As should be expected, a number of individuals have come forward with responses to the initial blog post. While I do not expect everyone to take even a passing interest in the rabbit-hole of the situation or the context, I figured it was worth writing a few quick addendums.

Naturally, as is the case when you post anything anywhere in public, I am called a liar. I’ll simply say that everything I describe in the blog entry happened. I contacted a VCF administrator and was told it was all disposed of, and that they kept the bins. I am fine with people claiming that disposal was not what happened, but this is what I was told, directly, in human words. The fact that I am seeing contradictory and confusing descriptions of what happened is not a checkmark destined for the Win column.

A few people have rushed to indicate that I need to be more careful describing “which” VCF entity is at fault. I am sad to report to them all that the Byzantine VCF structure of name licensing, geographic branding, and internal corporate entity is meaningless to anyone six inches away. You all know each other and you all interchangeably use nomenclature. If you are part of an organization that calls itself some form of “VCF” and need an opportunity to write a statement about how your organization in a solitary/separate entity and should be considered more worthy or ethical than others, feel absolutely free.

A small sliver of people were concerned I was saying that I was never going to go to any computer history conference or event again. I am a free person with the freedom to attend whatever is open to the public. As it stood, however, VCF East was the easiest event for me to attend, so it was where I saw people the most. A minor point is that I considered attendance a form of endorsement, but that is my own personal choice. The chances of me attending other events is, like death by cow, low but never zero.

The rest of the discussions I have seen from the blog entry, raging in the usual stages of social media and posting forums, have failed to require any further response or thought from me personally.

Finally, this is all relatively minor in terms of the work I do and projects I focus on, an event that brought me some fury but which has mostly played the part of filed under “life lessons”. I just got tired of having quiet inward emotion when I was reminded of the event, specifically when VCF announcements would pass by my screen, followed by nice folks asking if they would be seeing me at the event. Now I have made a statement, and rather than the beginning of a saga, I consider it the end of one. My conversations with people and organizations I shift materials to are much longer, much more involved, and with much more contingencies as a result of this event, and things are better for it.

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