[Music]
collecting and preserving um historic
artifacts of the computers that were
before now
becomes more and more interesting
because the people that could actually
operate them are
disappearing
um
what it takes to put build up a museum
how to operate it how to finance it how
to
make it happen
um is something that our next speaker is
going to talk about probably i would
assume from what i've seen so please
give a very warm welcome to beth van aka
thank you
so i i don't know if i'm going to walk
so maybe i'll walk or maybe i don't know
yet uh yeah as i said as my introduction
i'm my name is bart and i'm the founder
of the home computer museum
we're based in helmand in the
netherlands and uh we have actually
mission
so we stayed at a mission for ourselves
it's on the screens right now and it's
not this one is flickering but
uh preserve and share the history of the
home computer uh for and with current
and future generations
that's what our mission is which means
we have a lot of computers
so let's see if this works does this
work that doesn't work
okay i have to walk
so how it all started
i said i'm bart
and i'm a collector
and this message is approved by my
therapist i can now freely talk about it
that i am a collector
well actually
as you can see on the pictures
this is how my garage looked back in
2016.
no if a car didn't fit at all
i used i'm a drummer so
i created my garage was used to be a
studio i insulated and everything
but
it ended up in 2016 that my drum set was
permanently permanently in my car
because it didn't fit in my garage
anymore
actually um
i even had
computers stuffed in my wife's walk-in
closets so it was crazy how much
computers i had
however
at this moment i don't call myself a
collector
for the simple reason
a museum director cannot be
a collector
a collector is doing nothing then
collecting and a museum director should
do something else than collecting at
least in my opinion
so
as said in 2016
i got the idea of a computer museum
and the reason i got the idea is because
i visited two museums one in england and
one in the netherlands
both museums had the problem it was no
interaction at all
meaning that the computers were off or
not working or and a computer i mean
it's just an object it's
not supposed to be nice i guess there
are computers that really are supposed
to be nice but most computers are not
supposed to be nice
they're objects to work with
so why present them in a way that
they're not used to i mean
computers should be working right that's
my opinion
i didn't see any stories
i didn't have a limited information
about a computer but other than that
there were no stories why is this
computer made who were the people using
those computers
that was that was what i found
interesting about a computer i mean
computer is just a thing with plastic
and metal and all that stuff that's in a
computer
but more interesting is the story behind
the computer why is a computer made why
who were the people using those
computers and i missed that all in the
museums i visited
also i found in one museum
i won't call it name but it's in england
i found misinformation
i mean if you see an amiga 1200 and the
sign says amiga 500 you do something
wrong
if you see attendee trs-80 and it says
created in 1979
that's also wrong it's 1977.
and i know that as a collector
but
people who are not collectors and people
who are not very deeply interested in
computers or know about the history of
computers go to a museum and see this
information and assume a museum is right
and that's really bad
i actually from the same museum i got a
book which is even worse they actually
printed a book very expensive book and
there's information inside which is
wrong
there's an amiga thousand
stated all information about an amiga
thousands and they printed an amiga 500
i mean how hard is that to correct the
the right computer
so that has to be changed in my opinion
as a collector i came to these museums
and was like
this has to be changed
so first thing i did was try to
collaborate
i tried to collaborate with the museum
in the netherlands
to say okay i have this
you have don't have information it's
you don't have the stories can i help
you can i help you in any way
to
give you the information or to make it
nice to make it a visible museum that's
not only for collectors like like me or
maybe people here but also for for my
wife
she should enjoy it as well
um i tried to but
it was no use i couldn't he didn't want
to at all he's i i yeah i don't like
saying it that much but i think he's a
hoarder
it's all his and it's not he's not able
to to share his information
so that didn't work out
and i wanted one thing to do something
that actually matters and help people
there's a little bit of history about me
i have a sister who is who has autism
and it was discovered on a
pretty late age he was 20 and then it
was discovered that she was she had
autism
and before that before that age he was
just a heart learning child that's how
it called back then
so in 20 years i had experience with one
somebody with autism
without any label on it without a
sticker that says you have autism
and
when
it was discovered
i had a girlfriend as he studied
psychology
and i was really interested because i
all my life i was helping my sister so
when it was discovered and my girlfriend
at that time was studying
psychology i think i thought i should do
that too
it was my thing however i was studying
if my technical information so studying
computer stuff
and i figured okay i should finish this
first before i do something else
but
i think i'm smart so what i did was just
read all the books from my girlfriend
try i have a little bit of a head start
already
so i did that
but yeah i didn't do that at all the
reason is the relation ended and my
girlfriend at that time
she changed a lot and apparently if you
study psychology the first two years of
your life will be
finding your own problems and try to fix
that
she never returned from that so instead
of finishing her study she actually
ended up
in a closed
hospital
she's now fine again i guess i don't
have much contact with her but that was
also one of the reasons
maybe i shouldn't do that i was happy
with my life at the time so yeah don't
try to you know poke in and
try to fix me because i was fine
so yeah
however i became a system administrator
uh
got into linux i actually did security
for a while as well
but i ended up with voiceover ip
and in my work i found a lot of people
doing exactly the same as my sister was
doing
having a form of autism
and i also noticed
that a lot of managers a lot of
companies don't know how to act with how
to
respond to those people it's a lot of
communication it's only about
communication
and
um so in in i
accidentally
tried to be in between a short middleman
without i was a system administrator but
i try to be the middleman i try to help
those people
to have this miscommunication fixed
as i say i speak i speak fluently autism
because i have 20 years of experience in
that
so actually helped a lot of people
staying in the company
and
instead of you know calling in sick
not being on time anymore
not doing their job and eventually lose
their jobs
i i kept a lot of people from that and
i'm pretty proud of that
um
so yeah this was i wanted to do that as
well when i started with the museum i
wanted to help people and
apparently in the i.t i couldn't do that
that much
so that was also one of the reasons i
started the museum
and the third
reason
my wife asked me
as i said i had my the walking closet of
my wife was stuffed with computers and
she didn't like that anymore
i'm also i'm i'm i used to be a musician
i'm still a musician uh playing in bands
and all kind of stuff
and also doing business
so i tried to make a company from a band
so i was just doing the strange things
like being a bookings agency and being a
band and making it a company so my wife
was used to me being away for like 75
weekends
or else
mostly every weekend i was away with
bands and i quit with that because
children
so um
yeah and then i suddenly was home and my
wife would have yeah you have a bunch of
computers in the garage i had 35 back
then you have a bunch of computers you
go to all these fairs and you go to the
meetings and gatherings of old computers
why don't you do anything with that
because i was used to do you know making
companies
not that successful but i was making
companies so yeah my wife was one of the
the causes as well to create this museum
so yeah that
that was the plan
let's make a museum
because why not
i mean
i was here and nobody else was doing
what i was thinking of so okay let's do
that
so but
a museum is a terrible business plan
i mean i don't know if there are any
people from companies in here but or any
managers directors or anything founders
but a museum is a terrible business plan
it depends on external money
i mean every
company
that is
relying on external money is not a good
company especially if it's only one
i worked at a company that had one big
customer and that customer was saying
maybe we should shop for another one
yeah that was a problem
uh i don't want that and i see a lot of
museums
completely relying on external subsidy
on external money money they don't
make their own and
i don't think that's a good idea because
if you have external money that means
somebody else is making decision if they
give you money and what if they decide
something else
what if they decide okay no we're not
doing that anymore so let's do something
else and then you suddenly have no money
and you are relying on it so your
company goes down
now
it's always non-profit
which is not a problem but most people
think if it's non-profit it doesn't it
means no revenue
and that's wrong
a museum is a company so it should have
revenue in my opinion
it bets a good will goodwill of people
volunteers you name it it depends on
people trying to help you
which i i loved i don't say you
shouldn't but it is one of the facts
and most museums it's not a business
model it's like okay we have subsidy we
ask for subsidy we ask for money we ask
for funding
and we just you know put a lot of stuff
in make it nice make information
and that's it
and we'll keep it going as long as the
money flows in but
there's no business models no retainable
business model in that
so
so i wrote a business plan because it
was a terrible idea
that's how i am so this is actually a
screenshot of my business model
of my laptop of this one but
i made a photo of my i don't i don't yes
so the business plan
what version 1.0
and i can tell you it's still 1.0 we
haven't changed
it should be an interactive museum
computer should be on working they are
tools to be
used so museums are working plus
if a computer is working
it will stay alive
everybody here knows that if you keep a
system off for a long long time the
batteries will die
and eventually batteries will leak
capacitors will die
and leak
hard disks will fail especially the
rotating ones they will fail
rubber will just you know completely dis
dismantle and and
meaning that it can't be read anymore it
can be used to to read data
so
interactive means computers should be on
computer should be working meaning the
life will be prolonged
simple as that all electronics should be
on because it makes their life longer
we should be independent i don't want to
be dependent on anything
i don't want to be dependent on money
external but also i don't want to be
dependent on me
because
i will die eventually
not planning to but yeah something
happens and i will die
and if i die should the museum then
dissolve that's weird right so now we
should continue so we should have
something independent of as that as well
i want to help people with autism
one of the main reasons i started i
wanted to help people
i wanted to have good storytelling
people should have a good story to to
walk through have a good story
to
to read and have all the information
i'll do a lot of research as well
find the information but is this
information we can find is that correct
information or is it just bogus
quite recent example
one of the museums
stated on june 5 this year that apple
existed for
the apple now the commodore pet
was released
45 years now 45 years ago yeah something
like that the commodore pet was 45 years
ago on june 5th
was 1977 the commodore pet was released
according to them
but
if you did a little bit of research you
know it's wrong
because the apple ii came out on june
5th the commodore pet came out in
october that year so
quite a shame
we should have future proof i've seen a
lot of museums fall down
doing you know a museum is is is dying
people uh there are museums that that do
things that
nobody is using anymore and nobody is is
you
is actively remembering
obviously a castle yeah it's not that it
will dissolve suddenly but yeah it
should be future-proof it should be able
to continue for at least 100 years
by itself
not depending on external money et
cetera et cetera
and we have a clear focus because
calling it a computer museum is quite
broad
right you need the big ibm 360 and as400
and you need a lot of building for that
a lot of space especially if you want to
have it interactive i don't
you need the sort of power supply that
you have here over in this entire camp
it's not fun plus people i don't i don't
think people really remember working
with an as400
yeah some of them
so i had a clear focus and i wanted to
have a museum about the home computer
computer that people used at home
there wasn't any
at least not in europe
so
i came up with a business
plan
consisting of
three pillars
as i call it
the first pillar
is collection
so we have a collection part
showing everything that uh we can do
anything with the collection uh
collecting itself obviously showing it
going to fairs going to
mch
care is helping people
helping people with autism helping
people with the distance to the labor
market because we broaden it a little
bit in the years but
care is
helping people just helping people going
back to work
and commercial
we also have a commercial
branch
and commercial meaning we do services
because
where we can do in the museum
uh think of uh data recovery
reading old media
something like that nobody yeah
who can read the five and a quarter inch
here
yay
good zip disk
see
jazz disc
still
very good
but if you read the data
if you have the data what can you do
with it
can you open it in something modern
maybe
maybe not and that's why we come in
because we have all these old computers
working with the original software so we
can just open it in the original
software
so that's commercial
we also offer repairs
since we want an interactive computer
museum
we have to have knowledge of all these
computers right
so we have to repair them because most
of the computers we get
are broken when we get them
or will blow up if we try to use them
so we have to make make sure we can
repair them
but why only use it internally why not
use it externally
so that's exactly what we did we just
opened the computer repair shop
and in these times a computer repair
shop by itself is not really feasible
anymore it's not a business
unless you do it like huge but yeah
nobody is going to a shop to repair the
computer anymore it's just you you know
you return it throw it away whatever or
repair it yourself
but you don't go to the shop anymore
it's not the 1990s anymore
or 80s so
yeah we do that and we still have a lot
of people you know don't know how to
reinstall windows yeah sure we'll do
that or reinstall a mac but also
commodore 64 that's broken
we also repair that and we always repair
we never replace
we try to not to replace but
obviously if we have to spend six hours
to repair a commodore 64 then you could
probably get another one that's probably
cheaper than
and no q no pay
simple as that
there's also commercial stuff we also
sell computers all refurbished computers
it's also what we sell old laptops
business laptops we sell them
one of our biggest
uh
customers is called stifting leg health
it's a foundation
that gives laptops to poor families
poor family that has a child obviously
that goes to school and needs a laptop
but can't they can't afford a laptop
so
we give them a laptop
and that foundation pays us it's 150
euro not much
but what's what we do
also the social service the
work agency
if you have a
somebody who's unemployed and needs to
follow a course for their work for their
new work
and don't have the money to buy a laptop
there we are again we can provide those
laptops and since march this year we
also do that for ukrainian refugees
and nobody's paying that for us but we
just give them away somebody comes in
we give them away
[Applause]
and apparently we're the only one in the
netherlands who does that because we're
in helmand which is pretty south but we
get them from all over the netherlands
people from ukraine come to the museum
to get a laptop
and it's a it's a normal laptop it's
just you know second to seventh
generation core i5 so core i7 so they're
really decent laptops we install windows
10 on it or windows 11 if they possible
install english ukrainian russian
languages so they can use them and
there's warranty on it as well they
return it if it's broken and we just
repair it it's that simple
thankful we have a lot of companies
sponsoring laptops to us for that
especially for this reason
and we also sell them so you can also go
to the museum and buy a laptop it's
always below the 300 euro
because we are there are shops nearby
that sell chromebooks for 300 euro
we know these chrome booths are crap
but
a normal consumer goes either a new
laptop or a secondhand laptop for 300
they go for a new one
then six months later they're returned
to us because their laptop is broken but
that's another story
so that's that was the business plan
and i wrote it down i just did that yeah
you saw it i just made a word document
and i wrote it down and back then i was
still using open office i guess i don't
know
so that was the end of 2016
and then 2016 17 started
i had a plan
but i need a building
and it needed to have some requirements
i mean we can't just have a building for
a standard house it has to be a good
building
and i wanted to have a specific in the
city center i didn't want to be on an
industrial area or so
the reason is i
and the reason is
um
museums
why on an industrial area it's it's
really hard to get
to usually they don't have a train
station nearby or you have to go with a
bus
secondly if i go to an industrial area
it means i have to provide food
for people sounds stupid but people come
in and they stay for a few hours
hopefully and maybe they're hungry
so that means i have to provide food
and
i'm not a cook
so no i don't and i don't want to spend
money on that so no
i stay in the city center
if somebody's hungry go outside there's
plenty of food over there
that's their job
so i wanted to be in a city center
and i wanted to rent
not
anti-crack i don't know in the english
term but temporary so if i don't didn't
want to
what the simple reason again
i don't want to have a three weeks
notice
so like you have to three weeks and you
have to get out of the building
that's not very nice to have in a museum
right
especially if you know how many stuff we
have now it's not fun to move anymore
really
so i came i had this this idea i wanted
to have a decently sized building
at first i asked for 1500 square meters
but
yeah they didn't have that
so as to the city city of helmand
because i reside in the city of helmond
and
yeah why nude so i go into the city of
hamilt
and they had a plan they had a big
building in in their minds
uh where they could host four museums in
there were two other museums in
helmholtz that were getting out of their
building because their building was
teared down
um and they thought of the idea okay we
have this two build two museums and then
the home computer museum and they found
something else for a museum great great
idea good business plan one big building
multiple museums i think it was a good
idea
but yeah it was the the city city
council is not going to work
they didn't and they
just put in more build more people and
more
eventually i think we were 15 companies
in the same building and the building
wasn't any bigger it was a building that
already existed
and was empty for a long long time
so yeah i ended up with like maybe 100
square meters i was like now it's going
to happen
uh but yeah the city was still you know
this is going to happen this is going to
happen
so um
at some point i remember it was in
october and uh i was talking with with
one of the the people from the city
and she said to me
maybe you should start already
with the museum
so okay
i was like yeah sure let's do that
and now
uh we still speak a lot
she meant back then that i should start
promoting it on the internet but i was
already ahead of that i was already
doing that at the time so
my key was okay i have to rent the
building
so i did i rent the building
i didn't want to rely on anything so i
just started i just went ahead make some
phone calls
and found an empty building
500 square meters in the city of helmand
and it was
that's me
these are screenshots from youtube so
yeah so this was an empty building it
was completely empty
no power
no floor
it still had a wall in middle in the
building
and it was empty for multiple years
used to be a solar
thing
sunbathing studio or something and they
went bankrupt and they just removed
everything that was copper so you can
imagine that all cables were just
stretched off so it was
a mess inside
um so we got this building uh by the end
of 2017
we got the key for building we went into
the building
we found out there was no floor
so we called up the com the owner of the
building and said there's no floor how
can i use this
all right there's a floor yeah
okay we will make it sure that you get a
floor oh perfect
so i figured out
let's do six weeks from now
so i calculated six weeks or something
like that
um so i calculated a few weeks and
um i came up with 17 march of the 17th
2018.
that will be our opening day
so i put it on the internet and somebody
else would i put it on the internet
we're all going to open we have a
building and we're going to open on
march 17 2018.
cool
but the
building owner wasn't that fast
actually she was so slow if they were so
slow
that 10 days before
our opening
they pulled down the floor
and there was no electricity there was
nothing in there
so in 10 days we built a museum
and i don't know if this is going to
work
yeah maybe
maybe it's work yeah that's me
again
so i i'm going to skip through it easy
because
can i skip through it
no yes not
now i can't get to it
can i script no i can't skip
i don't have any sounds i don't need
sounds yeah
ah never mind now
it doesn't work it uh
yeah it's
i don't need science
okay
uh no i'll leave it on i'll just tell
about it it's working apparently this is
our intro um
do i still have time um
so this is actually what happened
between march 9 and march 17.
uh
as you can see the building the concrete
floor was made on my on friday nine of
march and as we said we opened on march
17 we
everybody and everybody knew that we
were open at that we're going to open at
a time
our sponsors and i still remember our
biggest our only sponsor actually
came in uh while we were doing this
and he said to us
yeah you're not going to make it and
like want a bet
we worked every day
every single day from eight in the
morning to two in the night with a team
of about six people
and i can tell you after the uh
yeah the last day i had pain i had pain
in muscles i didn't know i they had
those metals it was incredible i
couldn't this was doing this was painful
just standing was painful it was
um
so yeah it's it
it's on youtube you can find it
so i'm not doing this because
yeah i'm a museum director so i will
tell i will talk i can talk for hours if
i if you're ever in a museum don't ask
me to do a tour because i can talk for
eight hours and yes i did that already
so anyway that's a
as you can see it's
very empty
and the lights it was just
this was with one screw the lights were
bolted to the to the concrete into the
ceiling
uh
there were cables hanging everywhere but
we managed we were open
on march 17.
we were open with 25 computers that were
working
oddly enough all the computers from the
90s were broken but we were open with
all these computers
at that time i had about 400 computers
in stock
and they were scattered around in
several storage units and in my garage
at home and
but we had with 25 computers working we
were open and
people could enjoy and we had a great
day that day
and i slept a few days after that but
um
yeah we had 10 days of building
uh
and we started and in um
by the end of 2018
i'm still holding nothing but end of
2018 we were nearly bankrupt
because we didn't have any budget at all
uh
the total budget we had at the time was
25 000 euros not dollars
euros
that was about 10 000 of my personal
money
and the rest of the sponsors and the
city that give a bit of money that was
it
and again
no electricity so we had to really do
every electricity we had to go from the
from the the
box
all the way and we had to do with with
high power and it was it's crazy there
were no lights
we had to pay for that there were no
walls
just to make a nice there was nothing
but we managed to do it for some somehow
um
but by the end of 2018 yeah we were we
were nearly bankrupt actually we were
bankrupt
on paper
but since we were still communicating
with the people who are we owning money
to
um they kept us open
and they they kept those because we were
still you know asking everybody asking
the city to help us out because
there were no no nothing of visitors we
didn't have any budget to make to make
any commercial outings or anything there
was nothing
so we were just sitting in
and we didn't know anything and
um i was really
in doubt of throwing the towel in the
ring i was just you know giving up
almost
um but my my other founder
patrick said
you can't stop now you've become you
came so far and you can't stop
also i did i still stopped working
because this museum took up all my time
i stopped working i didn't have any
income anymore
i didn't have any benefits i just
completely stopped
and um
yeah so by the end of 2018 my savings
were completely gone
uh
i was in debt uh a lot
um the museum was in debt we were two
months or three months behind on rent to
the building
so it didn't was it wasn't nice
thankfully
another company went bankrupt
in the same street as we are
and the company at that time
was repairing computers
so we heard that we found out that they
were bankrupt or that the
the the city in the city was closed it
was closing down
the michonne for the people who know
from the netherlands um we heard this
this company was closing down
so we went to that to that company and
said i heard you're closing down and
told us yeah we're closing down
uh this morning we heard that we have to
go away by 12.
they heard that morning they have to go
away by 12. the entire building had to
be empty it was impossible to do
so i asked him very polite we are good
friends with them
we had an agreement they were wearing
the new computers we were repairing the
old computers that was our agreement we
did
so
i asked them
is it okay if i put up a sign over here
and she they said no no absolutely not
we are not allowed to put any signs up
but i'm away on quarter 212
and i don't care what happens after that
so at 12 exactly two papers on the front
door if you look for a pass go to the
home computer museum
and we picked up all repairs from that
shop went to the home computer museum
and that's how we survived
that was our thing that we could survive
so yeah
there's also
more than full our full-time work
we had i worked easy 20 72 hours a week
easy
the entire year
well actually i'm still doing that most
of the time
see
i'm not even half in my presentation yet
oh my god um
we had a first major story
um
i'll come back sorry um
in it was in august and um
for for some complete
coincidence
i um
i ended up sitting next at a bar
uh at a cafe
in
in in the city in a small city near near
the sea we just i went there with my
family it was a good day
uh nice weather and i said okay i've
been working for 72 hours a week let's
do a day off for me for one day so that
morning we went into i started in my car
with my family and we drove to the sea
dc shore and we sit there at some random
bar
and i had this shirt on
and and in the back you can see that all
brands
and um
the guy next to me said to me can i ask
you something yes sure
i see the brands acorn and sinclair on
there
um
i said yeah now i'm from a computer
museum yeah yeah i'm the first importer
of the of the netherlands of sinclair
and aegon the guy was sitting next to me
literally
i can't i can't figure that he was
sitting there so he started to talk and
he also
imported he imported laser he imported
uh acorn he imported a lot of brands
and his brother-in-law was the first one
importing ibm into the netherlands this
was a guy that was completely unknown on
the internet but he was very key to the
role of computers in the netherlands his
name is paul pardon he still lives
he's a very nice bloke and
so we got made but the thing is
he sold sinclair he sold acorn
uh he gave up over with importing that
and he kept only one company
one company alone
and that is
laser
laser computers
that was he was the only guy in the
netherlands importing laser computers
actually they were made in the
netherlands the laser computers
and um
yeah there's also katja schumann was
back then
some kind of famous uh girl from a soap
series which is still going on by the
way
and and he was telling he wrote he made
sure the song was written for her and he
booked her and um yeah that's how katya
became famous and laser computer became
famous lazy computers at some point was
the biggest in the netherlands
and
after a while he gave up a lot of
competition from the chinese market
dell as american but
but acer and all that kind of brands so
he sold his company laser computer's
assault in late 1999
and the guy who took it over um yeah he
it up that's his simple and lazy
computer's gone the thing is you
couldn't find this information at all
his name was completely he doesn't have
linkedin he doesn't have any social
media he's completely offline basically
you couldn't find this information
and um we have proof obviously
so what we did is we let him share this
story create this entire story how he
became the importer of laser computers
and that's what we published on our
website and we are still the only one
who published the full story of laser
computers so that was the first story we
did that in 2018
so 2019
we weren't bankrupt
so that was good
and we started to have a stable income
because we were helping people we were
helping people with autism helping
people with this to the labor market and
the dutch government gives money for
that
so we had stable income we had
volunteers as well
it was a great system and we still have
that same system
and we had the first contact regarding a
new building because the current the
building we rented was only for two
years
because when we started to rent it the
city told us after two years we have
this major building the big building
with the four museums in already
but in early 2018
just after we opened the city decided
yeah you're not coming in that building
so
but we had to do anything else and
yeah the landlord
really wasn't pleased with us
because we were still behind with rent
so there was no chance we could ever had
a successor a longer rent period
so we needed to have a new building and
it happened
that the building next to us
which was much larger and a much better
street
was empty and we could
got in contact with the land and the
owner of that building
and he was uh
enthusiastic about it yeah 10 minutes
great
i'm still in 2019 i was still now
um and we won the heritage prize
that was a big one we won the heritage
prize by the end of 2019
uh because our combination of social
cultural
uh entrepreneurship
that's the reason why we got the prize
and it was not decided by a judge it was
decided by the audience
which was quite easy because they had a
voting system
and you ask a computer museum for voting
systems yeah we can fix that
so
this is our new building
the entire yellow part
is completely us
1090 square meters
and we moved in by the end of 2019
and we were closed for the entire month
of january 2020 and we figured out it is
a good day to open on the 2nd of
february 2020.
and we opened that day
and we had a youtuber coming over it was
great and a lot of people were
enthusiastic about us
yeah
then
corona and stuffs happened
we moved to a new building we opened on
the 2nd of february 2020 and we were
closed on march the 15th
yeah that wasn't a great success
but since we had some time on our hands
we had didn't have any visitors we
started to repair on our status
and our status is a dutch cut computer
it's it's a
really big computer
and
yeah there's not there's no information
at all no schematics no documentation no
pictures no videos
up to then
uh and we had to we took on the
challenge to repair that to get that
machine booting again just because we
can and we had some time on our hands
we saved we managed to stay afloat
as a company
by selling laptops
we sold in three weeks more than 100
laptops
to the foundation that gives to poor
families because suddenly
home schooling became something and we
had to deliver laptops it was like the
mcdonald's at our place
in the front they were giving out
laptops in the back they were installing
laptops and i was doing the the
administration to send bills
it's a crazy time but we in three weeks
time we had uh we sold more than 100
laptops
um
we started to do the dutch heritage we
received an holborgen which is a dutch
computer
if you happen to be in the retro village
we have the whole bone over there
working
and we started to do dutch heritage
because the home computer stuff you know
is great but
we need to do more and we found the
offstate s which is also dutch computer
and we had tulip properties so that's we
did
and instead of
complaining about
oh it's it's terrible that we have
no visitors we decided to go on the
internet
and we took basically we took over
all social media we have every social
media can find us
except for um
i've got a name yeah i might we got all
social media
and we are actually the
by far the largest computer museum on
social media
by simple every day a picture with a
nice story that's what we do every day
so uh despite we are closed for uh four
months
uh
not my one month view one month was
closed because we were moving not too
pandemic
despite that we grow we grew in revenue
we grew in collection and we grew in
volunteers
we grew in everything which was
completely strange because we are a
non-profit organization without subsidy
and we grew in 2020 in a year that we
everybody was complaining that
everything went bad so
despite that we had less visitors than
in 2019
and by the end of the year we had a very
hard time but we were saved by the
sponsors people getting a year's
subscription
and in 2020 we were given
the largest collection boxed pc games
we counted them there are 2 200
pc games in our museum and we got the
largest collection cdi in the museum
so
2021
yeah i'm going a little bit faster
because i'm getting out of time with
we were more we were more close we had
six months we were closed in 2021
um
we had less visitors than in 2020
we became member of the network digital
uh heritage nde
meaning that we are now
for museums and for other companies
we are reading old media and converting
the data to a modern format that's what
we do
we became an example of social
entrepreneurship by the national office
of cultural heritage
so that's where we also are
we got our status working
and at this moment we are the only one
in the entire world that have worked in
our status standing and we had a massive
growth on social media
the only thing we don't have i i came up
with the only thing we didn't have we
don't have currently isn't only fans but
it's only social media we don't have um
yeah by the end of 2021 we were again
nearly bankrupt
that's that's our thing by the end of
the year getting bankrupt
but we're saved by sponsors donations
and adoptions you can adopt a computer
in the home computer museum
then we make sure we give them fresh
power every day
that's what we do and you can pet it and
you can come and visit it as well so
we became an essential museum for the
preserve of the national history
so we are officially
yeah right but
basically we can't go bankrupt because
if we are
nearby bankruptcy then the netherlands
will take us over
and fire me but yeah that's so we don't
do that
again
uh we crafted a lot of data
yeah
this year
we opened the cdi collection it was
planned in 2020 but yeah there was
something happening in the world so we
didn't open we opened the cdi collection
we actually have the largest cdi
collection in the entire world both
hardware and software
all the all the cdi's are currently
are archived already and shared
that's what we also do we open for
everybody to come in and actually share
the data
ah three yeah
he didn't tell me he had a three um
on september 25th we have the opening of
the game collection pc boxed game
collection which is actually in the
guinness world record and we will try
this year to have that
set again in the home computer museum
because the old record says 1800 and we
counted and we come up to 2200 so yeah
we need to fix that
mgh
it was the first time for us and we love
it here so we hope that we come back the
next time
um and i think everybody will like likes
us too because we have a lot of people
coming in our tent
our visitor numbers are getting better
and better it's not still on the place
where we want to be but i think this
year we'll be
doing that
yeah and i was already out of time with
this so
why are we important
i think
i told that pretty much
we do preserve the history
we actually tell the stories we make
sure everything is working that the
knowledge is kept how things work
and what we can learn about
the the history
is the the speed it went we went from
1977 with a computer that was four
kilobytes of memory we went to a thing
that yeah i mean this is a computer
everybody here has a computer
and what we learn in our computer museum
is that every computer has its own story
and we actually found that a lot of
people now who are in the musician we
are music industry started out with
matari
because we found the link between atari
and becoming a musician
and that's very interesting there's a
lot of history to be found in the
computer museum
history about people history about about
technology
it's very interesting
and yeah i have one minute left so
i was i was already out of time to
create more slides so i'm fine um
yeah that's not interesting that's a lot
of
go
this is what other people say about us
and the fun thing i we have 889
889 unique computers in our collection
and the total registered items is 30
555.
that's registers items not keyboards not
mouse
but
really like a monitor or a computer or a
particular piece of software or
documentation that's all we register
yeah yeah yeah
questions
we're in the retro village
thank you very much bad that wasn't i
would have given you six hours for this
talk it's not it's a lot of it i can
feel it it's no problem yeah so um thank
you very much unfortunately we're out of
time we will definitely drop by either
at the retro village or at the museum
and please everyone please give another
warm round of applause for pot thank you
very much thank you
you