^B 
CONVENTION REPORT:
 
For this convention report we thank Neil Wick who posted it (on CIS, I believe) and Al Fitzgerald, the fearless sysop of the St.Louis AUG BBS (3l4-773-l55l 7 E l 9PM-6AM Thur - Sun) who made this material available to us. 
 
#: 83123 S9/ADAMania
    13-Oct-89 01:28:23 
Sb: AdamCon Day 0 
Fm: Neil Wick 71056,613 
To: All
    The first day at AdamCon (day 0, actually) is one I'm afraid I'm not 
wellqualified to describe as I missed the most important part of it.  My 
brother and I missed the plane Friday night, so I got a stand-by seat Saturday 
morning and Dale came on a flight which should have arrived about 7:05. I left 
about 6:30 just as the opening session started and since the plane was a bit 
late we didn't get back till about 8:30 when the reception had finished.
   The first session was a history of the Adam by Jay Forman, president of M.W. 
Ruth, and the reaction to this seemed quite favourable.  Several people 
recorded it, so I'll likely get to hear it eventually.  One highlight here was 
that everyone was given a sticker that says "I (picture of a heart) Adam". 
These were the original stickers printed by Coleco on silver foil.
   This was followed by a reception, and by the time I got back from the 
airport, the room was half cleaned up and there were still about 20 people in 
the room standing around talking, which they contined to do for at least 
another half-hour.  These people then moved out into the hall where more people 
were chatting about all manner of things, and this continued until after 11 
when they all decided to move to the bar to continue the discussions some more.
    I went to bed at this point since I'd been up since 5 am and I wanted to 
make it to 7:30 breakfast the next morning, but one person said he hadn't slept 
for 2 days anyway and another commented that he came from California, so it was 
still early for him.
 
    Day 1 began with some general comments by Monte Neece followed by a session 
on hardware.  Much of this this time was taken by Phil Kosowski who explained 
many common problems with the Adam and showed us which parts of the circuit 
boards were likely to be the cause.  Phil apparently gets referrals from Coleco 
and has a cople of truckloads of stuff at the ready to replace any defective 
parts in Adam computers. He showed some pictures of his basement and he has 
indeed got all varieties of items from Coleco stacked from floor to ceiling.
   The morning continued with 3 sessions.  The participants were divided into 3 
groups and saw these in rotation.  John Vilillo and Ron Collins described CP/ M 
Basics, Alan Neely and Terry Cairns did Telecommunications and Mark Gordon 
discussed developing "Advanced Hardware" (more about his Powermate in another 
thread.)
   Lunch was followed by a general session where Ed Snow discussed "AdamCalc: 
Adam's Most Underused Program".  He told us about his experiences with 
spreadsheet programs on several different computers, and expressed a preference 
for many of AdamCalc's methods.  We saw a detailed explanation of how he does 
his home budgeting using AdamCalc.
   Product demos took up the rest of the afternoon until a wrap-up session at 
4:30.  (See other messages for discussion of the new products.)
 
    Day 2 began with 7:30 breakfast followed by a general session on "Building 
Super-charged User Groups".  Panelists were Howard Pines of ECAUG (Emerald 
Coast), Terry Cairns of MTAG (Metro Toronto), Jim Notini of NIAD, and David 
Cobley of VISA (Vancover and the Islands Senior Adamphiles).  These groups are widely spread geographically and have 
different purposes and forms.  A very good cross section of groups. Among the 
interesting facts: MTAG has about 100 members, but often has 25 to 30 at a 
meeting (seemingly the highest meeting attendance of the groups represented at 
AdamCon); NIAD has about 400 members in the Chicagoland area, but only about 15 
at a typical meeting; VISA has no membership fees and they'd like to keep it 
that way (they get free newsletter printing as long as they don't charge for 
memberships).  Between the panelists and the audience many good ideas on 
holding user group meetings were brought up.  Some discussion also took place 
on getting new members and this was finally where it ended because that was a 
main topic for the next day.
        The general session was followed by break-out sessions.  Pat Herrington 
demonstrated some of her techniques on Power Paint and introduced many people 
to the capabilities of this highly acclaimed tool.  Tony Patterson assisted,
                                                 
Meanwhile, Ron Collins and John Vilillo did a "CP/M Advanced" session, which 
included a demonstration of some programs to use of a dot matrix printer.
  Ron also explained how to adapt a CP/M program to run on the Adam if it 
wasn't specifically designed for our computer.
   In the third session the Walters brothers of Walters software gave 
demonstrations of their various utilities and even told us a bit about their 
programming technique.
   Day 2 wrapped up about 11:30 am and most of us were off in a flash to see 
various local attractions.
 
    After the third day's 7:30 breakfast, the general session topic was "Adam 
in the 1990's: Developing and expanding the Adam Community." This requires a 
message thread of its own, so I won't get into it here.  The door prizes were 
drawn in the morning also, because we didn't want to lug everything over to 
Church Street Station where the dinner wass to be held.
   The breakout sessions on day 3 were "Basic Programming" and "Advance 
Programming.  You had to chose one session or the other
                    ; there wasn't time to repeat each one, so I went to see 
the advanced.  After a short talk about the advantages and disadvantages of 
Assembly Language versus Turbo Pascal for CP/M programming, Tony Morehen showed 
how to write a small assembly language program.
   Lunch on day 3 was one of the highlights of the convention, not because of 
the food (although all the food at the hotel was very good), but because we 
finally got a demonstration of Chris Brayman's MIDI setup.  Although a bad 
speaker or amplifier output restricted the demo to one speaker, the results 
were very impressive, and we were treated to a variety of music from the St. 
Elsewhere theme to a classical selection.  As I ate, I had to look up to assure 
myself that there wasn't a chamber orchestra sitting on the other side of the 
room.  Chris says, "It isn't a product . . . yet," but hopefully it will be 
available to the rest of us soon.
   Lunch was followed by more product demonstrations.  And then 
came the event that we all had waited for all weekend, 
"The Adam Store and Swap Shop." Plenty of merchandise, both new and used was 
available for purchase at excellent prices, and a large line formed as people 
waited to pay for their purchases.  Monte and his wife must be thanked again 
here, as they were largely responsible for collecting and keeping track of the 
money.  Again everything went very smoothly and many satisfied purchasers left 
that room.
   I can't comment on the final dinner, because unfortunately, I had to leave 
before it started, but it sounded like a lot of fun.
 
MANY THANKS TO NEIL WICK FOR THESE REFLECTIONS
    Says, Al Fitzgerald (St.Louis Adam Sysop)

                                         
          
 
look up to assure 
myself that there wasn't a chamber orchestra sitting on the other side of the 
room
