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sirocyl
@sirocyl

Much of the information that was here pertains to the past event, held in January 2024, and is kept here for historical reasons.
I will fold it in the part below, but the rest still applies.
Thank you for helping to make our event wonderful this year! ❤️


The 2024 event info. I am one of the department-heads, and a Museum Director, at MAGFest, an annual celebration of all things music and games, multimedia and graphics, magic and gears alike.

MAGFest, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is looking for, among other things:

  • Old Computers!
    • Mac, Atari, Amiga/Commodore, and PC all welcome
  • UNIX workstations, and other neat workstation hardware
  • Cool computers!
    • Japanese and international/foreign-market computers
    • minicomputers/microcomputers
    • Itanium, Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, Sun, SGI and NeXT boxes
    • Interesting modern-day computers you don't see very often.
    • "It Runs DOOM" challenges. :)
  • obscure video game hardware (including prototype, dev, non-retail internal stuff!)
  • multimedia "experiences", especially on the indie side of things
  • creative music and art setups, things like trackers, tablets, workstations for Deluxe Paint

... and you! and people like you, in the mid-Atlantic region, who want to show them off.

MAGFest is January 18-21st this year, at the Gaylord National Harbor, in MD (right in the DC area). Our museum gets a modest amount of foot traffic during the event; I'd estimate 250-750 people a day pass through here.

Reach out!

TL;DR: if you're in the area for that weekend, and you'd like to do something with MAGFest and our museum department, reach me here or elsewhere @sirocyl (see my profile on the left sidebar/profile bio, for contacts!) We may even have a badge in store for you. <3

E-mail: You can also reach the museum department by e-mail. museum@ is the first part & magfest.org is the domain.

Be sure that when you contact us, include "Museum Hero" in the subject line or heading, thanks!

Photos are from previous years' events - this, or better, is what we're aiming to accomplish.


Museum hero? What's that about?!

See, every year for the past decade, we've done this pop-up computer museum. It's expanded over the years to include all sorts of diverse exhibits from Nintendo to PlayStation and everything in between; Macs with PCs in them, PCs with Mac on them, music workstations built from MSXes, and handheld game dev units with PVMs stuck to them.

Our goal is to provide an authentic and immersive experience around the entertainment technology we are familiar with, in a way that is original, engaging, educational and entertaining in and of itself.

We generally do this, through long-standing agreements with collectors, who bring a set of exhibits every year. Some collectors follow a theme, e.g., video game development and behind-the-scenes hardware, Macintosh systems over the decades, the Age of Atari, DOOM and Quake multiplayer LAN party zones, and the like.

In recent years, some collectors that have worked with us have either moved on, or have had scheduling conflicts that got in the way of preparing for MAGFest. This left the museum relatively barren, but moderately serviceable last year.
This year, however the impact is far greater.
The museum might not make it in the long run, if we don't, collectively, think fast.

So how can I help?

Bring vintage computers, multimedia and gaming stuff! Small, large, one or many items.

Depending on the size of your exhibit collection, you can either leave something with us over the weekend while you attend MAGFest, or we can plan out a table for you as an exhibitor under contract. If you have a table or more worth of stuff to bring, contact us!

The event starts on January 18th this year, and it's running until the 21st. You can choose any and all of these days to set up or drop stuff off and pick stuff up.

If you're already an attendee and want to drop something off with us at-event, to loan for the weekend, we have some rules in an agreement linked below:

Museum Hero at-event abridged agreement.

The above terms will also be posted on the check-in desk, before you sign in with your badge number.

If you want to contribute more significantly - e.g., a whole table load, you must get in touch with @sirocyl or e-mail the museum at the e-mail at the top of this post! That way we can handle a more secure contract, potentially with better perks.


FAQs about donations/volunteering/participation for MAGFest:

I have some old computer stuff to get rid of.

You can also donate items to the MAGFest Museum. Books, media, cartridges, disks, CD-ROMs, peripherals, equipment, computers, displays and consoles, especially with associated peripherals and parts, are good candidates for donation.
We're not an e-waste depot, though; this is not a guarantee we'll accept anything and everything.

Oh, we do a thing regularly at [VCF East, LI Retro, PAX, anime cons, etc]

If you have a road-travelling exhibition concerning vintage computing, arcades, television and broadcast tech, retro and vintage video games, music and graphics for electronic systems technology - reach out to us! We can get you in in quick time.
Also, we understand it's probably a bit short notice for you for this year, but we hope to have a museum every year! If you can't squeeze us in on your schedule this time around, hit us up anyway - we'll talk about adding you to the rolls for next year.

I'd love to volunteer with you.

We'd love to have you! It might be a bit late this year, but join MAGFest as a volunteer, and in particular check out what positions MAGFest has on its volunteer staff board.
If you want to specifically work with the museum, get in touch.

And what if we just want to throw money at your cause?

You can donate to MAGFest through GiveButter - if you use this link, we'll know it's to the Museum. <3
Your donations go towards funding our Museum department, including equipment, tools, peripherals and dongles, hardware acquisitions, and other departmental costs as needed.


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