Fleamarket 2002
My thoughts
by Bill Raecke
Well, it's over for another year. I'm sure we'll have more to report in next month's newsletter, but I thought I'd share my thoughts.
The fleamarket had far less to sell than ever before. And I counted fewer than 20 attendees. Speaking for myself, I think we may have reached the limit on how many times we can pass the same hardware and software back and forth among ourselves.
This was a far cry from our earlier MetCom's. We started the MetCom tradition in 1987. In years past, the fleamarket was just a part of the show -- and a small part at that. In fact, the first one or two MetCom's didn't include a fleamarket at all.
Things I remember:
- flying in guest speakers to give talks
- holding multiple simultaneous classes throughout the entire day
- renting a large part of the Arlington Convention Center for the show
- over 10,000 square feet of display space
- attendance by 12 or more dealers and developers
- hundreds of attendees
- lines of 50 people or more waiting to get in as soon as the doors opened
- shows that ran from 10am to 5pm -- and still didn't allow enough time to folks to do and see what they wanted to
Those earlier shows were a lot more work to organize, but they were a lot more fun as well. We dropped the MetCom designation in 1997 when it became apparent that we didn't have much more to do other than the fleamarket. Our list of dealers and developers had dwindled and there wasn't a lot of interest in classes any more.
Since 1997 we've had fleamarkets. Still, the fleamarkets have been very successful. When there's a lot to sell and a lot of folks attending, it's still fun. But it seems that the attendance and the amount of things for sale drops annually. I think it's a reflection of what's happened in the Amiga market during those same years. (What Amiga market?)
Obviously what we need are new computers and new software to run on them. More than that, we need new Amiga users. If the new computers do nothing more than sell to existing Amiga owners, next year there will be 10 of us at the Fleamarket. Here's hoping that the new machines can spark new interest so that our club can grow again.