I am pleased to announce that booking is now open for the next in person ABUG South.
This will be the last event that I will be organising (but the events will continue into 2024 and hopefully beyond).
Venue
The event will take place from Friday 10th to Sunday 12th November 2023 at The Ely, London Road, Blackwater, CAMBERLEY, Hampshire, GU17 9LJ.
The venue is a combined hotel and pub/restaurant. We have been there many times now and the feedback for this venue is always very positive. The meeting room is just off the bar. They have a good range of food including an excellent Sunday roast.
The meeting room is ideal for our purposes. The official capacity is 110 (although I think that is perhaps a bit sporting). At the previous ABUG South events, we have been comfortably able to accommodate 35 attendees with a full table each and plenty of room to pass between tables. This is, however, somewhat contingent on people being kind enough to bring a few extra tables (about 4 or 5 extra would be great).
Travel
The venue is a short distance from J4a of the M3 and pretty close to the M4 too. There is a reasonable amount of parking on site. There are nearby stations at Blackwater and Fleet which are less than 10 minutes by car (and, as usual, I am sure that there will be volunteers to do pick-ups). They are just branch line stations but are easily accessible from Reading, London Paddington and London Waterloo. It is about a half hour drive from Heathrow Airport.
How to book a place
Places will be subject to a charge of £15 per head (although I am not planning on taking any money until much closer to the time). The £15 charge covers the cost of the meeting room together with as much tea, coffee, fizzy pop and unhealthy snacks as you can consume.
If you wish to reserve a place, please post in the thread below or send me a PM.
Booking a hotel room
Click here to book a room. There has, in the last year, been a significant increase in the price of hotel rooms at the venue. In the current economic climate, I am not sure the room rate represents good enough value for money. (Although, they do seem to sell out in any event, which makes it difficult to negotiate a discount, particularly when the price we are given for the function room is so generously low.) As at 21 October 2023, the price of single occupancy for a room for the two nights is a total of £189.00
There are, however, a number of other hotels nearby, including a Travelodge which is 3.2 miles away and charges £98.98 £99.98 £102.98 £113.98 for the two nights. Another Travelodge charges £107.98 £125.98 £131.98 £129.98 for the two nights and is 5.4 miles away. There is also a Premier Inn which is 3.3 miles away and is charging £145.00 £116.00 £117.00 £103.00 for the two nights. I will keep an eye on room availability and pricing and post updates on this thread.
What happens at ABUG
Acorn & BBC Micro User Group (ABUG) events are open to enthusiasts of the BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Atom and Archimedes/RISC OS machines. Attendees will typically stay for two if not all three days. The events are always very informal and can involve:
- attendees bringing their own hardware to set up and show off
- time spent working on hardware and programming/games projects
- exchange of ideas/knowledge
- upgrade and repair of poorly Acorn machines
- collaborative work on community projects, such as software preservation, preparation/planning for displays at other events etc.
- sale of items by members (not guaranteed, but there are often opportunities to buy bits)
- general socialising, food/drink and the odd hi-score competition!
- Important! Ensure that any hardware you bring that features the RIFA/paper-type capacitors with a tendency to go POP (e.g. Beebs) have had the caps changed! We can't risk setting any smoke alarms off as that may incur charges!
Enthusiasts of other platforms are also welcome. In the past we have seen people bringing along vintage systems from:
- Apple
- Commodore
- Sinclair
- Dragon
- Vectrex
- Amstrad
Rules
There are very few rules:
- no hot food is to be consumed at the venue other than that which is purchased from the bar/restaurant
- no alcoholic drinks are to be consumed at the venue other than that which is purchased from the bar/restaurant
- see below regarding children
- the hotel is a snake-free venue; please do not bring any snakes to the event
ABUG meetings are not child friendly events because of the following:
- there is not often a lot to engage the interest of very young children
- people working with hot soldering stations
- people working with potentially toxic substances (lead, IPA)
- people working with exposed mains (and higher) voltages
- large amounts of electrical cabling representing potential trip hazards
- lots of fragile, expensive and sometimes rare equipment
If, however, children become a risk to themselves or others, they will have to leave.
New members
We are particularly keen for new members of the forum to attend these events. You do not need to ‘join’ anything to come along. You do not need to have attended previously or being active on Stardot or on the Facebook group. You do not need to be working on developing a Cray 1 second processor for the Beeb or porting Crysis to the Acorn Atom. You just need to be interested in vintage technology.
We are a friendly bunch and we will make sure you feel welcome. If you have any questions or uncertainty about the event, please feel free to PM me.
Partners
Many people bring their partners to these events. They are all very welcome. Those of you who are lucky enough to have a partner who is genuinely involved in the retro-computing scene, will have to secure and pay for a separate place for your partner. But those partners who just attend to socialise are welcome free of charge and without needing to take-up one of the places.
Confirmed
- JudgeBeeb (Robert) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- danielw (Daniel) - Saturday only - paid
- kieranhj (Kieran) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- tricky (Richard) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- sbadger (Stewart) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- cmorley (Chris) - Saturday and Sunday - paid
- 1024MAK (Mark) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- MattH (Matt) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- daveejhitchins (Dave) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- helpful (Bryan) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- tom_seddon (Tom) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- baz4096 (Chris) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- markdryan (Mark) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- TonyMay (Tony) - Probably Friday, definitely Saturday - paid
- BigEd (Ed) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- danrolfe (Dan) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- inky (Mark) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- steve3000 (Steve) - Saturday and Sunday - paid
- Dave Footitt (Dave) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- philpem (Phil) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- IanS (Ian) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- z0m8ied0g (Stephen) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- mogwaay (Chris) - Saturday only - paid
- SarahWalker (Sarah) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- mark71 (Mark) - Saturday only - paid
- friesian7 (Jarod) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- Prime (Phill) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- flynnjs (Jason) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday evening - paid
- VectorEyes (Adrian) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- DamoJay (Damian) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - paid
- fx210,1 (Mark) - all day Saturday, possibly Friday night - paid
- NickLuvsRetro (Nick) - all day Saturday, possibly Sunday - paid
