here?”
The answer was “none” which left many puzzled as to how he could arrive at that corner from the town centre without passing a single pub, those who knew him well knew the answer.

because some really are, quite frankly terrible.

It may be an idea, if there is some free time, for a person to watch a few TED talks to see how they’re communicated (in general 8-18 minutes), and to do a rehearsal run with somebody you can trust to give constructive feedback.
Also, don’t be afraid of bullet point notes so you remember everything.

Disclaimer: as an introvert, my idea of public speaking is to let somebody (anybody!) else do it. :-)

Disclaimer: as an introvert, my idea of public speaking is to let somebody (anybody!) else do it. :-)

That’s always been my inclination, too. Yet after a couple of years reading excerpts from my novels at monthly open mike nights at a local poetry & short story club (FenSpeak) I managed to speak at hustings as a parliamentary candidate in 2015. My head is now safely below the parapet again. Whew.

Appeal to a younger audience

This certainly has to be our aim, but how?

Offer big discounts at shows

This is very difficult to justify given the extra costs and that the the sales would probably have occurred anyway.

Show competitions. Either show wide – entrants can win a prize or people that purchase from your stand get entered to win a prize (pre-setup Pi’s and the like

The Wakefield show has done show wide prize draws in the past.

Have a walk-in repair service, where folk can drop off their broken kit and get it fixed at a sensible cost

Many of the repairs we often do in the shop (normally by mail order) wouldn’t be feasible for various reasons. e.g. Battery changes need testing overnight as there is a significant chance of initial failure.

Reduce the number of annual shows

That is one for the organisers to answer.

Offer free stalls to groups that don’t make money at the event, as they’ll draw in folk that wouldn’t normally attend

I think most of the shows offer free or nominal cost stands for such groups. Personally I think nominal cost is most effective “That which costs us nothing we do not esteem”

Over the years we’ve tried various ways of promoting & marketing Acorn/RISC OS wares but few have been very effective.

Offering 0% finance was one of the more effective. The margins and value (£2400 for a RiscPC with 17" CRT) made that possible and attractive.
Having someone stand outside the RiscPC launch venue with a tabbard on promoting our 0% deal.
Advertising in national newspaper and on local radio: Very poor results
Postal mail shots: Very poor results the turnover from the last one we didn’t cover the postage.
Email newsletters: Surprising quite a few well known RISC OS users have publicly said they did not elect to opt in for our email newsletters. Which is one reason I’ve not got round to find the time/motivation to do one for ages. I do wonder if they have any ideas about marketing RISC OS effectively.
Blogging: I found it quite time consuming (My dyslexia doesn’t help) and it didn’t seem very effective

The first show we exhibited at was The Personal Computer World show at the Barbican in 1982. Once Acorn shows became well established there was more than half a dozen a year at one time. About 15 years ago it whittled down to South East (Guildford then London), South West, Midlands and Wakefield

Having exhibited at well over 100 computer shows nearly all of them Acorn/RISC OS specific, I know that follow on sales are few and far between, also that many of the show sales were deferred sales that if a show wasn’t immanent and local would have been fulfilled by mail order. With the extra costs of shows it is difficult to justify extra discounts at the expensive of non show attendees.

Having not had to prepare for a show we have managed to get a number of things done this week that would have been delayed by at least a week otherwise. The most notable of which is finalising the PCB design of our forthcoming ZIDEFS mini podule which I hope to be able to launch next month. There were also other longer term projects which were worked on, but more of those later in the year!

From all the responses in this thread it does seem that not enough people are in favour of pure virtual shows to make them viable, but that other ways of getting existing show talks and other show info out there to non attendees is the way to go.

I hope a lot of you are now on your way to or preparing to go the South West Show and have put the Wakefield and London Shows in your diary!

Appeal to a younger audience

Is this quoting someone? I couldn’t find it. If it’s referring to RO that’s (conceptually) easy. Step by step guides and some nice tutorials on how to do some things that will entice people to want to venture further. Links where necessary too. Trying to start with RO is currently like running face first into a brick wall.
Also… something I wanted to put in the wish list section. It’s bothered me for years. Even way before I made an account. Most OSes, and software now I think of it, have a screenshots section on their menu or main page. If it were me, I’d slap it up top between “News” and “Downloads”. It’s closer to a logical progression that way. Get some nice screenshots showcasing capabilities with included, downloadable and purchasable software mentioned and linked in a short blurb under the screenshot. Standard fare. Perhaps point out how well suited it is for editing ARM assembly in one. Nothing I have seen comes close to the tools / editors available in RISC OS.
Use your favourite search engine to look for screenshots of RISC OS. Pretty dismal, isn’t it?

Get people’s attention and get them interested. They are more likely to attend an event if it is nearby and they know about it in advance.

On the subject of brick walls… Try to properly bootstrap a user experience from an HD4 archive. No PackMan, No App store, no Netsurf. Minimal documentation. Even I get frustrated by that.
If one gets far enough to somehow gain knowledge about Netsurf and Packman then work out how to install them, then what? They install StrongHelp somehow through psychic guidance perhaps?
Next we have a Manuals.!Manuals directory that just complains about !Run being missing. What does one do? Do they know to press shift while double clicking somehow?
I could continue for ages, but I won’t. My point is that new users will drop it like a hot potato because there is no way a person can reasonably be expected to know what to look for or what to do to get a system set up in the first place.
I managed to do it but I’m stubborn to a fault. Give people a positive first experience and they will come back.

Okay. I’m done.

Is this quoting someone? I couldn’t find it.

Jon Abbott Feb 10th
Appealing to a younger audience is actually on the top of the list for pretty much every voluntary group/society/interest group and probably businesses too.
Everyone gets older so appealing to younger potential members of the group is a requirement unless you want things to die off gradually.

I agree with the comments regarding getting into RO.

Does the NOOBS install (assuming the initial load works – ref. Tim Hill¹) have !Help running from start up? If not, why not?

¹ Tim’s comments about NOOBS (non)functionality have to carry a fair bit of weight, after all he’s been around the Acorn scene for a long time and should have just sailed into a working setup.

(disclaimer, I help organise a RISC OS show)

I thought I’d wait a short while after the South West Show to reply to this thread to make sure any comments here were not seen as being linked with that show in particular … that and I also forgot for a week.

So how do we reach a much larger number of RISC OS users than attend the physical shows and free up time to enable more RISC OS development? My suggestion is ‘Virtual RISC OS Shows’

An interesting and modern take.

However I notice you use the phrase ‘we’ here, fundamentally here I think we are running into a problem that you believe there is a ‘community’ responsibility to do RISC OS related companies’ marketing for them.

It does need someone to co-ordinate it.

That would be you Chris.

An issue with a ‘Virtual’ show that appears to not have been brought up in the thread before, is that for many people the ‘social’ aspect of the show, meeting and chatting with people you only see a few times a year, is an important aspect of visiting. I am not sure a ‘Virtual’ show could achieve something in this area.

Rick wrote: Can I cut and paste my suggestion from last year? You know, the one about YouTube live streaming…

Rick, it appears you have not been to a show in a while, realistically there is not enough going on to support a live stream (of a particularly long length). RISC OS land shows have sort of reached the level of ‘small village fairs’, things to do, people to meet but not with enough content to keep someone at home watching a show entertained.

So you can save yourself a plane ticket – just find somebody with a decent enough Android phone.

That would be you Rick. Or I suppose you could pay someone to film it for you?

Richard wrote: Are there too many shows? At the height of Acorn, wasn’t there a London show, and Harrogate show? Now things are a fraction of the size, and we seem to have more!

Jon wrote: Reduce the number of annual shows

Chris wrote: That is one for the organisers to answer.

I believe there were many more smaller shows that ran in addition to the big two back in the day. I remember Stevenage, attended one in Leicester, arm club shows and the like.

As for too many shows, I can only speak for my own in that I expect it to run providing it continues to break-even (just about). There isn’t a committee of RISC OS show organisers planning these things out, they are separate concerns. There’s certainly no way I’m going to go to another shows’ organisers and say “I think you should stop”, they would rightly tell me to f off.

Andrew wrote: I’m not a social creature, and I don’t want to share myself with the internet.

That is a sensible position, however you need to separate yourself from your company. Your company should definitely have a social media presence, no need to post personal information, but posting about your company’s products and services is cheap marketing.

Jon wrote: 6. Offer free stalls to groups that don’t make money at the event, as they’ll draw in folk that wouldn’t normally attend

Already done, I believe at most shows. The pay off for show organisers is that more things to see and do means more people through the doors. The pay off for commercial stand holders is more people to try to sell their wares too.

We shouldn’t neglect folk that can’t attend though, show talks should be live streamed on YouTube and someone could walk around and interview exhibitors, either live or put up post edited highlights.

That would be you Jon.

Actually I’m not sure live streaming the show is a good idea from a show running point of view. With the option to stay at home and watch the event may decrease the number through the doors, less through the doors means less commercial exhibitors wishing to attend. Less revenue from commercial exhibitors to the show means shows close. So no more shows to live stream …

I should point out once again that all the videos and photos and reports coming out of the shows are being generated by volunteers who are not seeing any money from this and who have paid for all the equipment out of their own pockets. If this generosity is just being repaid by demands for more, don’t be surprised if no one is jumping up and offering to provide you a free service.

Steve wrote: I don’t know about the London show, but Wakefield usually bounces around the “barely breaking even” point (we made an “operating loss” last year, for example) unless the hotel end up reducing the bill in exchange for their mistakes on the day (such as the lift problems a couple of years ago).

The London show is breaking even +- 25 quid at the moment. Over the very early years we have trimmed the expenses of the show down to the absolute essentials. Everything else is down to the time and effort of volunteers without which the show couldn’t run.

Of course the year we make a larger loss is the year that we have to consider a cheaper (smaller) venue, or choose to stop.

Similarly our small profits from some early shows are currently covering smaller loses from others.

Andrew wrote: Finally, there’s a prestige element. Community halls are nice for some purposes, but hotels send a better impression to people who haven’t been before, or who are new to the community. Don’t get me wrong – I’m no snob (Steph and I got married in a community hall type location), but I do recall people turned their noses up at the Summer MUG show because of the community hall location, sadly.

Unfortunately prestige, realistically, couldn’t be maintained in the face of financial reality. If it becomes a choice between a church hall, or community meeting place or no show at all, people have to understand that there’s not the money here that there once was. We don’t fill Olympia or Wembley anymore.

Andrew wrote: Also, David, I think you’re really overplaying things talking about “a matter of survival”. It really isn’t. Most of the shows have been rising in attendance and break even in their venues.

David is fully aware of the numbers attended shows over the 15+ years he’s been helping organise them. As for London numbers, no, they’re not rising, we, well mainly Bryan, have been fighting like crazy finding new places to advertise the show to just maintain a small decrease in numbers over time.

Andrew wrote: No-one’s looking to make a profit on the event itself.

Steve F wrote: They aren’t, but equally no-one can afford to make a large loss.

This, so much this.

Jon wrote: Offer free stalls to groups that don’t make money at the event, as they’ll draw in folk that wouldn’t normally attend

Chris wrote: I think most of the shows offer free or nominal cost stands for such groups. Personally I think nominal cost is most effective “That which costs us nothing we do not esteem”

Chris, learn to esteem free things more. Given the shear number of people providing time and effort into RISC OS land for no return, providing a free stand is the least we should do. As I mentioned above, more stands = more people = more sales.

RISC OS is currently only working because of the good will of people providing something for nothing. Not least, running shows.

We shouldn’t neglect folk that can’t attend though, show talks should be live streamed on YouTube and someone could walk around and interview exhibitors, either live or put up post edited highlights.

That would be you Jon.

If I can get someone to man the exhibit (ensuring memory cards with every game for the Arc don’t go walkies) and dosed myself up on steroids for a few months prior (don’t think the Dr would let me have them), I’d love to walk around the show and interview exhibitors. It would be a great opportunity to pester them about releasing games they hold the rights too. I’d say the chances of this happening are close to zero, unless I make a miraculous recovery.

Actually I’m not sure live streaming the show is a good idea from a show running point of view.

I don’t think it would make much difference, the talks will still be packed and the same people will still go to the show. Steaming wouldn’t appeal to the general age range RISC OS cover anyway, but it would appeal to the younger audience and might just stir them into visiting a show in the future.

The only talks I’ve been interested in have been either guest speakers or tech talks, all of which I’ve been unable to attend either because I was exhibiting or unable to go to the show. There are also lots of folk who live abroad which are not catered for, we need to move on from the British post-middle aged group and expand our horizons as a collective community to wider, younger audiences. That means social media.

An issue with a ‘Virtual’ show that appears to not have been brought up in the thread before, is that for many people the ‘social’ aspect of the show, meeting and chatting with people you only see a few times a year, is an important aspect of visiting.

Everything else is down to the time and effort of volunteers without which the show couldn’t run.

There’s an event in August at which the staff (1000+ on last numbers I looked) are volunteers who largely attend and work for an annual social interaction with a set of friends/“family”. Those of us who have done GBBF for a fair while recognise various customers as long time attendees who will happily give their main reason for attending as the social aspect rather than the products on sale. Admittedly virtual drinking might not be a thing, but I suppose they could also be streaming their experiences at the festival to their friends in the pub back home.

If it becomes a choice between a church hall, or community meeting place or no show at all, people have to understand that there’s not the money here that there once was.

However, the difficult bit is finding the right community venue, a task I wouldn’t wish on anyone. That’s one aspect of organising that the various areas with a show could usefully do a knowledge transfer to areas without a show. Assuming a community spirit and willingness to freely give out said info.

We don’t fill Olympia or Wembley anymore.

I work as a volunteer for an organisation that does¹ and I can assure you that the event wouldn’t be financially viable without the totally volunteer staff and supplemental income from franchise² stalls. Other shows that use those kind of venues only occur because the companies attending throw sizable chunks of their advertising/marketing budget at the event to fund their attendance.
Strictly speaking the ‘social’ aspect is the “fun” bit for volunteers and attendees, the financial aspect is the companies selling and paying for the space to do so. I applaud ROD efforts to give micro-traders a leg-up.

RISC OS is currently only working because of the good will of people providing something for nothing. Not least, running shows.

This. ++

The starter for this was the show in Bristol, which, without the presence of a virus in my system, I had every intention of attending.
A few purchases, a few chats and then a short tour of the pubs within easy-ish strike of the station.
I don’t get ill very often, so I’m well out of practice and recovery has been slow. I’m sure I will be fully fit for the CAMRA transport planning meeting next week (in a pub, on a station so public transport is excellent). Naff timing wrt the show though.

¹ If we’re picky the GBBF uses more (at least double) of Olympia than the Acorn show did.
² Food stands pay for the space and facilities pro rata so the income isn’t great, but it’s a show feature that we don’t need to staff

Maybe it would be worth teaming up with organisers of other related events, maybe even for other (retro) platforms. Then the costs and risks would be shared by a larger group and it would be easier to reach potential users.

Sure, it’s not then an exclusively RISC OS event, but then it seems that there’s always a lot of non-RISC OS things at RISC OS shows, anyway.

Maybe it would be worth teaming up with organisers of other related events, maybe even for other (retro) platforms

MUG did that with the Recursion events and though it got RISCOS out to a different younger audience we had mixed support for it though the likes of ROUGOL/Soft Rock/Ident Computer helped us fly the flag.

Sadly the event after 3 years is not running this year.

So I’m coming at this from an American perspective, never having been to a RISC OS show, so I may be out of line, but…

I regularly attend an Apple II conference, KansasFest, and it’s been growing rapidly – my first year was 2010, when there were 30-odd people there (I’m having trouble finding an exact number), and starting in 2017, they’ve had to cap attendance (the cap was 100 that year, 120 last year).

So, a limited number of conferences probably helps – there’s just the one for the entire US every year, plus one in France, one in Japan, and a few in Australia (which all seem to be happening simultaneously this year, and one of them isn’t just Apple II).

But, also, KansasFest has a unique format compared to most conferences, and I think that’s most of its success.

Most retro conferences in the US are held at hotels, and have a format of, arrive Friday, maybe some stuff happens that day, then the main event is Saturday and part of Sunday, at which point everyone packs up and leaves. Sometimes the main event is people exhibiting their computers, sometimes it’s vendors (often it’s both), and sometimes there’s shifts in the schedule, but that’s the basic format.

KansasFest, on the other hand, has people arriving Monday through Wednesday, with talks beginning Wednesday afternoon and going into Saturday, a vendor fair open to the public on Saturday, and everyone moves out on Sunday. And, it’s not held at a hotel, it’s held at a university dormitory (being in the summer, there’s almost no students at the university, so universities will rent out their dorms to conferences for extra revenue).

The dorms give a few benefits: it’s cheaper, the furniture is better suited to having a bunch of old computers setup, and because they’re not open to the general public (just to university staff and attendees) there’s a lot more of an open attitude around the halls. Instead of people using their room as just a dumping ground for equipment they’re not using, a place to sleep at night, and maybe a place to have private afterparties… it’s common for people to just have their rooms open while hacking on something, inviting people who walk through the halls to hang out.

The talks at KFest have, recently, been recorded and streamed – AFAIK, there was resistance to the idea of streaming in the past, but now this is seen as a way to promote the conference, because the conference isn’t just the talks and the vendors, it’s the whole camaraderie of hanging out with 100+ other Apple II users (and retro enthusiasts who don’t even use the Apple II) for almost a week.

The long duration also meant that, last year, a couple of attendees set up a hardware repair room, and got a lot of stuff fixed for people. When you’ve got that long, you can do things like long burn-ins after repairs, you can do complex repairs, and even get additional parts if it’s early enough in the conference. (That room also ended up being the “hang out and have a beer or two” room, so I spent a fair amount of time in there last year.)

It’s a format I really enjoy, and I wonder if it could work elsewhere. I don’t think it’d work as the only format for getting new people into the hobby, but then again, there is a growing millennial attendance at KansasFest – 2010 was a year that a bunch of millennials (myself included in that) went for the first time, and we’ve gotten other people to come too. And, the older attendees who have made the attendance base of KFest in the past are bringing their kids along, too – because it’s in summer, kids are off of school.

Thanks Eric – that’s some really interesting info. I’d never thought of that approach. I’ll be honest, it sounds somewhat scary (outside of comfort zone) at first read, but I can also see its merits.

My big fear is that most of the RISC OS attendees are quite elderly (50+) and I don’t really see them in university dorms! But, as you say, it has opened the way for a newer set of fans to come into the scene. Maybe that could work for RISC OS too – certainly one of our biggest challenges as a community is “beating the grim reaper”.

The trickiest element is that many people who currently do shows as exhibitors have day jobs. Whilst it could work for full-time companies like myself and CJE, many of the other stands (ROOL and Amcog immediately spring to mind) might struggle to take a lot of mid-week time off.

But, I don’t want to sound overly negative, as I found the post to be fascinating – a really useful window into how other events are being run. Sometimes this “peak into other platforms” can be quite illuminating, and this could be one of those times.

Changing topic, the post-Bristol report for the SW Show was very positive. Numbers were up hugely over last year, and we had the largest attendance since we took over the SW Show from RISC OS Ltd some years back. Of course, we can’t rest on our laurels, and we didn’t reach London levels, but Richard and I were both pleased with how it went, as was the Hotel. We’ve re-booked for next year. As for profit/loss, it depends how you calculate it, but we certainly broke even, despite lower stand-income (the drop in stand-related income was offset by larger numbers through the door). We look forward to seeing everyone again next year :)

My big fear is that most of the RISC OS attendees are quite elderly (50+) and I don’t really see them in university dorms!

As I almost commented earlier, GBBF staff accommodation is a mix of B&B/Hotel/student accommodation with the majority being student rooms and one of the festivals biggest problems is the ageing worker profile.
Over-50’s aren’t as averse to short spells in en-suite box rooms as you might think and those who are can be pointed at nearby B&B/hotel offerings.
Colleges/Universities do tend to be either in town or miles out – Coventry has both with Coventry Uni filling large portions of the city centre but 25 minutes brisk walk from the main station and Warwick Uni barely in the south edge of the city boundary and a bus ride away from even a bog-hopper train station.

As an example I’d be more inclined in the West Midlands to suggest a Birmingham venue simply for the catchment and concentrate on Aston Uni or whatever they call the Polytechnic these days

On thread, I wouldn’t advocate moving the SW show if you’ve had a big improvement in numbers as finding a venue that works for the exhibitors and visitors is difficult, but it might be an idea for other regions.

As for profit/loss, it depends how you calculate it, but we certainly broke even, despite lower stand-income (the drop in stand-related income was offset by larger numbers through the door).

When half or more of the reason for the show is PR you can say financial break even is a profit.

Honestly, the biggest concern I’d have is simply that KansasFest has an unbroken history going back to 1989, when the Apple II was still a current product, and has always been a dorm con. Someone trying to bring this to another platform won’t have this history to build on (although GORF in Australia, which was inspired by KansasFest, but for all retro platforms, is worth keeping an eye on).

The bulk of RISC OS show attendees being 50+ is a bit surprising, given the relative age of the platforms – I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me that KansasFest’s average age is under 50 (but I wouldn’t be surprised the other direction either), and Apple IIs were discontinued entirely in 1993, the last major hardware update was in 1986 (and the IIGS does not compare to the Archimedes), and they were mostly out of schools by the mid 90s (I only encountered a few in schools myself, and I’m in a semi-rural area that was behind on technology).

That said, plenty of 50+ people do sleep in the dorms at KansasFest – sure, people discuss their mattress pad purchases and such on the mailing list, but for the most part, it works out. (There are a few people that stay offsite at hotels or AirBnBs, though.)

I think one factor helping KansasFest attendance is that it’s in the summer, too, when taking a week off for vacation is perfectly normal for many. And, some people do only attend part of the time, between people that can’t get the whole time off and only attend towards the end, and people who want to attend San Diego Comic Con or HOPE (both of which often clash with KansasFest) and only attend towards the beginning, flying to San Diego or New York City on Friday.

Given that the vendor fair is only on Saturday, I could see a vendor only coming in towards the end of the event and doing fine, if KansasFest’s structure were copied.

KansasFest sounds more like the ABUG events which take place over a weekend and feature a lot of hacking and hardware fixing. They are mostly Beeb focussed (similar era to the AppleII) but are including more RISC OS stuff recently too. There are 3 or 4 of them per year.

See – https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewforum.php?f=25

As an example I’d be more inclined in the West Midlands to suggest a Birmingham venue simply for the catchment and concentrate on Aston Uni or whatever they call the Polytechnic these days.

MUG have Done it and got the teashirt.

We did a number of shows at Birmingham University at the Students Union building and the reception to that was mixed.

Some of it may have been to do with the decor in the room and we looked at altering the actual room to another one at the University.

We had a lot of negative comments about driving in to Birmingham and though it was on a main line route, 2 stops from Birmingham New St train station and also though it was well served by numerous bus routes again we had negative comments about the built up nature of the area.

We also did publicity through the University and offered free entry to all students. We did have some curious types who entered but by and large it was the same RISC OS crowd.

So you can see, this along with other things we did, we in MUG did a lot of innovation to try and improve things as we tried to keep the MUG show alive.

It may be the future is more intertwined with events like ABUG in the future as collectively the numbers can be maintained.

We did a number of shows at Birmingham University at the Students Union building and the reception to that was mixed.

Some of it may have been to do with the decor in the room and we looked at altering the actual room to another one at the University.

Brum Uni being slightly at odds with the way the word works probably explains the genera comments and the Uni building was strangely both bad modern and olden at the same time back in 1976 – probably not improved.

We had a lot of negative comments about driving in to Birmingham and though it was on a main line route, 2 stops from Birmingham New St train station and also though it was well served by numerous bus routes again we had negative comments about the built up nature of the area.

Exhibitions need buildings and those tend to be in built up areas.

Driving in Brum centre wasn’t too bad back then but now manages to exceed Coventry in being a pain.

Changing trains seems to put people off, but for people fit enough to do stairs I recommend the ones at the John Lewis end of the station rather than the escalators/lifts toward the centre /Proof House Junction. Essentially if you can see daylight and the Rotunda you’re at the wrong end.

Part of the reason for pointing at Aston Uni¹ is that the walk from New Street isn’t much different to the “University Station”² and Aston is a technical University. Two things students there in the 70’s definitely knew were technical stuff and the route to all the pubs within half an hours walk. The technical aspect still holds. Think Tank and Millennium Point are on the south side of the campus and I think the tower block down there is a City University premise (shock, a third Uni)

It may be the future is more intertwined with events like ABUG in the future as collectively the numbers can be maintained.

Which is where I feel getting access to the Aston low rise accommodation and meeting rooms might work, oh and step outside and there’s a nice lake, fountain etc. Plus the pubs I mentioned and all the city centre to explore shopping when the show isn’t on.

So you can see, this along with other things we did, we in MUG did a lot of innovation to try and improve things as we tried to keep the MUG show alive.

Not knocking that at all, in fact the effort for such things is usually underestimated.
However, for a different style event in/around accommodation and based on an expected block stay-over there might be value in a Friday/Saturday event with people staying to socialise on either or both nights.

¹Not counting it being my stamping ground in the mid-late 70’s and the much better selection of pubs in and around the campus.
²As though there is only one in town.

Part of the reason for pointing at Aston Uni1 is that the walk from New Street isn’t much different to the “University Station”2 and Aston is a technical University

Ah, you reminded me of the other complaint , the walk.

One of the reasons on the move from Winter to Summer was based on feedback about the weather and ability to travel on public transport at a more friendly weather time.

Also Birmingham University has a big Computing element and thats why we chose it as well as links to local places to stay.

Not trying to knock what you are saying but if someone won’t go to a show because of costs they are not likley to go to a 2 day event even if it has the delights of Birmingham’s canels. Also extra spend over two days means less money to spend on RISCOS goodies.

Also who is going to bank roll a two day event as the current ones bearly break even and someone would need to financially stick their neck out at the risk of getting burnt and the impact that may do on their activities in the market.

As I said if we want more numbers to see RISCOS then sadly it might mean linking in with some other non specific events and limit the pure RISCOS ones.

The only other thing I think we would all , ok mostly all, agree on is that a virtual show would be the end of all shows and perhaps the whole community.

Ah, you reminded me of the other complaint, the walk.

Indeed, so the ideal spot for those would be the open area between the ticket barriers at Grand Central :)

As I said if we want more numbers to see RISCOS then sadly it might mean linking in with some other non specific events and limit the pure RISCOS ones.

Probably. Although a vendor with a ready to walk away package like a laptop that lasts all day on a charge with software pre-installed might well pique interest in a show full of Windows PC’s

Indeed, so the ideal spot for those would be the open area between the ticket barriers at Grand Central :)

Typical of todays generation, lets all go to the train station and lets all spend hours walking around and going no further :-)

Well some people may decide that a RISCOS laptop is more desirable than an Apple Mac and a lot cheaper.
Apple’s shine seems to be coming off, there is always hope for the little multi coloured cog, such a shame we can’t have a light up green acorn on the laptop though.

I sense a market opportunity for RISCOSBits

Anyone in London/SE who wants to discuss this further in a non-virtual fashion should come along to this Monday’s ROUGOL meeting:

http://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

Before you ask, no it’s not going to be live streamed.

Before you ask, no it’s not going to be live streamed.

:-) Your c.s.a.announce posting title did have me wondering…