Homebrew Computer Club Reunion | Hacker News Reader

Homebrew Computer Club Reunion

kickstarter.com

106 pointsIcer5k37 comments

If anything this really is the time for the club to reunite (and for some new fresh blood to join in). If you think about it, homebrew has really exploded without the benefit of meets like this; all thanks to the internet (YouTube et al in particular) showing what can be done with a bit of DIY hacking of purpose built and definitely not purpose built devices.

Forget IBM, Dell, HP and such. Those guys are dinosaurs. There are so many new companies now Arduino, SparkFun, RaspberryPi, BeagleBoard(TI, but still worthy) etc... all catering primarily toward the tinkerer. If anything this should receive support from these companies, groups and products as well as individuals since it's their products that are going to form the backbone for a lot of homebrew projects.

How come there still isn't a proper standard (open source) replacement for the TI series graphing calculator? I can't imagine a group more qualified to build one and share among each other.

There are plenty of open source replacements for graphing data that involve computers. The calculator is a form-factor challenge and marketing challenge. Calculator markets are driven very early by what is acceptable for a High School Student to use.

Current US influential standards:

http://sat.collegeboard.org/register/calculator-policy http://www.actstudent.org/faq/calculator.html https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/apcourse/ap-calculus-ab/c...

I think a big issue with the TI graphing calculator replacement is that hacking community always tries to put in a lot of features and things, whereas the TI calculators are representative of a lot of compromise to run on AA batteries for so long.

Fun note:

The conference room in the picture from the video is the Panofsky Auditorium at SLAC national lab.

It was just shut down last month as they are preparing to demolish it.

Aw man. That is not a fun note. I spent quite a few fun hours there.

It's being demolished? That makes me sad.

Don't worry, I'm not shooting the messenger!

I don't really understand why this is a Kickstarter?

One of the organizers here.

We needed funding to pay for the substantial costs of the event, and we needed a mechanism to sell tickets.

The Kickstarter model gave us both.

Oh ok, just curious! I didn't really understand why the event would cost so much money? Wasn't the whole spirit of the homebrew club kind of antithetical to an expensive event? Are people in the club asking for money to attend? Definitely not trying to take away from what you're doing because I think it's really cool, just wondering.

Most of the money that we're raising is going towards catering (it always shocks me to see how much catering costs). Some of the money will also go towards flying out original Homebrew members. The rest will go towards the costs of running the event, things like tables, chairs, a photographer, etc.

Oh okay cool! Have fun, wish I could go!

I still don't get it.

I am increasingly struck by how many recent kickstarters are either indistinguishable from evites or deal with projects that any reasonable person could bootstrap on their own...

It seems there's a lot of "free money" and easy attention flowing through kickstarters that I also find troubling.

Especially with anything video game related that kind of comes off as just "online begging." You have companies like "River West Brands" that "acquires, redevelops, and monetizes iconic brand intellectual property" and has put out a kickstarter to remake the Colecovision http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rantmediagames/colecovis...

It's slowly evolving into a very very specific niche of billing not well-handled by PayPal- collecting one lump sum from a large number of customers.

Why wouldn't it?

Why not just sell tickets on something like Eventbrite? To say there's no way to sell tickets for an event except on Kickstarter (which is not really for events that are definitely going to happen) doesn't make sense.

Because without economic incentives, the club would be free to do things that that are contrary to the economy, like I don't know, develop a machine capable of easily and efficiently copying and communicating data.

Does a ticket to the event mean you get to participate with the original members of the Homebrew Computer Club?

Yes. A big part of why we are doing this is to give people a chance to experience what the original Homebrew meetings were like.

Awesome. I'm glad that the answer is "yes", though I backed it regardless before I saw your answer. I hope I can make the event.

I hope you can make it too!

This is cool, but why is this on Kickstarter? Are they going to do it or not if they don't reach their goal (which of course they are)? Why isn't it just on Eventbrite or something like with different ticket levels? The use of Kickstarter seems irrelevant / gratuitous here. I'm not taking issue with the desire to charge (by all means, you should!) but the use of Kickstarter as a platform for that, which is fairly high cost and needless for events that are pretty much guaranteed to happen, but just need to sell tickets. I don't get it.

My original plan was to use Eventbrite, but we decided to go with Kickstarter mainly because they transfer funds sooner - I wasn't looking forward to floating a catering bill on my credit card.

A Kickstarter also makes it easier for us to scale the event to match the funding. The more money that we get for this event, the more that we'll be able to do. That's something that people who are familiar with Kickstarter understand, but would take some explaining on Eventbrite.

Including sponsors would have also been more complicated with Eventbrite. People just aren't used to paying for a sponsorship with Eventbrite, but it totally fits in the Kickstarter model.

A more subtle benefit is the community aspect. Kickstarter gives me the tools to communicate with backers, give them updates and make them part of what is happening. It's easier to do things like ask people for their address (to mail out post cards) and ultimately, I think that people feel more invested in a project when they use Kickstarter. Which is important, since we want this event to be one where people can meet the original members of the Homebrew Computer Club and carry on their traditions and stories.

Please offer rewards that can be shipped internationally! ;-)

Makes sense. Although if you use Eventbrite with any payment source except the Eventbrite one, you get your funds right away, FYI. As much as we dislike Paypal, we get our funds right away on Paypal when we use Eventbrite. I'm hoping they add Stripe one of these days.

For most big events, it would seem like kickstarter has the right model and not eventbrite. I'm sure the event organizer would rather use kickstarter to gauge demand, and not worry about floating the costs of the event.

Maybe there's enough medium sized events out there that could make this an interesting startup idea.

Will Bill Gates return to reimprovise his famous Open Letter to Hobbyists?

Let's hope not.

I was really hoping this was a club for hackers who like to brew beer. I'll keep dreaming.

To be in the midst of pioneers which brought the personal computing age to the world. Wow! Wozniak too!

Too bad I'm not able to go because I'm on the other side of the world (Australia).

I would love to attend but geographically can't make it.

I bet a lot of HN'ers are in the same boat.

How 'bout a couple of rewards catered towards remote beyond postcard?

EG - $50 limited edition t-shirt, $20 live stream attendance, $30 for a DVD, ?

I would love to add a live stream option, I just have no idea how much doing a live stream would cost.

I'm not sure how giving "tickets" to people would work, but you could probably just stream it on a free service like Justin.tv. Google Hangouts might work as well.

Potentially free with a borrowed iDevice or Android device and Wi-Fi.

I live streamed a funeral a year ago. It was pretty easy. I borrowed an iPad and installed Ustream's app. The church had Wi-Fi, so all I needed to do was create an account on Ustream's website, and they gave me the HTML code to embed the video on the memorial website I made. I used a free account, so I was told there was one or two commercials during the 90 minute broadcast. They removed the free trail for the Pro (100 free hours without ads) just before I signed up, but it looks like they have that option again. Afterwards, I was able to download the original video from Ustream's website, and upload it to the memorial website so people can play it back in the future without seeing ads.

I like the t-shirt idea.

Fortunately I used to live in Mountain View. Unfortunately now I live 5000 miles away. Fortunately I'm going to Palo Alto next week! Unfortunately I'm flying out Nov 3. Doh!

Same here. Why do postcards "ship within the US only"...?

They should offer rewards without tickets but with signed things from Wozniak, those would sell.

This link is.crashing my dolphin mini browser on android 2.3. I wonder why...

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